Are questions about best practices bad?

Question

I was looking at asking for some help from the SO community in relation to best practices for ASP.NET MVC. I planned on making it a Community Wiki as well.

But, when I was typing my title, I was told that my question was subjective and would likely be deleted.

Why is this?

Surely, if this was a community wiki question, then it becomes not a question per se, but a source of good information.

So now I'm worried. If this question is indeed subjective, why, if it is going to benefit others by helping them as well? And if I do create it, I don't want it to be closed.

Answer 1

Any time you use the word "best" it is generally going to hit a "subjective" flag. But if you are discussing best practice, those are generally much more acceptable.

Answer 2

The thing about "best practices" questions is they are often incredibly broad. ASP.Net MVC is a huge topic. Asking for best practices on that general topic is like asking for best practices on stopping global warming. You need to narrow the question to an extremely specific scenario.

Answer 3

Are "best practices" questions bad? Not inherently; questions on processes tend to come up fairly often, and while yes, they are inherently subjective, there's something to be said for just answering them and getting them out of the way.

_{^{By the way: i must congratulate you on choosing to use the Community Wiki feature. This is a category of questions where that flag shines!}}

That said... You should think good and hard before posting a question asking for "best practices".

If that's really what you're after - a practice widely-recognized as "best" that you can adopt as your own, then go for it. All too often though, i see people asking for a "best practice" when what they really want to know is:

"Given my situation, what are the available solutions to my specific problem, and which one should I choose?"

Note the key difference: if you aren't free to make changes, potentially major, to what you're doing and how you're doing it, then "industry best" is irrelevant - you just need something you can use now. Perhaps it'll happen to be a Best Practice; perhaps it'll merely be the best of a bad set of hacks necessitated by the particular corner you've been painted into. But regardless, the focus has to be on you.