My question is: is there somewhere else where these kinds of questions (not totally on topic but still relevant to what programmers do) can be asked? I'd love to see more of them!
Then when you have the audience who were drawn in by the high signal focus on a topic of expertise, sucker punch them by closing down all such questions and cite some lame excuse of following the charter of purity. In the name of site quality they'll say.
"This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development."
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do...
Very common on StackExcahnge. A bunch of high rep users swoop in and close questions that don't meet this weeks version of the rules that were decided in the Meta site that only the high rep users read. It reminds me a lot of Wikipedia.
You can see the process on a small scale with homeowner's associations.
(I put "manager" in quotes because there are good managers out there. Oddly, they're often the ones who are willing to break the rules when they don't make sense).