Stack Overflow Moderator Election (opens in new tab)

Which policy do you have a problem with? I've been an active Wikipedia editor in the past and I think the problem has less to do with removing content, but rather maintaining existing content.

That is not our opinion ;-) We believe that the highly open ended, conversational questions generate heat, not light. They are AWESOME and we LOVE THEM, but NOT ON STACK OVERFLOW. Stack Overflow is a place where you go to get an answer to a programming problem, and what you find there should be just that -- the answer to a programming problem. It's not an online forum or a place to discuss open ended "why" questions. There are a million of those on the Internet already.

(Personally I'm a fan of a little site called Hacker News for this purpose... but I've never found the answer to a programming problem on Hacker News. And I've never found french fries at a Pizza store, and I don't fault Pizza stores for not selling french fries)

IIUC, programmers.stackexchange.com is where "why?" questions should be asked. And IMO this sucks. I hate the SO fragmentation problem.

I absolutely support the somewhat firm hand that they employ to keep out open ended questions and discussions. I certainly believe this is needed to keep out all the garbage, and to keep places like SO from deteriorating into Usenet, or Slashdot.

If someone wants a discussion, or slightly off-topic questions there's other places to do that, and SO is not obligated to accommodate everyone.

This. Here's a video of the speech in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpGA2fmAHvM

We generally believe that it's important to keep the quality on Stack Overflow high, so that when you click on a stackoverflow.com result on Google, you can trust that you're going to get something good. That means that Stack Overflow is not just a host where anyone can type things into the Internet, and we host it. It's a curated environment.

Right, the main problem here is that -- in many ways like the recording industry before them -- these guys are trying to apply all sorts of real-world analogies and metaphors to virtual problems.

I get it. They were actually right about the broken-window theory. The demand for quality has had an enormously positive impact overall and they should get a lot of credit for that. But they routinely close questions that simply do not need to be closed.

I guess that's why old-style forums are so successful and Stack Overflow doesn't work, right? :)

Sorry, that was unnecessarily snarky. People on the Internet tend to believe that if there is a TEXTAREA tag on the internet, they have a right to type things into that TEXTAREA and have them hosted on the Internet by somebody else until the end of time. This eventually leads to youtube, reddit, etc... very amazing things but nevertheless not necessarily good places to solve programming problems quickly.

You say that as if you know that for a fact, I've seen them over + over again (anecdote, but still), as well as many other such passive-aggressive responses. I often do take action on them, however the prevalence makes me think that not enough is done about the standard developer issue of people not knowing how to behave civilly to one another.

Frustrating to be so downvoted for raising something that is so rotten by the way, presumably it's ok to talk down to somebody simply because you feel they haven't put in enough effort in asking a question?

Or perhaps it was the language? That stems from being frustrated with the nasty culture that seems to be seeping in to so many corners of our development communities.