Hacker News Reader

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

How many good questions do you see that are "CLOSED AS NOT A REAL QUESTION"? The site is fine for what it is, but there's definitely a market for building a better StackOverFlow.

View on HN

That annoys the heck out of me, because if it truly is not a real question, then the "general masses" of answer authors would naturally agree. Instead some deletionist authoritarian jerk needs to force his idea on everyone else, because obviously no one else is worthy enough to make a judgment. Why feel the need to force what they call the truth on everyone, if it is in fact the truth? Or more likely they're full of it and just enjoy watching the world burn. The worst part is the selection of judges is based basically on who spends the most clock time googling for people too lazy to use google, it has nothing to do with taste or skill or ability or experience. Random selection would be more effective.

A site could be designed that isn't based on an anti-social, exclusionary, classist, authoritarian philosophy. The tragedy is it wouldn't look too much different than SO. So close, and yet so far...

"Instead some deletionist authoritarian jerk needs to force his idea on everyone else, because obviously no one else is worthy enough to make a judgment."

I think they caught this disease from Wikipedia, where deletionist authoritarian editors kill articles on real people because they're "not notable enough" while allowing thousands of words to be written about minor characters in TV series.

Usually questions are "closed" by 5 users (not by a moderator) so make it "5 jerks" (and I am one of them BTW...)

A question should be closed because it's a dup, or because it's not clear, or there's not enough information and the author didn't bother responding to the comments that mention that etc.

If you don't think so - you can write a comment and vote to "repoen". If you feel better by calling us "jerks" - good for you...

Happy new year!

Build your leveller's idea of Stack Overflow, then, and let it compete on its merits against the one which already exists. I'll be interested to see the result.

Closed as not a real question.

150 question upvotes.

Asking about the colour of the bikeshed always draws more upvotes and views than a question asking why the screws buckle and eject when the outside temperature reaches 30C but only if the interior is 21C.

Popularity does not mean a question is within the scope of the site guidelines.

> Popularity does not mean a question is within the scope of the site guidelines.

True, but it might indicate adequate reason for modifying the guidelines.

There is a time and a place for everything. For opinion-based questions about programming, that place is http://www.slant.co/ (not affiliated with Stack Exchange).

I just checked this out and it looks horrible. There are no categories. It's just a long list of unrelated questions, like "What's the best app for listening to music?" and "What's the best 2D graphics and physics engine?" It looks completely unusable.

This is one of the most annoying part of stack overflow,instead of closing the discussion,they should have a provision to move to more opinionated discussion list.

They do. When you vote to close a question (and anyone can do that, not just moderators), you have to give a reason. One of the predefined reasons is "belongs on SuperUser stack exchange," and another where you can fill in a reason, such as "belongs on Programmer stack exchange." (Programmer is for code review, style questions, opinion-based stuff, etc.)

My experience is that programmers.stackexchange is even more militant about closing questions than stackoverflow. I guess they got tired of receiving all of the unwanted garbage and it makes them extra sensitive.

I remember signing up for a news on a site "Not Constructive", here on HN a while back. I really wish it would appear.

http://slant.co is pretty much that.

StackOverflow seems to have devolved into a bunch of shit questions. Anything too technical doesn't get answered, since the real veterans have left, and anything not technical enough (like an approach to a problem) gets closed.

I loved SO in the beginning. Now it's a cesspool.

There are a few holdouts in certain areas. E.G. there's a pretty active and good Haskell community on SO currently.

>> the real veterans have left

Evidence?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com