Should we encourage language-agnostic and subjectve questions?

Question

This kinda of hit me after reading this question, mainly because it's true. As a webmaster I don't care what language you are hosting your website on, I only care if its relevant to mine. The more subjective and language agnostic it is, the more likely the question is going to apply to something I am working on, some-way, some-how.

As soon as you ask a question about .net this or .asp that, I am going to ignore it, because its not .php. (I already have my ignore tags in place.)

Most likely why SEO, hosting and payment processing questions are ranked highest, because it applies to well.. everything.

Answer 1

Language-specific questions aren't a problem, as long as they're not "how do I program X in PHP/ASP?" If you do not know much about ASP then sure, ignore those questions and focus on the subjects you are "expert" in.

Not sure what your point was regarding subjective questions, but no, purely opinionated questions like "is PHP or ASP better?" are not welcome.

Answer 2

If the question is language specific, but not erroneous enough to prompt being moved to another site, then it can always be answered in an agnostic fashion.

Most systems are similar enough that if a question is posted here, the answer can be generic enough to apply a much broader audience.

This behaviour seems to already be in motion: What can you do to speed up IIS 7 web sites?

Answer 3

The more subjective and language agnostic it is ...

I believe you meant more objective, not subjective.

I agree with DisgruntledGoat's view of language specific questions, as long as it isn't intrinsically a programming question it is fine.

As regards for the subjectiveness of the question, the recent stackoverflow blog post on the topic cuts right to the heart of the matter. We should encourage good subjective questions as many common problems may not have an authoritative "this is correct" answer.