Meta Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for meta-discussion of the Stack Exchange family of Q&A websites. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
So I'm basically at the boiling point with Microsoft's Cult of TypeScript. When I ask a question in JavaScript and someone uses the answers or comments to deride me for not using TypeScript, can I report that message as a site rule violation?
This question differs from Is the answer “Don't do that” an acceptable response to a “how do I” question? in that people aren't discouraging my methods; my question is about people who are advertising their favorite tech stack.
For comments, flag them as No Longer Needed:
It's no longer needed. This comment is outdated, conversational or not relevant to this post.
Absolutely flag these things. They aren't trying to improve or clarify your question so they are not an appropriate use for comments. Since they add nothing, flag them and have them removed.
For answers, go ahead and downvote. If the answer is only peddling something and explicitly does not solve your problem, it is not useful to you. If it is not even attempting to solve your problem you can flag it as Not an Answer. Otherwise, let the downvotes do their job.
If you are getting lots of these suggestions, consider clarifying your question and indicate what technologies you are or aren't looking for.
If you feel like it, in either case, simply politely respond that whatever they are offering as a solution is not something you want or are looking for and why.
It's worth remembering that Question & Answer pairs on here aren't just for the benefit of the person asking the question; the hope is that they'll benefit others in the future - which is why one of the off-topic closure reasons is
It's caused by a typo or problem that can no longer be reproduced. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a way less likely to help future readers.
(I use this example as it's one I'd consider voting to close your question with as the likelihood of another person hitting this specific issue is quite small)
Yes, I'd fervently agree with you if the issue was specifically a JavaScript question where the person answering had given you a TypeScript only answer (or as tends to be more common a here's how you do this with jQuery despite the fact that you've noted in your question that you're not using jQuery style answer!). If I was to take the specific example of your recent question about Electron and the answer it received that feels like a slightly different kettle of fish.
The answer to that question (which isn't tagged TypeScript) consists of three parts:
(the fact that the answer as a whole doesn't solve your issue, based on your comment, isn't material to my analysis of the structure of the answer)
I don't think that actually classes as proselytising, to be fair to the poster of the answer. I also note that you proposed a suggested edit with the comment removed proselytizing, which was rejected, to the answer that removed the information regarding TypeScript which actively reduces the value of the answer overall. Just because you're not a fan1 of Microsoft products, please don't strip out references to them where it may be useful to others.
tl;dr: It depends on the context. The most recent example where you tried to remove a reference someone had made to TypeScript was absolutely not proselytising. You not liking it doesn't make it so. Wanton disregard for the questions tags and content could.
Footnotes
1This link was to a now removed comment where the OP stated that adding a Microsoft product usually introduced more problems than it solved (albeit, I'm paraphrasing!). I've left the link and annotated it this way as I believe it's relevant to the question at hand given that Microsoft created TypeScript.
