The problem is that the Q&A format is a very bad to ask for list of things. A "wiki" would be a much better format to have list of things that everyone can contribute to. Q&A is also a very bad format for discussion. Traditional forum, Reddit or Quora are much better choice for discussion. It's a simple mater of using the best tools for the best job.

It occurs to me--I don't think there's any real "social site" focused on making lists. The closest things we have are social bookmarking tools--but those have a ranking algorithm that highly weights novelty, causing the front page to resemble a stream of ephemeral content mixed with periodic reposts of evergreen content.

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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.

I love this idea. Currently my search for, say, a new IRC client is likely to end up on Wikipedia of all places because they're the only people that have a comprehensive list of what's available. There has got to be a better way to do this.

That's an interesting idea. One of the things we are building is a "reddit like system"[1], and so I could see building a feature like that. Our current focus is on enterprise usage, though, not building something for the public web. But the code is all Open Source, ALv2 licensed and it's done in Groovy and Grails. If anyone is interested on hacking on something like that with us, just shout.

[1]: https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick

It seems like it would be hard to find additional content after the easier targets are taken up. Once people have put up lists of what they find useful, new lists or useful additions to the list wouldn't appear every day. It might be a good curated reference, but I have a hard time seeing an active community based around it. Maybe you need to expand the scope of the site idea?

Letter grades from A - F would be a good idea. Their meaning and use has been ingrained since childhood.

> Letter grades from A - F would be a good idea. Their meaning and use has been ingrained since childhood.

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.

Yeah, but really that was kind of the idea in the beginning. It was to be this Wikipedia-like destination but it was all these subtle micro-management decisions that pushed it away from this.

On some level it is silly to put such constraints.

It's been said every time this argument is brought up: StackOverflow is a Q&A website. It's not meant for discussions, and while some interesting questions get closed, it's not arbitrary at all.

"We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion."

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 at least definitely leads to polling. Everyone and their capuchin being able to just throw in theirs as a legit answer. When there is no chance for a canonical answer at all, that's a bad question.

I've got 7K+ rep there (hardly a high-score) but I don't really like the site anymore due to arbitrary behavior of mods.

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.

Yeah, I have similar feelings. I have more rep and at the time my usage dipped it was a fairly high number, but far less than people like Jon Skeet. I stopped answering and engaging a few years ago. It just seemed like at some point enough LRH (or JA, if you like) tech was disseminated on the site that even very good participants on SO that dared to have different opinions were relegated to SO's version of RPF or just deemed SPs altogether. :)

Your post pretty much echoes what I could say about my time at Super User - I made it to about 13K before realising I was expected to play by JA's rules or shut up - so I 'quit' about 14 months ago.

Your username seems familiar. Are you also the same linker3000 who was outside of the shipping district for some of Jeff Atwood's personal free stuff he happened to use Super User to give away to? http://meta.superuser.com/questions/3720/three-free-video-ca... You left shortly after that. Were those the rules you're talking about?