Ask HN: Why does StackOverflow close so many useful topics? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does StackOverflow close so many useful topics?

6 pointsSeanDav8 comments

I can't actually log into my SO account at the moment because MyOpenID is giving problems so thought I would ask the question here as I respect the opinion of HN'ers.

Often when searching for information on something technology related I get linked to SO and almost always the information on SO is great. I have also found that a lot of these topics have been closed. For example there is a SO topic on HN front page right now about Language to use for Safety Critical Software. This has been very popular on both HN and SO and yet the topic is already closed on SO.

I find this rather frustrating as it seems that almost any question about "what is best?" or "how would you do this?" is closed, irrespective of how relevant the question is and how good the answers are.

It seems that in their zeal to prevent religious wars the moderators are closing very interesting, relevant and well reasoned topics.

This behaviour does not make a lot of sense to me and is starting to detract, in my opinion, from the usefulness and relevance of Stackoverflow. Just where is one supposed to go to get these types of questions answered from domain experts?

It's extremely frustrating. I used to look forward to finding a Stack Overflow link in my google search results. Now, I can pretty much predict that the topic will be closed based on how interesting the title looks.

I've actually been collecting all the annoyingly closed discussions I've run across in everyday internet browsing:

https://pinboard.in/u:zpinter/t:closed/t:stackoverflow

On the bright side, StackOverflow content is available via data dumps and an API. Combined with the fact that they use OpenID logins, I've been tempted to setup a domain that matches stack exchange urls and automatically pulls in content for closed topics to continue the discussion.

Something like:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up...

to

http://stackoverflow.whyyouclosethis.com/questions/316265/tr...

However, it really seems crazy that StackOverflow itself can't find a way to incorporate these types of questions into their ecosystem. There's clearly a demand. Whether or not they want it to be the core focus, they've got a community that's interested in these discussions. They really should find a way (even if it means moving them to an off-topic section) to allow it.

Serverfault has the same problems. I barely go back there anymore, I just lost interest (despite being in the top 100). The questions are usually not that interesting, but I do enjoy helping the new sysadmins that don't know where to begin. Although I need to be quick about it (those questions are usually closed first).

Example: http://serverfault.com/questions/9766/what-a-beginner-should...

There is a relatively new (a month old) FAQ section named What Stack Overflow is Not[1]. I believe lots of new and old questions are being closed and deleted based on this list.

For your example, a "what is best..." question would be closed under "Stack Overflow is not a Recommendation Engine".

[1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/128548/151459

I used to believe that it's because some of the questions are not objective.

However, after seeing some very good discussions closed, I really just think that the admins get off on it. It's even worse at programmers.stackexchange.com

It's a bad policy, and it leads to a lot of frustration by a lot of people.

Some of the forums seem worse than others. I give you "Programmers" (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) as an example of one forum that closes questions way too often.

I'm curious - why not ask this over at StackOverflow?

Besides, they have a FAQ specifically for your question: http://stackoverflow.com/faq#close

AS I said in my post - I could not log into SO, due to problems with OpenID. Will try again later and post this question there.

Because the topic would get closed.

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