26

There seems to be agreement1 that it's time for to go. As Anna Lear suggested3:

Orchestrating a mass clean-up of the questions in the tag is something we could do as a first step: vote to close and/or delete questions as appropriate. Some might be worth migrating to Programmers, but it'd have to be judged carefully and on a case-by-case basis.

It's pretty clear that these questions are off-topic on Stack Overflow now en masse, so it should be fairly easy to close and remove (where needed) these questions in preparation for removing the tag itself.

There are 870 473 223 0 open questions remaining. I suggest we concentrate our votes on the oldest of them2. 10kers should also target the questions that already have close votes.

Many of these questions may be on topic for other current and upcoming Stack Exchanges sites. I suggest closing questions, but not deleting them or removing the tag. This will keep it easy for users of other sites to browse these questions for ones worth migrating. Unless you're familiar with the policies of the site in question, you probably shouldn't vote to migrate yourself.

1 No downvotes, several upvotes to recent questions about this.
2 Arbitrary, but working on the same questions has less risk of votes being wasted.

|improve this question
  • 5
    Might it be worth holding on this a few weeks, in case the IT Careers & Training proposal on Area51 gets through? – Benjol Jan 20 '12 at 6:41
  • possible duplicate of Blacklist career-development – Rosinante Jan 21 '12 at 19:59
  • 2
    I wonder how many young Stack Overflowers are frantically flagging to get some sweet, sweet flag weight – Adam Rackis Jan 23 '12 at 22:55
  • 2
    @AdamRackis Flag weight? What's that? – Jeremy Banks Jan 23 '12 at 22:58
  • @JeremyBanks - doh! I mean....helpful flags. – Adam Rackis Jan 23 '12 at 22:59
  • 1
    Daily close votes spent on this! – BNL Jan 27 '12 at 20:54
  • @OffBySome I think it's a reasonable thing to do, given that this is an uncontroversial action and they can do it so much more efficiently. I've already started flagging questions on which my close votes have expired. I'll probably start flagging more immediately once the clean-up slows down. – Jeremy Banks Jan 28 '12 at 6:40
  • @OffBySome I'm using a custom flag with the message "not constructive" or "off topic; belongs on Yahoo Answers", because I think that such flags will show up in the 10k queue. – Jeremy Banks Jan 28 '12 at 6:42
  • 1
    Job-hunting is a similar tag that should be closed out. – bkaid Feb 19 '12 at 19:21
  • [job-hunting] has been closed out. – Pops May 7 '12 at 14:45
28
+100

Vote to close as off-topic or vote to delete your career development questions, but to the suggestion that Programmers (or sites not even in beta yet) are good candidates for migrations, I have only this to say:

Nooooooo

Other Stack Exchange sites are not your dumping ground for questions you no longer want and we don't want your old, dead questions.

To emphasize a different part of Anna's answer:

Orchestrating a mass clean-up of the questions in the career-development tag is something we could do as a first step: vote to close and/or delete questions as appropriate. Some might be worth migrating to Programmers, but it'd have to be judged carefully and on a case-by-case basis.

It's pretty clear that these questions are off-topic on Stack Overflow now en masse, so it should be fairly easy to close and remove (where needed) these questions in preparation for removing the tag itself.

And provide a number of other resources that should show that Programmers is wholeheartedly against bulk migrating of questions from Stack Overflow:

And, of course:

What's the golden rule of question migrations?

Don't. Migrate. Crap.

You don't help other Stack Exchanges by migrating old, dead questions to them: the massively upvoted giganto questions from Stack Overflow always overshadow any work a site does to bootstrap its own community.

To this day, the highest voted questions list on Programmers is a cornucopia of crap migrated from Stack Overflow we haven't found a good way to get rid of.

So instead, I'd like to propose that, instead of blindly voting to migrate questions to Programmers (or any other site, really) without having the foggiest idea whether they're useful or if just going to closed and deleted after they arrive, you ask us instead: create a question on our meta-discussion site and let us decide if we want them. Then, the moderators on the proposed destination sites can work with the moderators on Stack Overflow to deal with the very, very few (if any) old questions that would be stellar fits.

|improve this answer
  • 1
    The main purpose of this clean-up would be to close these off-topic questions on Stack Overflow. I don't mean to suggest mass-migration. Out of the ~120 of these questions I've voted to close so far I've only voted for migration to programmers for ~4. – Jeremy Banks Jan 20 '12 at 7:51
  • 2
    That image really should be "do not want" given the rest of the post... – Charles Jan 20 '12 at 7:55
  • 6
    @JeremyBanks Those four should've been voted to close as off-topic: we don't want your old questions. At all. The old, ridiculously-voted questions migrated from Stack Overflow have caused nothing but problems on Programmers, and they stick out like giant, broken windows. You don't help us by voting to migrate your trash to us. If there are specific questions you insist would be good fits for us, talk to us: create a meta-discussion question on our site and ask us if we want them. – user149432 Jan 20 '12 at 7:58
  • Love the answer :) Just to be clear, I agree that all the straight career dev questions can be closed/deleted (been casting plenty of votes on that myself). There are just a tiny fraction of potentially migratable questions, your solution of requesting migration on a case by case basis is good. – slugster Jan 20 '12 at 11:05
  • 2
    Was Anna's italics not clear enough? She said "some questions might be worth migrating to PSE". She didn't say dump them en masse. – Adam Rackis Jan 23 '12 at 22:53
  • @AdamRackis This question has been revised numerous times since this was posted: emphasizing migrations to Programmers (and migrations to sites that don't even exist yet) over all other guidance misses the point, which is why this answer exists. Close first, then on a case-by-case basis, let the destination sites decide for themselves if they want it. – user149432 Jan 23 '12 at 23:18
6

Edit:

I agree completely with Mark's approach. Normally I would delete my answer because a much better opposing answer has been made (rendering my answer completely obsolete), but in this case I'll leave it here to provide context for Mark's answer.

I think you need to boldify Anna's comment Some might be worth migrating to Programmers.

One question that may be a candidate for that is How can I convince skeptical management and colleagues to allow refactoring of awful code?, however in the rush it is being marked as simply Off Topic, rather than Off Topic - Belongs on Prog.SE.

Obviously some may disagree with me about whether that question should be migrated to Prog.SE. My point is that once it has been closed as Off Topic, delete votes will soon follow and then it will be gone*. This particular one is a question about programming and may be a good fit on Prog.SE, at least we should give it a chance there.

People, please consider carefully before casting close votes in a clean-up binge. Let's not lose questions with a good amount of upvotes that could be a good fit on other sites.

*Let's be honest, it could be undeleted, but the chances of that happening are slim. Even if it was undeleted it would still then need to be migrated.

|improve this answer
  • 12
    Close each and every one of the career-development questions. Please don't migrate any of them to P.SE. Then assemble a list of the ones you think are on topic there, and post a Meta question on P.SE, so we can take a look. You don't even have to make a list, just let us know the clean up is done, and we can browse through the closed non deleted questions. Pointing to P.SE from the career-development tag wiki was trouble enough, we don't need any more. – yannis Jan 20 '12 at 8:14
1

Don't forget to also vote to delete the really bad ones that are closed: https://stackoverflow.com/search?page=999&tab=newest&q=%5bcareer-development%5d%20closed%3a1

Also, clean up the job-hunting tag.

|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .