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voretaq7 Mod
voretaq7 Mod
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TL;DR: "It really depends on the question."

GENERAL CASE: List Questions Suck

List questions off the form "What X do you use for Y?", "What products exist that do Z?", and the like are crap questions. They can almost always be answered better by Google, and Google will do a better job keeping its answer up to date than we could ever hope to.

Possible Exceptions

  1. Checklist Questions
    A good checklist / Best Practices question that can be used by others to develop their own checklists can be a Good Thing. If nothing else it provides a canonical destination for newbies so we don't have to keep closing the same thing over and over as "not constructive" and leaving pointer comments.
    (The key here is we're NOT aiming to provide a comprehensive, permanent answer: Just a list of considerations that won't change as a base for someone to make up their own list that will evolve over time.)

TL;DR: "It really depends on the question."

GENERAL CASE: List Questions Suck

List questions off the form "What X do you use for Y?", "What products exist that do Z?", and the like are crap questions. They can almost always be answered better by Google, and Google will do a better job keeping its answer up to date than we could ever hope to.

Possible Exceptions

  1. Checklist Questions
    A good checklist / Best Practices question that can be used by others to develop their own checklists can be a Good Thing. If nothing else it provides a canonical destination for newbies so we don't have to keep closing the same thing over and over as "not constructive" and leaving pointer comments.

TL;DR: "It really depends on the question."

GENERAL CASE: List Questions Suck

List questions off the form "What X do you use for Y?", "What products exist that do Z?", and the like are crap questions. They can almost always be answered better by Google, and Google will do a better job keeping its answer up to date than we could ever hope to.

Possible Exceptions

  1. Checklist Questions
    A good checklist / Best Practices question that can be used by others to develop their own checklists can be a Good Thing. If nothing else it provides a canonical destination for newbies so we don't have to keep closing the same thing over and over as "not constructive" and leaving pointer comments.
    (The key here is we're NOT aiming to provide a comprehensive, permanent answer: Just a list of considerations that won't change as a base for someone to make up their own list that will evolve over time.)
Source Link
voretaq7 Mod
voretaq7 Mod
  • 80.6k
  • 2
  • 39
  • 94

TL;DR: "It really depends on the question."

GENERAL CASE: List Questions Suck

List questions off the form "What X do you use for Y?", "What products exist that do Z?", and the like are crap questions. They can almost always be answered better by Google, and Google will do a better job keeping its answer up to date than we could ever hope to.

Possible Exceptions

  1. Checklist Questions
    A good checklist / Best Practices question that can be used by others to develop their own checklists can be a Good Thing. If nothing else it provides a canonical destination for newbies so we don't have to keep closing the same thing over and over as "not constructive" and leaving pointer comments.