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Some examples:

I've been a long time SO user, and questions like these are usually quick to be closed (partially thanks to the cv-ring) and I think they're bad for the site's health.

I don't think questions about broad topics, or require writing an entire module as an answer belong here. I know we're all here to help people learn Magento, but I believe we should be directing things like this to a forum/reddit/twitter/etc.

Take from the FAQ:

Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.

Don't ask about [...] Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

I've flagged/vote-closed a few questions out there, but I wanted to bring up a few examples and see what the community thinks.

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Background

In the foundation of this site it was very important for us to attempt to answer all questions and to instill trust that we would support this community, no matter how difficult. Let's face it - Magento is monolithic and can be daunting.

Today we see very few of these types of questions, and if not they are swiftly closed.

But what you're asking is to rewrite history. I will argue not to close questions that have de-facto answers on them, no matter how long the answer may be. I often refer back to them and I hold them in very high regard. Those of us in the early days put in hundreds of hours, and that should mean something.

I realize that not all long-form answers are good, just as not every short answer is good.

Action

So, in that case, I will consider the following:

  • Mark these types of questions as Community Wiki
  • Lock these questions so no more answers can be posted
  • Notify those in the future that longform answers are encouraged, but it's probable that the question itself may be out-of-bounds to begin with

We have to be careful not to be police. I don't want to discourage people from asking hard questions. If they knew the answer to the question or the level of effort involved in the answer, they honestly they wouldn't be here asking.

We're here to help people be better actors by nudging them in the right direction.

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  • I think the key is that we best serve the Magento SE community by using the tools provided to encourage inclusion (ie community wiki) rather than exclusion (closing questions) and it serves no one to close retroactively if questions have up votes. In a recent SO Podcast Joel & Team mentioned how they felt they had been perhaps a bit too eager to train Mods & reviewers to close topics quickly as OT resulting specifically in too strong of a "policing" mentality making SO less inviting for new users. Steve's got a good point but I we should strive for balance & prefer change vs closure.
    – Bryan 'BJ' Hoffpauir Jr.
    Nov 13, 2015 at 11:40

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