Can we un-delete "New Programming Jargon You Coined"? [closed]

Question

Here is the post in question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new-programming-jargon-you-coined

According to Jeff Atwood's Stack Overflow: Where We Hate Fun, there are three things to consider when deciding what content should be allowed:

1. Does this question match the criteria provided in the Stack Overflow FAQ?
2. Is this question accepted by the community, as reflected in upvotes, favorites, views, and answers?
3. Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?

I realize this definitely does not qualify for #1. But there is no question that the Jargon post meets qualification #2. I argue that it also meets qualification #3, and Jeff said, "As Meat Loaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad. It’s guideline #3 that ends up being the pivotal decision in most borderline cases." I think this borderline case leans towards the useful end of the spectrum.

While I admit some of the answers are frivolous and just entertaining, I also believe that some are genuinely useful.

In particular, the top-rated answer, "Yoda Conditions", is a phrase I heard used by a colleague before I even knew about that post, and found it to be a very useful description for a common idiom that previously had no good name. And, in fact, a google search for this phrase shows it being used in many places besides that post. There is some other very useful jargon* in this post, but I think "Yoda Conditions" alone qualifies this answer as useful.

To quote Jeff further:

I know that we’re all programmers, so we love thinking of the world in absolute, binary terms — either fun questions must never be allowed, or fun questions must always be allowed. Well, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the world is more … floating point. We will sometimes allow fun questions that meet the three broad guidelines I outlined above, but even then, only a limited amount.

I believe this question meets two of the guidelines and qualifies for this "limited amount".

* Some other highly rated answers that I believe are more than just frivolous include "Heisenbug", "A Duck", "Doctype Decoration", and "Baklava Code".

For some back-discussion see Can we revive deleted content that does not follow the guidelines but nonetheless contains an abundance of community relevance? Basically in this question I was arguing that there should be some posts that should remain alive despite not following the FAQ guidelines, and used the Jargon post as an example; turns out Jeff Atwood already said in the linked article exactly what I was advocating for. This new question is specifically about the Jargon post and nothing else).

Answer 1

Having gone through the (rather painstaking, actually) process of re-blogging the top 30 "answers" on this question, along with some meta-commentary, I have an opinion about this.

Mostly, I think it fails on the "can I learn something from this that will make me better at my job?" criteria. It's close, but it's not enough. For example, knowing that someone uses

// banana banana banana

as a placeholder comment is amusing, but it's not exactly setting my IDE on fire with new techniques.

Another problem with this question is that it invites people to contribute by making up their own terminology, rather than asking that they find support for existing terminology (even if their own) and providing examples of where that terminology could teach you things about your code.

That's why it has 386 answers, because it's an open invitation to … basically make stuff up for the lols.

(I'm not saying the top 30 answers aren't some good lols, and some of them you could actually learn from, but not reliably, and not enough. I liked it enough to blog it, but the point I'm also trying to make here is that it belongs on a blog, not on Stack Overflow.)

Answer 2

There are nearly 400 answers in 13 pages. It's a great example of a question which is too broad for this format.

We're not saying it's a bad question at all - simply that it's not suited for the Q&A format here at Stack Overflow. If you can write a book about it, if everyone can submit an answer and none are more or less correct than every other answer - yet still different, then the question is more like a "Getting to know you" question than a "Here's a problem, do you have a solution?" question.

I could go on about whether point #3 is true or not, with examples of answers such as "When someone shows me a problem they are having and I don't have an answer for them, I just say "You're not holding the mouse right"." and "Not really a jargon, but I don't actually spell out "A-P-I". I just say "ah-pee"." and those are only on page five out of thirteen - they are among the more highly rated "answers" to this "question."

There are many, many other reasons to reject this question, but the bottom line is that it's not suitable for this Q&A format.

Since it can be obtained via the data dumps and is CC licensed, you are free to post it elsewhere - there are many sites where such content is not only acceptable but likely welcomed.

Answer 3

Please undelete this.

There are sites that link to this URL. Having some stackprinter or archive.org is really not a good alternative to keeping this great question available for everyone. Has Stackoverflow gone mad?