Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
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How could we improve on this?
[Anyone who wants to do the following is welcome to; I've too many startups on the go already.]
Imagine something like Reddit--with each list being a "subreddit"--but:
A. there's no time-weighting in the front-page algorithm (though there is a "new" page); and
B. there are robust mechanisms in place for preventing duplicate entries from being created, and merging duplicates (along with their votes and comments) into the canonical versions.
Additionally, since the lists created will be far more static, you might want to give people greater influence over the ranking system--using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting_systems, for example.
In many countries A - F grading system is not commonly used. For example in the country where I was born they use 1 - 5 grading system and A - F means nothing. I think rating with stars is much more widespread and would be wiser choice for any project with global ambitions.
On some level it is silly to put such constraints.
He's asking for free books about programming. When someone answers with a book, it's super-easy to verify that it is a book, is about programming, and is free.
It might be a bad fit for SO because there isn't one answer that is "more correct" than all other answers and so on, or something like that. But it is not a question that leads to arguing and extended discussion. It's a question that leads to people posting links to free books about programming.
So like, it might not be arbitrary and it might be that all the right questions are being closed, but it looks like a bunch of deletionists flailing about, knocking shit over. And it looks like that because there's this canned "reason" for closing a question, and it is often a poor match for the question being closed. Not because people don't get that SO is "not meant for discussions".
It wasn't even a "discussion" (specifically forbidden because independent thoughts and points or view are something frowned upon on SO, which is bent on crushing individuality)... Just a friggin' good list.
The really pathetic behavior of SO mods starts when they see people criticizing SO (and leaving or rage-quitting SO) and then try to say: "Do not speak about it here (e.g. on HN), bring this to meta".
Yeah. Sure. Meta is even worse than SO ; )
As a result of this crazy mod behavior people, like me, are quitting and stop helping others on that medium.
It's not that big of an issue that said because something, one day, will rise just as fast as SO did and shall have fixed the arbitrariness of SO mods behavior / rules.
A pet-peeve of mine is that they clearly said on SO (on Meta) that it was OK to rewrite a question entirely so that the question fits a totally bogus response (totally bogus response of course made by a user with lots of rep).
When I saw that non-sense I realized it was time for me to quit.