Why is asking a question on "best practice" a bad thing?

Question

I've written a few questions on Stack Overflow before that have been closed due to being "not constructive" or "not a real question". Now, after scanning the FAQ for the site a few times, I understand that my questions were indeed closed for good reason. However, even after reading the FAQ, I still don't understand why a question of "what's the best practice here?" is a bad thing. I feel as though if you properly explain your situation as thoroughly as possible, then it shouldn't be a bad question at all.

Questions like "what's the best language?" or "which framework should I use?" are indeed bad questions initially, but I feel if you specify in the post (or preferably in the title itself) what the context is, shouldn't that be deserving of some kind of an answer? In my recent question I asked what would be "best practice", and naturally my question was closed. So I read the FAQ and learned how to make a more constructive question, of which I've now re-edited in an attempt to be less vague.

I understand the desire to avoid debate and lengthy discussion over a question, but I also feel as though sometimes there are certain questions which should be asked if proper context is given. Why is a question over "best practice" always a bad question to ask?

Answer 1

While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking individual, who uses the term best practice in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of people who are just looking for an easy answer that doesn't require thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking for an appropriate solution, all they want is to spot a herd in the distance and go trotting off after it.

Thus, the term best practice has been rendered an extremely strong signal of someone unwilling to think about their problem and consider solutions, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.

Answer 2

"Best" doesn't really describe what you are looking for.

In programming for example, it could mean fastest, shortest, most readable, smallest memory print, least likely to fail due to absurd user input, or any combination of the above. It's just not a useful description of a metric that can be used to objectively determine which answer would be... "best." "Best Practice" is just another way of saying "Best." It is often used when someone has a problem that they have no idea how to solve and/or when they want someone else to do it for them. Don't be one of those people.

Instead, what you should ask for is specifically what you are looking for. Don't ask what the best way to build a form that performs an ajax request is, ask how to build a form that performs an ajax request. Don't forget to also include the specifics that make your case unique. If your case isn't unique, consider not asking it; it's probably a duplicate. The answerers will naturally provide whatever solution they think is the best.

"Best Practices" aren't really a thing. You might come across blog posts, or articles on official documentation providing what they call a best practice, but really it's just their own opinion on what they think, at that point in time, is the "best" way to do something... but they haven't really defined what "best" means, so to me, those types of things simply aren't useful outside of being an example of how to do something. They aren't necessarily the "best" way to do it, they aren't in your situation.

Answer 3

I think questions where the term "best practice" is used may often make a lot more sense if the reader mentally substitutes it with the "common practice" or "idiomatic".

There are many examples in all walks of life where there are 10 ways to do something, of which 5 are terrible, and 5 are perfectly fine and broadly equivalent, yet only 1 is typically employed. All other things being equal you might as well use the idiomatic solution because just like idioms in spoken language this shared context allows us humans with our puny brains to parse what on earth is going on much more quickly.

So I would suggest when wording your question think to yourself, am I really looking for the objectively best way to do this, or just a way which is perfectly reasonable and will cause the least astonishment down the line. You might find you'll get exactly the same answers with less chance of starting a flame war or having your question rejected.

Answer 4

Asking about the 'best practice' could be maybe a good idea on the religious sites, since the religions tend to have 'best practice' for everything.

However, in real life, especially in the creative areas like programming, there's no highest instance that decides what's the 'best practice'. There are some institutions writing some norms, while other institutions may write other norms. There are influentions bloggers popularizing their norms, and others who oppose.

In other words, the first answer for the question about 'best practice' is 'best practice for whom'? It's extremally opinion based thing. There's no simple 'best practice' but many 'schools of thought' which learn doing the same thing in various way. You could ask what's the practice of splitting large classes in, for example, IBM (although not on SO), but asking, what's the best practice of splitting large classes could resolve in 10 contradicting answers, each dogmatic, and a huge flame war.

Answer 5

Maybe we just want not best practice but a better practice. For newbie sometimes we know some solution with defects and look for a better one, so the suggestions from the experienced users helpful and that is I usually look for.