Timeline for answer to Opinion-based questions alpha experiment on Stack Overflow by CPlus
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 11, 2025 at 6:34 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @CPlus That feels indeed more in line with what people would have done like 10 years ago. Experiments then were exactly like this. Turn something off or on and see what happens. In a way out also had it's drawbacks. Discussions to go from 5 to 3 close vote where taking years. But each time we learned something. Here I maybe only learn that this was a too big step. | |
| Dec 11, 2025 at 6:29 | comment | added | CPlus | @NoDataDumpNoContribution You know, ironically, reverting back 12 years (i.e., with "Not Constructive" as a close reason) would have been, not necessarily the best solution, but way better than this. They could allow opinion-based/subjective questions as long as they were "Constructive" in some way. That does have issues, like who decides what is "Constructive," but still better than letting anyone post whatever with negligible quality control. | |
| Dec 11, 2025 at 6:25 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | The problem is if too many things are changed at once, you never know what part is responsible for a failure, should it turn out to be not so good. Maybe allowing opinion-based questions would still be a good idea, just not in this specific implementation. | |
| Dec 11, 2025 at 6:24 | comment | added | CPlus | @user400654 Indeed, and I believe for the reasons mentioned, this 'alpha experiment' is not good. Especially since the lack of curation is apparently by design. | |
| Dec 11, 2025 at 6:21 | comment | added | user400654 | I 100% agree, but what I’m pointing out is the overall presentation of this “alpha experiment��� was that it was a place for content that is off topic for Q&A, but that’s not actually what it is. It is a direct replacement of Q&A with all guardrails removed where stack will likely begin further experimenting with a newer more restricted form of curation. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 22:02 | comment | added | CPlus | @user400654 Not allowing any curation (besides the bare minimum of spam and R/A) will not end well. This is still a programming website, so they should at least be "programming related" in some sense. And we should also have a mechanism against like blatant homework dumps and those sorts of things. And of course the ability to downvote ones that are not useful or interesting, as a signal to other readers. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 21:57 | comment | added | user400654 | This is by design. “Designing for the New User: A Softer Entry Point” (the entire section.) It was never meant to be strictly for opinion based or subjective questions, it’s meant for anything one wants to ask without being impeded by curation. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 21:48 | history | answered | CPlus | CC BY-SA 4.0 |