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Is a question regarding security and best practices for a user interface not programming related?

I refer to this question.

I think it is a perfectly fine question. Maybe some people don't like the idea from this person but he is asking for best practices in terms of communication with his user and security...

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6 Answers 6

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I will tell you why it was closed:

Discuss!

StackOverflow isn't meant for discussion, it was meant for getting answers to objective questions. There's some give and take, but putting "Discuss!" in your post is pretty much a close magnet.

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    It is like putting the following in the question: What would you do and what are the best practices for handling this... I would understand making it community wiki but closing?
    – Janusz
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 17:27
  • @Janusz: SO, CW or otherwise, isn't a discussion site. Short discussions between a few people can work, but any time a concrete answer can't be hashed out quickly this will fall apart. CW is recommended for subjective questions, where every answer boils down to someone's unsubstantiated opinion... but discussion is just plain discouraged.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 17:39
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    How many sites start off being for one thing, but end up being for another? Twitter for example is for "quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" How many people also use twitter to ASK questions? To have a conversation? To comment on other tweets? So long as the discussions are on topic (software development related) I don't have a problem with it. I find I learn quite a bit from the discussions.
    – Colin Mackay
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 20:57
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    Well another problem is that SO doesn't really handle discussion that well, so even if wanted to have an on-topic discussion it would be difficult.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 21:08
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In the case of that question, the inclusion of the image in the original question probably put a lot of people off. Add to it that the text isn't great. Still, the concept strikes me as fine. In fact, I've voted to reopen along with rewording it.

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  • hehe i haven't seen the image. I can understand that
    – Janusz
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 17:31
  • ++for the excellent edit. It's easy to ask bad/non- questions on perfectly good topics - the beauty of SO is that they can be edited to be both real questions and well-written.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 17:34
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While it's not programming related it is development related.

Should SO be recast be a development questions site rather than a programming questions site?

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It may be a "perfectly fine question" as are "How was your breakfast?", "What's your favorite color?" and "What is the meaning of life?" But all 4 have one thing in common, they are not least bit programming related. Votes to reopen are silly.

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  • There are a thousand questions on so that don't have single bit of code in it. It is a programer making a design decision for his application. And he is asking other people form the comunity what they think about the decision...
    – Janusz
    Commented Jul 14, 2009 at 17:34
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I think part of the problem is that the question author didn't make any effort to point out he was actually needing an answer for any kind of programming purpose. It ends up sounding almost like it's more of a general curiosity question about features of the interwebs, as if he had asked "Which is more secure: Yahoo or Google mail?"

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I have a nebulous approach to discussion questions - if there are best practices the OP is looking for, with discussion about different tradeoffs, I'm OK with it.

But if it's vague and handwavey...yeah, that's not really in the purview of SO. (Although I like vagueness questions as much as the next guy)

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