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First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...

First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...

First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...

First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...

First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...

First off, the answer to this question is easy:

Should it be left open? Power to the people?

Yeah, that. There's nothing particularly exceptional about this question apart from its popularity; given that most of the attention is coming from this post and SO itself, I'm not too worried that it'll be overlooked by the community.

Moving beyond that, I'd like to address something Robert wrote in his answer:

How many topical questions about serious problems languish in neglect because we are too busy answering questions about croissant algorithms?

How many topical questions on serious problems languish because folks are fixing a trivial regular expression somewhere, or teaching PHP folks how to not send headers prematurely for the umpteenth time? More importantly, why is it any of your business? Because of the network-wide "hot" list? We have 6 sites dedicated to games - if that doesn't bother you, I'm not sure why pastry-oriented programming questions would.

Y'all are straining at gnats here. There are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of embarrassingly bad questions asked on Stack Overflow every day; this question is just not that interesting, even if it did prompt me to eat a half-dozen croissants today. It's neither exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad - pictures of pastry aside, there are countless banal questions like this posted every day.

And... so what?

We used to argue about bikeshed questions that were clearly identifiable as such; what colors do you use in your IDE, what music do you listen to, what should I put on my wedding cake... But reading the answers here, I find very few simple, compelling arguments for why this question is harmful or sets a bad example. Adam does the best job of it, and even hints at how the question could be fixed if need-be, something sorely lacking from most of the rest of this discussion. Gilles went ahead and took a stab at that - good for him.

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing closed and low-quality questions lately; it's possible this has biased me in favor of any programming question written in clear English with the problem stated in the title. But I know one thing: this question isn't gonna rob me of any sleep.

Indigestion caused by all of the buttery pastries I've consumed while reading this discussion OTOH...