Now if you have a specific question about some aspect of Git compared to Mercurial, that can work on SE. But as a broad kitchen sink, catch-all, "compare these two giant things kthx", you'd end up with Gorilla vs. Shark.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/247621/what-are-the-corre...
Asked and answered by your number 1 user, John Skeet. Basically he had specific detailed information to share, and he did it by asking and answering his own question. Something encouraged by Joel on the old podcasts if I remember correctly. Hugely upvoted, so the community thought it was great, but one of your moderators closed it as "not constructive". This is endemic at Stackoverflow. As SiVal points out, the best material on the site is routinely shut down. How does this make any sense? I have 2k8 rep points and used to visit often, but I find the excessive moderation hugely off-putting and I now rarely visit.
So, when trying to get your bearings in a new area or get an idea of what the issues are, asking experienced developers what they think you should know is bad behavior that can't be allowed. The risk is just too high that between the useful answers there might be some that you couldn't use. Better to have no answers than to have that.
StackOverflow should not be about using experienced people as advisors; it should be about using them as documentation.
It is certainly possible to replace SO in this capacity, but it's far from trivial. Of course, whether or not SO should be focusing on foundational education is up to you & company.
(Almost) every bit of knowledge that is on StackOverflow can be found elsewhere on the net, too. People go there not because it has knowledge, but because of its density.
You make the following points for why they shouldn't appear on SO
- Nobody needs to know the answer to this question. -> There will always be someone looking for the answer in question. Surely a lot of people would like to know it still. I googled "Git vs Mercurial" and it has 965.000 results. I suppose at least few people thought it was worth discussing.
- It’s not nearly specific enough. -> A or B. Seems specific enough to me. And the difference in the opinions and experience of the those who answer will bring a depth and specificity that can not be found on Wikipedia or a blog post. If all the answers in life were as easy as A or B, life would be a lot easier.
- It is difficult to learn from these questions. -> This is where I disagree the most with you. A person who hasn't used one of both will surely gain some insights why or why not to use A or B
- It drives away experts. -> I only see it attracting people as there are lots of votes. Of course that doesn't disproof your claim. But perhaps you can show us the numbers? Do you see a disproportionate larger amount of votes from people with less points?
What I think are good reasons are: - Perhaps you want the site to remain clean Q&A not Q&O(pinion) - You want to avoid opinion battles as they can get out of hand
As for the opinion battles. I can understand. But I still value the opinions. And whether an opinion is constructive should be measured by it's upvotes. But the clean just Q&A. As I said earlier. There isn't always a clean cut answer to a question. Life would be a lot easier if it was.
And to answer the Gorilla vs Shark question the answer is obvious. If you're on land the Gorilla will win. If you're in the water the Shark will win. And that's what you can learn from such a question. That's what someone is looking for if he's Googling for "Gorilla vs Shark"