There's a reason the frat house isn't in the middle of the classroom on most college campuses. Because it'd interfere with learning.
Frat row is, y'know, over there. Slightly off campus.
Frat row is, y'know, over there. Slightly off campus.
Entertaining? Sure.
For me, one of the biggest advantages of the college classroom over the high school one was that digressions, side topics, and open-ended discussion occured far more frequently in my college classrooms than in my high school classrooms. Think of it as the difference between being taught to a test and just learning things. There still needs to be some moderation so that things stay focused overall, but often those side trails spark some really interesting, useful discussions. Education doesn't have to be narrow.
The problem there is, where does the motivation for people to provide you with "your answer" come from?
Do you really think there's pool of people out there who think "Maybe RegEx has a problem at work today, I'll just go check StackOverflow to see if I can answer todays question for him."?
Or do you think it's more likely there are a bunch of people interested in various coding topics, who enjoy discussing problems and solutions? How long do you supposed that second group of people will hang around if "strict moderation" starts deleting any "interesting discussion", because questioners are complaining "I just want my damned answer!"?
Sure, StackOverflow reputation points are one source of motivation, but if I had the choice between getting my questions answered by people wishing to maximise their StackOverflow reputation, and getting my questions discussed by people who're interested and engaged experts in the field - I'd join the second discussion every time.
If you're looking for a system that is designed to solicit discussion, Stack Exchange is not that. Not by a long shot. It's kind of the ... opposite of that.
That way there would be a place for people to have these discussions while keeping it separate from stack-overflow?
Discussions over the best solutions happen frequently on SO. Poor solutions are criticized, good solutions are expanded upon.
> The problem there is, where does the motivation for people to provide you with "your answer" come from?
Easy. Some people just love to educate. I love to educate - I write tutorials frequently. Some people use SO to educate, while others use forums.
I don't think the jargon question example from the article here is well suited for even a looser SO, as it's more entertainment than education, but there are lots of productive questions that don't have black and white answers that I've still enjoyed seeing SO discuss.
I actually learnt a bunch from those jargon examples - I'll certainly start using some of them at work. Jargon exists to make communication more efficient - I just learned a bunch of new ways to communicate about my craft.
You have to ignore your users sometimes, and maybe this is one of those times. But if you are getting a consistent message from your users that they're unhappy, I hope you're at least listening.
Characterizing the people who want more reasonable^H^H^H^H^H lenient moderation on SO as wanting a frat house atmosphere makes me think you're not really listening.
Is there a sanctioned place for people to post this sort of meta-programmer stuff? You find little scraps of it from time to time, is there a stack exchange site that can be used for fun stuff?
Anyway, frat row was pretty far off main campus (sorry, "the lawn") where I went to college, at UVa.