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Comment by nyellin | Hacker News Reader

I wish they wouldn't close questions like this.

SO is quickly approaching reference territory. It is my go-to authority on most programmatic questions.

And not all content takes the form of a how-do-i-solve-this-problem format. Would be good to see them re-purpose that good information (like this particular entry) into a useful format.

> Would be good to see them re-purpose that good information (like this particular entry) into a useful format.

Like cough Wikipedia? Most of the entries on that page are links to a Wikipedia article with a one-paragraph summary. Seems like anything missing from the canonical list should just be added:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures

Wikipedia is a good place for information about different data structures, but the question here is "What are the lesser known but cool data structures. There are tons of obscure data structures, but only a few that people would consider cool. Wikipedia cannot and should not show that information, because it's inherently subjective.

StackOverflow cannot show that information either, because it's inherently subjective!

"What are some data structures not found on Wikipedia" is an objective question (but time-bound, which violates an SO policy)

Wikipedia was my first thought, but it's more encyclopedia oriented (naturally).

I was thinking something more along the lines of what they did with Scala:

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info

I am not optimistic that they will reach the point of being a reference. I fear that, especially for product-specific information, it will eventually become too hard to separate up-to-date content from outdated content.

I do not know a good way to prevent that, other than through manual intervention (hm, thinking of it, machine learning could help here. One could train a model that knows, for example, that 'perl' answers from five years ago are more up-to-date than 'rails' ones from two years ago)

Considering that they don't really line up with the goals of a "normal" SO question, I can't really blame them for closing it. It may be better for them to create a separate section for these types of open-ended questions.

I thought they were encouraging such questions to be posted on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ instead.

I don't think so, from the FAQ:

    You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual
    problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the 
    usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Programmers is simply for less focused on code, more conceptual questions.

Well then they're missing out. The only time I visit Stack Overflow is when it comes up in a Google search or when it shows up on hacker news with something actually useful and book-markable like this.

Programmers mod here: this is inaccurate, as these types of questions are pretty much off-topic everywhere on Stack Exchange.

Programmers is the whiteboard to Stack Overflow's compiler: if you have a specific (emphasis on specific) programming issue that doesn't involve code, it's likely on-topic for Programmers. If it's just a poll of weird/funny/cool/etc. stuff, it's not welcome.

facist moderators who delete the site's best questions make it worse one deletion at a time.

It's too bad the name is so generic, or that it makes such a fine distinction between programmers and programming.

I agree it's not intuitive, particularly to those not well-versed in the history of Stack Overflow.

For the backstory, when there was just Stack Overflow (and not the network of Stack Exchange sites), there was a large contingent of people who wanted Stack Overflow just for programming problems (and not programmer-related questions, like business concerns, conceptualizing, or lists like these).

So the early Stack Overflow population separated everything into "Programming Related" (on-topic) and "Not Programming Related" (off-topic) questions. When Stack Exchange 2.0 launched (allowing people to suggest new sites), one of the sites that launched in the first wave was "Not Programming Related" which was intended to house all the fun stuff that was now off-topic on Stack Overflow.

Turns out, having a free-for-all site doesn't work, and the quality was all over the place. So it was retuned into being a site for questions about being a programmer or acting as programmer (so, business or conceptual questions answerable by programmers)—which captured 85-90% of the quality questions on the new site—to Stack Overflow's concrete programming (questions specifically about implementation): hence the name, Programmers.SE.

No, Programmers is for strict Q&A as well.

I am on record on meta.programmers.se as disagreeing with that policy.

speculation 1) its a doozey on their database

speculation 2) they don't make money on content like this. (um, maybe its significantly less referrers from search?)

I think that's unfair, the mod who closed it isn't even an SO employee.

The SO employees have seen it. If they want questions like this open, they all have the power to override moderators.

Maybe they simply agree the question doesn't fit the SE model? I'm not saying the company running SO doesn't want it closed, I'm saying it's unfair to assume that's because it's "inconvenient" to them.

I don't follow you. I'm not assuming it's inconvenient for them. It's very convenient. They just have to click a few buttons to reopen a question like that. I know for a fact that they really don't want them to remain open.

We know they don't want it open. The question is why.

dustingetz was speculating they don't want it open because it either hits too much on their database or doesn't make enough money from it.

My position is that they feel the question doesn't fit with the SE model and there's no ulterior/egotistical reason behind keeping it closed.

Oh, I see what you mean now. I mistook your original comment as being in agreement with him then. I thought you were saying that it was unfair for the moderator to close that question.

No, it's closed because it's a list question and there is no actual answer.

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