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Re:Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs by wpietri on Monday September 10, 2012 @12:56PM (#4500743)
You weight the intent system too highly and ignore the effect on the reader.

SO's interface worked pretty well for opinion. Who cares if it's impossible to accurately score? The most useful stuff generally ended up near the top, so readers could quickly find a lot of good material.

As to the green checkmark, a querent isn't obligated to select a best answer. And if they selected one, so what? It pushed one answer up, but readers were perfectly capable of reading down.

SO's behavior with opinion is a classic case of founders saying "B-b-b-b-ut they're doing it wrong". Which is backwards. The purpose of a discussion system is to serve its users, not its programmers. This is exactly the same sort of idiocy that killed Friendster: https://plus.google.com/116014836340643816850/posts/WFH5eDug...

Re:Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs by k3n on Monday September 10, 2012 @03:24PM (#4501669)
They even state when you go to ask a question:

> We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed.

And to me (and this is of course just my interpretation), but that means that questions that can only yield subjective answers aren't really meant to be asked there.

Additionally, the FAQ[1] goes into even more detail that I think supports both my and SE's stance; the question ITT is, to me, clearly more under the "and it is not about..." section of the FAQ than it is under the top section.

They even plug another of their sites, The Workplace[2], as being a better fit for "general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help".

Point being, the question the OP asked here has absolutely nothing to do with programming, and thus doesn't have any place on a site that deals exclusively with programming.

1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq

2. http://workplace.stackexchange.com/

Re:Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs by wpietri on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @02:52AM (#4504138)
It absolutely has something to do with programming. The economics of programming make behavior like this deeply foolish. In other circumstances it can be reasonable. And some of the ways of solving the problem are software specific.

But that doesn't really matter. You cite the rules as the authority for what should be there. I agree that the users and the rule-writers have different ideas about what the site should be. I'm saying the rule-writers are wrong, just like the Friendster rule-writers were wrong.