The FAQ for StackOverflow and many (all?) other stackexchange sites contains the advice:
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
The community disagrees. The most popular questions on StackOverflow are the ones which defy this guideline. Some recent examples:
None of these questions are "entertainment" questions. They are all technical questions which recieved good answers. I'm not talking about the massively upvoted "poll" questions of the earlier days of SO.
int a[] = {1,2,}; Weird comma allowed. Any particular reason?
Is there a technical reason that C# does not issue the "tail." CIL instruction?
What are the implications of asking Reflection APIs to overwrite System.String.Empty?
Why are private fields private to the type, not the instance?
string.Empty vs null.Which one do you use?
When I `throw` something, where is it stored in memory?
Named arguments and generic type inference in C# 4.0
Parentheses altering semantics of function call result
Why is List.Sort() an instance method but Array.Sort() static?
Difference between covariance and upcasting
Why not have all the functions as virtual in C++?
Why return object instead of array?
Those questions weren't about problems thier writers faced. They were about matters of curiosity. This type of question is consistently more upvoted than specific, problem-related questions.
So the community favors curiosity questions. Should the FAQ be changed to reflect reality, or should it continue to assert its obsolete ideals?
I propose the removal of the words "based on actual problems that you face" from the FAQ.