Conceptual development questions; do we need a Programmers for SharePoint.SE?

Question

I have seen a lot of conceptual development questions (good and bad) being asked. And most, if not all, of them have been closed with the reason: Primarily opinion-based.

I agree, they are primarily opinion based, but sometimes it's nice to get someone else's opinion to compare to. And do we have anywhere else to ask these type of questions for SharePoint specifically? - MSDN you say? But I like StackExchange better!

StackOverflow has Programmers, but we only have SharePoint.SE.

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.

People here know what they are talking about, more than anywhere else, so this is the ideal place to ask a legit conceptual question - not just "SharePoint Online, yay or nay?" - but more in the lines of:

I have to develop Application X, the requirements are A, B, C, but D is totally out of the question. Should I go with a combo of Y and Z instead of Q?

Would getting a Programmers-like site for SharePoint.SE be a possibility if there is support for it or are other alternatives better, if yes, which?

Update:

This is a brilliant example: How to have privacy

Answer 1

As you say, the world is never black nor white. The same goes for mathematics, which isn’t an exact science since 1931 when Gödel proved it with the simplest of sentences. Among other things he stated that the sentence “This sentence is false” doesn’t fall within the rules of mathematics. If the sentence is true, it cannot be phrased “this sentence is false”. If the sentence false it still cannot be phrased “this sentence is false” since it would then be true. Therefore, in a sense – everything we build our world on (math) is opinion based since math cannot be proven scientifically.

More to read: Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Because of this I dislike over use of primarily opinion, based close reason since it can be applied almost everywhere. Before the close reason change this was phrased as a subjective question close reason which emerged with a blog post by Robert Cartaino in September 2010, Good Subjective, Bad Subjective, on SE which everyone should read. It discusses the need for subjective questions, which today are named primarily opinion based.

One more thing to put in consideration is the wording primarily opinion based which could be interpreted as an opening to discussion. That doesn’t mean that all possible opinion based questions should be closed, only those who are there to initiate discussions. We don’t like discussion in our Q&A, but we do like good reasoning in fields where the world isn’t an exact science. This is especially true in SharePoint where you can accomplish the same through a wide variety of actions, where different considerations and judgments determines use of actions rather than the technique itself.

These opinion based questions you find that are good subjective should stay open, or if closed, be re-opened. In addition to casting a reopen vote, I think you should flag them as well to let moderators look at them and possibly reopen them if they really are good subjective questions. Keep questions here.

Answer 2

Benny Skogberg has a point. We don't need a separate site, because the programming questions for SP are part of the site's scope.

The peer reviewing hasn't worked out lately. At this point I honestly wish we could flag users instead of posts.

Getting back to initiate reopen votes are rarely done, but with a help of a direct moderator interaction it could become easier. While I don't know how moderating works in SE, I must say that usually in communities when the users misuse the seniority-provided power, it would be the moderators who should intervene.