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Comment by olavk | Hacker News Reader

SO have a very well-defined purpose: To answer practical questions about software development - questions which have answers. The site is not a good fit for open-ended discussions - the UI is not designed for this. How would you select the "accepted answer" in a questions like "what is the worst language you have ever worked with?" What is the actual problem in search of a solution here? Upvote/downvote is supposed to indicate "helpful"/"not helpful" - how would you determine this for such a question?

Think of it in unix philosophy - a site which does one thing and does it well. If you need something different, use another site which does that thing well.

And what is lost by pushing general discussions to sites like HN or Reddit which is much more suited for such discussions?

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Users don't care about any of that. They look at the answers on those questions and think "wow this is great content!" then they get mad when mods shut down the discussion.

It's important to remember that users don't care what SO's purpose is, they care about their experience with the service and for a lot of people that experience is extremely negative.

I think it would be in SO's best interest to actual listen to the complaints people have instead of just saying "you're not using the site right". People wanting to use a product is a privilege that is best not taken for granted. After all, the customer is always right.

Perhaps - and I don't se the benefit of all decisions, like pushing system admin and database admin questions to separate sites. But I do think the overall perceived value of the site would decrease if general discussions, joke threads and unfocused flamewars were allowed to run wild. The basic premise of SO is that "it answers your question", and I believe it does this extremely well. I remember a time before SO.

But that is a decision for the owner of the site - Joel Spolsky I guess? Don't blame the mods for keeping the site at the intended focus.

There are also frequently users complaining about HN not allowing joke-threads. Clearly those users are not served well by HN and have a bad experience here - but would it improve the site to cater to them? Are all customers always right?

There might be some users wanting joke threads on HN but there's a massive number of people who feel closed questions on SO are a problem. It's a very well known issue in our industry.

> Don't blame the mods for keeping the site at the intended focus.

For better or for worse, the users are going to blame the mods for this since they're the ones closing the questions.

Questions are closed by voting just as they can be reopened by voting. You do need a certain level of rep to vote either way. So the closing and reopening trends for better or worse reflects the community using SO, not just some cabal of mods.

A closed question only needs 5 votes to reopen, if I remember correctly. So if there are massive amounts of people who wants a question reopened it should be possible.

Not disputing some people are overzealously closing qestions, and this problem should be addressed - just saying it is just as easy to vote against closing.

Another stack exchange site could be dedicated to this type of questions, let's call it InfiniteLoop. Moderator would move questions from others sites there instead of closing it, and no answer could be accepted. It may be enough to both maintain SO quality/focus and please those who like open ended questions ?

By the way, I happen to like these open ended questions because they complete dispassionate theory by being opiniated. Maybe it just me, but I think both are needed for a broad understanding of any subject.

Oh I also love those kind of questions. Would love to read the HN thread about "worst language you have ever used". SO format is just a really bad fit for such discussions since the UI is not designed for it.

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