Timeline for Opinion-based questions alpha experiment on Stack Overflow
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 20, 2025 at 19:08 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "Stack Overflow also accepts troubleshooting/debugging questions, but a bit reluctantly, and that is arguably a bit of a compromise, because those questions are less frequently useful to anyone other than the original poster. " — valid questions of this type are those where OP has already effectively "debugged", and is really seeking an understanding of the results of the debugging effort. | |
| Nov 11, 2025 at 18:59 | history | edited | D.W. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Remove extraneous quote introduced during edit (thanks for the rest of the edit, it's great!)
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| Nov 11, 2025 at 13:26 | comment | added | wjandrea | There's also no good option for "What does this do?"-type questions, which is 3/5 of the top Python questions. | |
| Nov 11, 2025 at 13:18 | comment | added | wjandrea | Yeah, right now there's no option for "how-to", which is one of the best "types" of questions on SO, e.g. How do I parse a string to a float or int? [python]. I just went to ask a how-to question about my IDE, but none of the options really fit: "tooling recommendation" is the most specific, but I know from experience that that's not what I want. | |
| Nov 11, 2025 at 12:56 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Grammar (missing quote marks). Add bold for skimmability.
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| Nov 7, 2025 at 12:43 | comment | added | einpoklum | "have to try something" - no. They do not have to try anything intended to achieve undesirable goals. | |
| Nov 4, 2025 at 1:16 | comment | added | beaker | @Hoid I do feel pretty confident that most askers that stop by don't ask in the spirit of "I really want to add this question to the knowledge archive." That's not a good reason to reinforce their incorrect assumptions. Troubleshooting / Debugging questions are the least desirable type of question you can ask on Stack Overflow and still be on topic. (Unless time-complexity questions are still on-topic, in which case they're the second least desirable.) | |
| Nov 3, 2025 at 21:52 | comment | added | dumbass | Also, I can’t help but wonder if this was done on purpose to artificially inflate engagement metrics. | |
| Nov 3, 2025 at 21:19 | comment | added | dumbass | “I do feel pretty confident that most askers that stop by don't ask in the spirit of "I really want to add this question to the knowledge archive.” – well, yeah, new users expecting Stack Overflow to be a help desk that it never really was supposed to be isn’t exactly a new problem. (I also shared some thoughts on debugging questions over at <retrocomputing.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1300/15334> – which applies to this site just as well, I think.) | |
| Oct 27, 2025 at 18:51 | comment | added | D.W. | @Hoid, For purposes of your experiment, perhaps "Programming Problem" could be an acceptable replacement for "Troubleshooting/Debugging", for now (and people could keep thinking to see if they can come up with something better if they like). That doesn't increase the number of labels. | |
| Oct 27, 2025 at 18:36 | comment | added | Hoid StaffMod | Interesting thoughts. I do feel pretty confident that most askers that stop by don't ask in the spirit of "I really want to add this question to the knowledge archive. That seems like language specific to power user types. Most people come here looking to get unblocked. I do, however, agree that these labels are not complete and are certainly worth thinking about more or different ones. The tricky part is that we can only realistically get away with maybe 5-6 of them? | |
| Oct 23, 2025 at 19:25 | comment | added | D.W. | @V2Blast, Sure. Those suggestions have some issues. Feel free to suggest something better. But please don't let the perfect get in the way of the good enough. In my opinion, something imperfect would be better than Troubleshooting/Debugging. I see "Troubleshooting/Debugging" as actively harmful to the site. | |
| Oct 23, 2025 at 16:08 | comment | added | V2Blast StaffMod | I fear "Knowledge" or "Knowledge Library" would not be very clear labels, and I suspect "How-to" would be equally as ambiguous. But I'm sure there is room for improvement in those labels/options. (To be clear, I'm not currently working on this project, just sharing my personal thoughts.) | |
| Oct 23, 2025 at 5:45 | history | answered | D.W. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |