

Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star - bussetta
http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star

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jrmg
Could someone summarize how programmers.stackexchange.com has changed, for
those of us who were not heavy users?

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danielbarla
When programmers came about, SO (StackOverflow) was already a well-established
site for technical questions. It has a hard line on questions that are
difficult to answer directly, either with simple logic or code, or references.

Programmers was created (or so it seemed) with a similar goal, but for not
directly technical questions. Typically things that are too high-level and not
detailed enough for SO end up there, e.g. questions about architecture, design
patterns or paradigms (and many others).

What seems to have changed is that the moderation policy has become ever more
to the letter, closing any question which doesn't seem to fit the site. The
problem with this is that most of the policy (the "FAQ") is in line with that
of SO, where it works great. I honestly don't think that high-level,
architectural questions can be answered in a 100% correct way; they are often
too fuzzy, involving trade-offs that are different for different organisations
and people. So basically, if any question comes along which has no single
"correct" answer, it is likely to be closed. This is a bit of a problem,
because I for one would love to read about the (highly educated and refined)
_opinions_ of some great developers. Apparently that isn't allowed, however,
only "facts".

~~~
yrizos
Disclaimer: I'm a Programmers moderator.

The original version of Programmers was called "Not Programming Related", and
it was created as a site for anything and everything that didn't fit Stack
Overflow (What's your favourite programming cartoon, etc).

What you are describing is actually the current scope, that seems to be
working just fine. You're right that questions that fit within the site's
scope rarely have a definitive answer, but a definitive answer is not what we
are looking for, just a finite and somewhat limited set of good/great answers.

Here's a few recent example questions that probably explain what the site's
about better than I could ever:

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-f...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-
functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-
ca...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-
master-a-programming-language)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critiq...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critique-
of-the-io-monad-being-viewed-as-a-state-monad-operating-on-the-world)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-
is...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-
code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-
it-...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-
idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-
is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experi...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experience-
of-pythons-pep-302-new-import-hooks)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-
ha...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-have-
languages-influenced-cpu-design)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-
in...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-
inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-
bos...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-
to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i)

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-s...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-
software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)

None of these questions would make it on Stack Overflow, and that's the gap
Programmers is filling.

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danielbarla
Yeah, those are some great examples. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the
most viewed / highest reated question ("what should every programmer know
about web development") closed at one time due to being a "polling" type of
question? Here's the link:

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-
sh...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-
programmer-know-about-web-development)

Personally, I've found that some of the most interesting and instructive
answers have been quite opinionated and not really fact based. Sometimes these
lead to (heated) discussions of their merits, which lead to some insights into
the various opinions. I would almost say that in software architecture, most
areas are gray (and those that are black and white are trivial or
uninteresting). It's just unfortunate that these types of questions and
answers run the risk of being closed.

What I'm really saying is: I get the need for moderation, and yes, perhaps
some questions are not a good fit for the site. But I'd still love to have
some place where developers express their opinions and are challenged to
justify them.

~~~
yrizos
It was closed and re-opened a few times (full revision history:
<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions>). Every time that
question got shared somewhere, it started getting crap answers instantly,
everyone ignored the fantastic community curated top voted answer and went
ahead and added yet another one liner saying "learn css".

No one wants that question closed, but at the same time only a handful of
people actively prune it every now and then. Right now it's open, but if it
starts generating crap answers yet again, we might close it. And then silently
re-open it when no one's looking, hoping that the next troll that visits the
site won't notice.

However, keep in mind closed doesn't mean dead, we have lots of great (but
closed) questions
([http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=closed%3a1)),
if at some point a question becomes incredibly troublesome, closing it is the
easy - and reversible - fix. Killing crap answers, rewording the question to
be a bit more specific, etc, is a very slow process, but it happens.

~~~
danielbarla
Thanks, it makes more sense in that context.

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lrobb
I feel like I just stumbled into a jr high lunchroom conversation.... What the
hell is wrong with you people that this makes it onto the first page?

