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NOTE A Programmers moderator on meta there told me to bring this here, as they can't do anything about it.

I've been a long time SO and stack user in general. I'm REALLY disappointed that Full Time Employee versus Contract Work? on SO was deleted instead of migrated to Programmers. I don't care about the rep, I care about the answers. That one really mattered to me.

I see that "career advice" is on the don't list, but questions about "freelancing and business concerns" are good. I very much think this question should be allowed.

Freelancing and contracting have massive overlaps. What does "freelancing and business concerns" even mean if this kind of extremely useful question is not allowed? I can see rejecting specific career advice (simply under the too localized reason), but this was VERY close to being specifically about the business concerns of freelancing.

EDIT Okay, now I'm confused. I was going to try to clean it up and submit to Programmers (or at least the blog), but now it's undeleted on SO. (thanks, mysterious stranger) The edit/rewrite would have been for Programmer criteria... either way it's off topic for SO, but it's not locked as historical off topic. The question has fewer votes than I thought, so it's obviously not as important to the community as it is to me. The mature thing for me to do here is to suck it up and ask what the community leaders want with this.. so what should it's fate be?

EDIT 2 well, it's deleted again, I guess that's my answer. (anti-thanks, other mysterious stranger :) ) Personally, I find it ridiculous to delete content that has received a non-trivial number of upvotes and has existed for a significant amount of time. Don't break the Internet. Go create a new classification that removes rep, but doesn't remove the content. Oh, don't see the difference? Yeah, that's the problem. Disgusting.

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  • 9
    Does Programmers.SE want it?
    – user102937
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:38
  • 5
    If that's really true and Programmers.SE really wants this question to be migrated to their site, then you should have just flagged it and asked a moderator to migrate it. No need to open a new rant^H^H^H^H question on Meta.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:40
  • 2
    @CodyGray Darron doesn't have enough rep on SO to get to the question and flag it. If he did, he probably wouldn't need to flag it.
    – user102937
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:42
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    Apologies to one and all - I didn't realise it was an old question (I should have checked sooner). I'm dead against migrating old questions.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:43
  • I'm a lowly 777 rep user on SO, so I can't really see the question. Not sure I want to though... foo vs bar is not really what P.SE is about.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:46
  • @Bill: neither is "freelancing and business concerns", which are specifically on the list of desired questions there. I'm slightly in the dark here, as I can't see it any longer to comment on the unique aspect. I do think that the choices and factors going into deciding between being full time and contract in the software world are very much extremely specific to the software field.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:47
  • @YannisRizos Pft you said that about Mediator vs Observer too. a vs b questions are OK if written right, because vs is often used to compare/contrast two subjects so it is found in searches better, and is a pretty clear title.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:49
  • @Chris, I'm not saying this question is any good, but why should the age of a question have anything to do with whether or not it gets moved?
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:54
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    @Rachel I trust the SO mods didn't close a well written question that might have been on topic for us... It was either blatantly not constructive, or they consulted one of us and we rejected the question. That said, the Mediator vs Observer question is not a very well written question, it's borderline at best and you are kinda make me regret that I didn't close it.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:54
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    @AdamRackis: Part of the deal for new sites established from Area51 is that they would be allowed to grow organically on their own merits, and not seeded with old questions from already-established sites.
    – user102937
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:55
  • I think this question would obviously pull from searches well. I can't look at it anymore to judge the question text, only that I really liked my answer's breakdown on the pros and cons. I have this discussion with people a lot, and I always think it's a great topic to discuss. I really liked having it at SO. You can tell from my rep plot that I'm not just farming rep, please don't take it that way.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:56
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    @AdamRackis - I see the main reason for migrating a question is to get it better answers than it would get where it is now. If it's an old question then a) it has all the answers it's ever going to get, b) the OP has moved on and doesn't want an answer any more or c) the OP got the answer the needed at the time it was posted.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:57
  • @ChrisF: Yeah, but it's not just about the OP either, is it? If it was, that'd be too localized. :) I think the question had value for many. Are you able to see the question itself and judge for yourself? That's all I can ask, I guess.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:59
  • Thanks @Chris - that makes sense to me.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:59
  • @darron - The same arguments, particularly a), apply to the internet at large. In the vast majority of cases an old questions isn't going to get any new information added to it by migration. This is where SE breaks down (at the moment) and something needs to be done to preserve this old, and clearly valued, content.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 21:03

1 Answer 1

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Although the question itself is a decent one for Programmers, the way it is written would get it immediately closed. It is basically a poll for opinions, programmer characteristics, and experiences.

I feel a better solution would be to post a new question on P.SE, which is better written so it asks for a single answer comparing permanent work vs contract work, and then summarize the existing good answers to that question in a single answer.

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    How do you ask it without it being a poll? blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark
    – user102937
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:53
  • @RobertHarvey I see a poll question as one that gets a ton of answers, each with one part of the answer. The key part here would be to ask for a single answer which explains the differences between the two, rather than a list of answers each explaining one difference between the two.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 20:56
  • This question had a specific answer (mine, full disclosure) that broke it down and listed the arguments for and against in one nice spot. I -think- a good number of answers were detailed and had some thought put into them. I have that conversation a lot, and I really liked it being there. I wouldn't be opposed to a rewrite, but I can't even see what I wrote on that old question any more.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 21:02
  • @darron Here you go: mediafire.com/?o446gtx3j2easle Also, if you're interested and do a good job writing it, feel free to submit it to our blog team and perhaps we can add it to the programmer's blog once its up. I wouldn't mind seeing something well-written outlining the pros and cons of both.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 21:07
  • Thanks! Hmm... it IS somewhat more non-unique to programming than I remembered as Bill the Lizard complained about. I recalled heavier emphasis on the specific IP concerns. I'll see what I can do... I'm obviously somewhat partial to this discussion.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 21:14
  • as a user of programmers.se I would vote to migrate this question, not that it counts for much
    – prusswan
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 21:25
  • @Rachel: I seriously disagree with the way these old questions are treated, the criteria of basically all of the SE sites I regularly use, and I'm just no longer interested in putting in any extra effort given the direction at this point. I considered rewriting my answer as a personal blog entry, but the world just doesn't need yet another blog entry like that. This is just not really a community, it's a resource. I'll start to treat it appropriately.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 6:48
  • @darron You're not the only one. Perhaps you would be interested in this proposal to having a read-only archive of questions which are considered off-topic, however that contain good information.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 12:22
  • @Rachel: Thanks! I've gone there and tossed my thoughts on the pile. Maybe there's hope for sanity yet.
    – darron
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 21:32
  • @Rachel: Actually, from that proposal I found what I'd greatly prefer, which is meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124464/…
    – darron
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 22:54

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