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Questions are a bit tricky to locate since we don't have the question labeling supported. For the time being I will keep this table updated daily so interested community members can find them easier.

Question Title (As of January 17) Replies Score ContentType Tags
How to load a website (HTML) and click a button? 3 6 Advice , , ,
optional prerequisites in gnu make 0 5 Advice
How to step out chain of promises 1 1 Best Practices ,
How to integrate JaCoCo into a spring boot OCI image to measure E2E testing code coverage? 4 2 Advice , ,
How to retain CrewAI Short-Term Memory with Azure OpenAI Embeddings? 4 1 Advice , , ,
Base class and derived classes in Qt 6 1 Best Practices , , ,
Ridgeplot with area charts in plotly (or any other free python library) 4 4 Advice , , ,
advertise RequestedAttribute in service provider metadata in Spring-security OpenSAML5 1 1 Advice ,
Omitting missing or Nan columns in python plot 4 2 Advice
Parsing with Python html.parser: accessing and using raw tags 0 1 Advice , , ,
How can I efficiently run a RAG pipeline fully in Node.js using OpenAI embeddings and FAISS without relying on Python? 0 3 Advice , , , ,
Copy out file from build state to host 4 2 Advice
Automatic Python type hint migration 3 6 Tooling Recommendation ,
spring UriComponents tobuilder to UriComponentsBuilder 1 1 Best Practices , ,
PowerShell: syntax sugar to combine parent and child attributes in pipe 6 1 Best Practices
Configure Spring Context Using Arguments 2 1 Best Practices , , ,
Java 21 multi-key map collector 7 1 Best Practices , ,
Visual studio vs gcc 10 2 Advice , , , ,
How to avoid dual splash screen in Flutter using flutter_native_splash and custom splash screen? 1 3 Advice ,
What are the kinds of practical difficulties you've run into when implementing Microfrontends? 7 6 Advice , , , ,
Memory accounting and quotas for subtasks in golang programs 6 2 Best Practices , , ,
In Common Lisp, replacing "get-setf-method" with "get-setf-expansion" is not always working 16 2 Advice , , ,
How to make a js dropdown with description like Microsoft Excel 4 1 Advice , , ,
Architecture design for multilingual descriptions for several classes 1 3 Best Practices , , , ,
Buffer a polyline by variable distance 4 2 Advice ,
The difference between Credential Manager and Windows Vault 1 1 Advice , , ,
Which paradigm and tech stack for an app that listens to messages and updates shapes on a satellite map 4 1 Advice , , , ,
Text-to-Speech function in a 3D Unity game 0 1 Advice , , , ,
Using the equivalent of an include in an iRule 4 0 Best Practices , ,
How to best group an iterator's items into batches? 7 1 Best Practices , ,
Best way to dynamically switch Blade partials with data in Laravel [Question Removed] 0 0 Best Practices , ,
Schedule publish Revit workshared models every day 2 1 Best Practices ,
PyErr_Format and floating point number 3 0 Advice
#ifdef equivalent for constexpr variables? 14 4 Best Practices ,
IBObjects for Delphi 13 5 0 Advice
How can I print very thin lines (e. g. 1/300 dpi) to PDF via Chrome? (Prevent rounding to full css-px) 1 1 Best Practices , , , ,
Best way to write an Oracle Procedure using Spring Data Jpa 7 0 Best Practices , , ,
Azure DevOps Extension – Prevent recursive onFieldChanged event when updating fields programmatically 0 0 Tooling Recommendation , , ,
Polymarket totalBought calculation 0 0 Advice ,
High-Performance ACK Generation in NDIS Filter Driver for 10 GbE FPGA Traffic 5 2 Best Practices
Wordpress: Open one navigation item in a lightbox/modal 2 1 Best Practices ,
Advice on using css to hide elements 7 1 Advice ,
Samsung QM55C screen does not show URL Launcher [Question Removed] 1 0 Advice ,
How to align a byte array transferred from Blazor to Typescript via interop to a multiple of 2 bytes? 6 1 Advice , , , ,
How to echo cd as cd in batch? [Question Removed] 0 0 Advice , ,
Is using #region acceptable to organize 30+ endpoints in a .NET Core Minimal API? 2 4 Best Practices
What modules exist for simultaneous input and output? 0 1 Advice , ,
How does Discord reuse code for their desktop and browser apps? 0 2 Advice ,
.NET 10 not available for Azure Functions in Visual Studio 2026 Insider 2 4 Advice ,
H2 Database web site is down [Question Removed] 2 1 Advice
Google gnostic: protoc-gen-openapi 0 1 Advice , ,

As mentioned in the post covering the now running opinion-based question alpha experiment, we would like you to share feedback here on specific opinion-based questions that you see as a result of this experiment that you believe are good or bad candidates for Stack Overflow. If you disagree with an example that someone leaves on this post, please share your rationale in a new answer to this question. We would prefer not to start any debates at this juncture and instead want to give community members space to share their thoughts. Feel free to express disagreement or consensus via voting.

Feedback on questions

Please provide the following:

  • Link to the question
  • Assessment of why the post is not a good fit as an opinion-based question or is a good fit for Stack Overflow. Please try to provide a thorough explanation. Something along the lines of, "This can't be answered because of X" or, "The question is so vague it's hard to get an understanding of what they are actually trying to accomplish", etc.

Feedback on answers

Please provide the following:

  • Link to the answer
  • Assessment of why the answer is not a good fit or is a good fit.

Please provide an explanation of your thoughts and why. This might look something like, "The answer has no value to anyone other than in this specific situation" or "The answer misleads the asker to believe this will resolve their question when it is dependent on other factors not mentioned in the reply", etc.

Any other feedback about the experiment, bug reports, feature requests, etc, can only be left on the original experiment announcement post.

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  • 3
    @KevinB This would be limited to questions we see coming through the experiment on Stack Overflow. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 18:16
  • 7
    Oh, so it's live... edits to existing posts don't make for very good announcements Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 18:18
  • 18
    I find it pretty bad that "default" is troubleshooting/debugging, when that's just one type of question alowed on SO and isn't even the most useful type. (this feedback was provided in the other thread). Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 18:20
  • 16
    But I assume someone must see these questions. Where do they show up? Where would one encounter it? Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 19:00
  • 15
    I recommend some of the staff contribute answers here: from the start, there seems to have been a vision for how this might work inside the company, that members of the community (myself included) have had a hard time grokking. Here's an opportunity to build a shared idea with two-way communication. Commented Oct 28, 2025 at 13:59
  • 3
    It seems that people have problems coming up with real opinion-based, open-ended questions. The examples read like normal Q&A. Not knowing the solution doesn't mean that there isn't one. Commented Oct 29, 2025 at 17:55
  • 7
    From a quick glance at the listed questions, it seems like "best practices" is used on simple "how do I do X" questions that should not be "opinion-based" at all. Which was more or less expected, and mentioned in various places on the previous post as well, but was not addressed. From my pov, the experiment is clearly detrimental for those questions. Commented Oct 30, 2025 at 11:10
  • 7
    @Hoid score seems to count "thumbs up" only - can we get a "thumbs down" count as well? Commented Oct 30, 2025 at 15:31
  • 3
    @l4mpi I can add that I will have to dig into the DB a bit to see where that's stored, since it's different from regular questions. Commented Oct 30, 2025 at 21:58
  • 4
    @WeijunZhou We are up to about 177 questions now. So, trying to think about how we are presenting that list and if there is a better option than a massive table. Commented Nov 4, 2025 at 15:27
  • 11
    This experiment went sideways pretty quickly. To me none of those questions are opinion-based and I think they would be all accepted on normal SO. Commented Nov 5, 2025 at 20:22
  • 12
    You could get a lot of useful feedback from flagging those posts, if you've implemented the flag "not opinion based". Commented Nov 9, 2025 at 1:16
  • 4
    I'm curious if we have any statistics as to how many questions are actually categorized correctly. (As Piotr mentioned previously, this could be helped by having flagging options.) But it seems to me that upwards of 90% of the questions posted as advice/opinion are actually proper technical questions. I don't actually go looking for these things, but I think I've only seen a single properly-categorized opinion question this whole time. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 15:35
  • 12
    Frankly, it boggles my mind that nothing was put in place to deal with the obvious problem here. Even if you underestimated how confusing the UI turned out to be, you should have anticipated that at least some users would misuse the feature and put in something to deal with that. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 22:44
  • 3
    may I suggest to list "questions that you liked" in a seperate thread? If someone will posts one, it would be hard to find in the combined "didn't" and "liked" list Commented Nov 15, 2025 at 12:52

21 Answers 21

Reset to default
34

This question was asked as an "Advice" question, but it's actually a fairly decent "How To" question that is best suited for traditional Q&A. The discussion structure is a poor fit for this because it won't properly rank answers by score based on both upvotes and downvotes, nor can we mark it as a duplicate. Requesting clarification of the question, and of the answers, would also be intermingled with potential answers in a way that would be difficult to use.

Loading a website (HTML) and clicking a button via code in C# / .Net MAUI

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    I see nothing opinion based about that question. Although it does appear to seek a recommendation for a library. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 19:51
  • 4
    loosely, though that can be edited out without impacting the intent of the question. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 19:52
  • 1
    Indeed. But the point is that this doesn't seem to be an example of the sort that this meta question is seeking. (But maybe that was the point?) Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 19:56
  • 8
    @KarlKnechtel if it's a question i feel doesn't belong as a discussion, then it's exactly the kind of example it's asking for? Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 19:57
  • 35
    How do we close it for being non-opinion-based? Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 21:02
  • 2
    I would suggest them to delete it and repost it as a normal question, but I am pretty sure they cannot do it. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 21:03
  • 31
    In few days, this is going to be moderation nightmare. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 21:12
  • 4
    I debated 'answering' that that belongs more as a proper question (albeit with an MCVE that is currently lacking) but decided against it. Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 21:37
  • I mean, the title of the question here is "What opinion based questions and answers have you come across that you liked or didn't like". Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 22:12
  • 2
    thats fair, given it isn't an opinion based question, i was more or less working under the assumption that everything asked in the discussion format was presumed to be an opinion anyway Commented Oct 27, 2025 at 22:14
  • 5
    The open-ended question was finished in the third reply. And the result is less useful than a Q&A about it would be. Commented Oct 28, 2025 at 8:10
  • 8
    As expected people are treating this as a discussion, so what are supposed to be comments are now treated the same as what would be some more elaborate reply (answer). Commented Oct 28, 2025 at 10:42
  • 8
    I think Kevin B's answer here is exactly what the team's looking for (in terms of "bad" opinion-based question posts). Per Hoid's post, they're looking for an "Assessment of why the post is not a good fit as an opinion-based question or is a good fit for Stack Overflow." And this is exactly one such case: an "opinion-based question" post that is a better fit for regular Q&A. Commented Oct 28, 2025 at 22:28
  • @V2Blast Most questions you've listed here seem to be like that. I don't have the experimental "Ask question" page but I assume that the wording there is very unclear, if it leads users to chose the incorrect category so often. Commented Oct 29, 2025 at 22:31
  • 1
    I noticed overall that there's a whole lot of "advice" questions that would be perfectly on-topic as regular Q&A. Seems like a poor name for a category. Commented Nov 5, 2025 at 13:57
29

PyErr_Format and floating point number is somewhere between a debugging question and a how-to question. It's currently marked as "Advice". I think part of the problem is that every Stack Overflow question is "asking for advice"; making that a distinct category is bound to be confusing.

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    I don't have the subject matter expertise to judge that specific question, but I agree about the vagueness of that particular label. Commented Oct 31, 2025 at 2:49
  • 7
    It's the same problem with "best practice". We always want to advice for best practice in every answer to every question on StackOverflow. I had expected the category to be opinion-based and nothing else, but somehow it isn't. Commented Oct 31, 2025 at 6:50
  • 1
    The same applies to this question: Advice on using css to hide elements. They put "advice" on the title but it is really a debugging question or a how-to question, with a poor title. Commented Nov 6, 2025 at 16:41
25

Here is an "Advice" question, In Common Lisp, replacing "get-setf-method" with "get-setf-expansion" is not always working, that should have been a regular question. The question poster meant to post as a regular question, but misunderstood the UI and mistakenly chose "General Advice/Other".

Aside from maybe making sure that the UI is clear and understandable, it seems like there should be two mechanisms to prevent content that should be posted as ordinary questions from being posted as opinion-based questions. One mechanism that allows a poster to revise the type of a question (perhaps in some grace period), and one voting/review mechanism that allows the community to revise the type of a question.

Or consider this "Best Practices" question that 1) has a clear and objective answer, and 2) has at least one obvious duplicate and probably a few others (I seem to remember seeing another dupe of this question just a few weeks ago).

The question can't be flagged as a duplicate because the UI doesn't allow it. The question should be a regular question, anyway. "Best Practices" is a terrible and confusing category, and often such questions are easily objectively answerable, as in this case.

Further, the poster of this "Best Practices" question has gone on to post further questions in the "Replies" section below. My understanding is that "Replies" are intended for answer-ish content, not question-ish expansion, yet there is no way to flag a reply for deletion without bothering a moderator directly.

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  • 2
    meta tag(s) in their evil lair: "haha. the unsuspecting fools". I dunno how I feel about it. but... maybe good? if there was a way for me to just filter out debugging questions, I think I'd use it. I prefer answering how-to questions and I think they generally have more long-term value. Commented Oct 30, 2025 at 21:55
  • 1
    But there are no limits on "opinion" answer posts, it's set up as a forum discussion. It's not set up as a Q&A with different/slacker asking criteria. (Unfortunately.) Because their goal is not per se the allowing of good less-concrete less-specific mini-precis tutorialesque Q&A, it is the allowing of poorly written posts (which happen to have different/slacker asking criteria). The whole goal & functionality is fundamentally misconceived. Commented Nov 19, 2025 at 2:02
  • 2
    @philipxy "The whole goal & functionality is fundamentally misconceived." -- I could not agree more. Commented Nov 19, 2025 at 2:44
23

Find the commit that deleted a particular line is not only not opinion-based, it's actually a duplicate of a question asked 15 years ago.

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  • 20
    Note: I decided to be nice and add a "reply" pointing to the duplicate, but all I got was an "An error occurred submitting the answer." I refuse to waste more of my time on another half-baked experiment. Commented Nov 5, 2025 at 13:08
12

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79820362/minecraft-mods-decompiler-with-ai

Not asking for any advice, not asking for any opinions. Pure "join my project" advertisement. Not sure if there is a guidance against/for such posts as "advice", but in the past this type of post was not considered anywhere close to "opinion-based".

Separately excessive use of emojis...anyway deleted as spam - partial screenshot: enter image description here

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    Yeah, this would be unwanted content. Commented Nov 14, 2025 at 19:40
  • 5
    Given they're asking for "feedback ... and ideas for improvement", they're now supported by this experiment which enabled them to post that, they're a "builder", and it's about AI, it perfectly fits "our new mission: to support ALL the builders of the future in an AI world" which started this experiment. @Hoid The fact this requires staff confirmation (because it otherwise perfectly answers to what you've been advertising as of lately) should make you at least reconsider if what you're doing here makes sense at all. Commented Nov 14, 2025 at 21:45
10

A combobox as new property for a usercontrol to show in the designer crashes VS

This post is quite obviously a factual Why? debugging question, the answer of which is simple and a duplicate: the property calls itself, which causes a StackOverflowException. It should have been closed as a duplicate of Why does Property Set throw StackOverflow exception?. But that can't be done with these experimental "opinion-based questions".

9

Why does Python get a red carpet to vSphere while Java gets a CAPTCHA and a shrug? isn't really asking anything the community could answer. I don't think it's even really asking a technical question any deeper than "for this particular vendor API, the Python version works and the Java version doesn't".

In standard Q&A there's the occasional question that doesn't actually ask a question – either it's just a code dump or sometimes the answer is in the question – and it's usually right to close these as "needs details or clarity". There needs to be a similar community-accessible close vote for "opinion" questions that can't really be constructively answered.

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  • 1
    There are truly useful why questions out there in the world. But many similar why questions all boil down to "bad luck" or similar. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 20:50
  • "bad luck" - or because they designed that way and whining probably won't help ... so bad luck. Commented Jan 17 at 7:35
8

This advice is completely off topic here, but a plain user like me, cannot do much about it.

cad - Need help, 3d design of pick and place bot

7

HTML 5 Audio Player should not be an advice question, and would normally be closed as all the debugging information is externally hosted with the URLs marked up as code.

7

Typescript: Create array type containing values of all object properties should be a regular question. The asker does not understand the difference between question types.

2
  • It's interesting about how some people seem to use the "opinion-based questions" feature to ask regular questions. Maybe there are people who know they don't understand the difference between question types, and choose this as the less-intimidating option? Many people really hate and fear the feeling of getting questions downvoted and closed, like it's some kind of public ridicule. Maybe the whole experience would be smoother for everyone if we could simply vote to move a question from one to the other. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 11:12
  • 1
    @user56reinstatemonica8 - They are either intentionally asking their questions as the new type of question to avoid the communities ability to (close, downvote,ect) or they don’t know any better. I have yet to see a single question seeking our advice that’s worth keeping Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 17:56
6

I was very surprised to find an advice question pop up in one of my very small, niche followed tags:

Is there any working difference when setFocus() method for agenda group is defined in the java code or in then field(RHS section) of the DRL rule file

This question would be a lovely proper Q&A. I'd be happy to answer it if it was a Q&A: it has a single technical answer. But it's not a Q&A, it's an 'advice' question.

Rambly aside, feel free to skip:

As I went to answer the question, it occurred to me that I don't actually know how to answer an "advice" question. If it was an opinion or best practices question, that's simple "(You should do X because of A, B, C reasons. Here's some ways to measure.") If it was a proper advice question, that's ... a little less simple but still somewhat straight-forward ("In your situation, I would do X because of A, B, C reasons. Here's my reasoning.")

But a technical question with a straight answer? ("Those two pieces of code are actually different, and the reason is because of the rule lifecycle...") I could put that as an answer but that wouldn't help future visitors because it can't be marked correct. In an ideal world, I'd want to flag this to migrate it to the correct question type, but since that's not a valid workflow right now, I'm just going to ignore it, I think.

Especially for niche, low-traffic tags, we really need a mechanism to fix the categorization of these questions. Unless the meta effect kicks in, I'd bet real money this never gets answered by the 2-4 experts who occasionally pop their heads in.

That seems like an extremely frustrating experience for a new user. The low-traffic on the tag means that there's already going to be a delay in anyone ever looking at the question, and then the additional miscategorization exacerbates the problem further. A high traffic tag for a popular language like python or html can probably live with this, but not the niche library/technology tags that average a question every few months.

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    Agreed that we need a mechanism to move between types, or better types. We are discussing all of that. But putting all of that aside, you mentioned you don't want to answer the question. Is it because there isn't an opportunity to earn rep, or don't you want to support the experiment this way? Something else? Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 15:51
  • 1
    I don't know how to "give advice" about a technical question. I can't formulate the answer like "you should X" -- there is a factual answer, there's no "shoulds". (Heck in this case, the asker is just trying to understand what's going on, which is cool.) Plus at the end of the day there's no way to mark it as a correct answer to help future readers. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 15:56
  • 6
    It's like this. If you came up to me and said, "Hey, friend, I need some advice. Why is the sky blue?" It's a weird cognitive dissonance -- I can tell you about rayleigh scattering and how it makes you perceive the sky as being blue, but what kind of advice am I supposed to be giving you about this fact? Personally it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, though I can't articulate why. I only really noticed it now because a question finally got asked in the very small niche tag that I care most about. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 15:58
  • 1
    Understood, but just cause I am curious. You mentioned it has a technical answer and that it's not really an advice question. Is it just because at the end of the day, you want the credit for the accepted answer? And in this format, you can't get it? Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 16:01
  • 6
    At the end of the day I want to answer a technical question in a Q&A format. Here's the question. Here's the answer. For this experiment, the format of the answers is so unstructured and disorganized, without distinctions between comments and answers, that I really don't want to post anything in there. I don't "do" discussions, I can't remember the last time I posted in a forum, and at the end of the day I think we should be emulating Quora (yuck) and not Reddit. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 16:20
  • 2
    Assume there was a way for you to signal that this should be changed to a regular Q&A. Would you wait to answer it until after it had been changed to a regular Q&A, or would you be more comfortable doing it right away? Assuming that meant that your answer passed through with the type change? Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 16:27
  • 5
    I would wait to answer. The two types of questions are different enough I wouldn't want to accidentally mess something up so that when it gets migrated, it doesn't go cleanly. Plus, in an advice question, the standards for an answer are looser. "You should do X" is a perfectly fine advice answer that would get downvoted on a proper Q&A because it's not useful. I'd rather wait for the question to be categorized correctly, then write a good answer based on the criteria for that question type. (My "migrate to Q&A" flag might be declined, and I wouldn't want to have a 'bad' advice answer.) Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 16:33
  • 5
    Agreeing with Roddy, and unwelcomly adding that sometimes (especially on niche tags) curation falls through the cracks. I don't think adding the ability to transfer between discussion and qa would fully fix the issue with the format. Currently, someone could come in and say "the sky is blue because god is a boy, otherwise it would be pink" and the only difference between the two answers would be that one might have a larger number next to a thumb. The problem is worse if that bad answer was the fastest gun since they'd always be the first response. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 17:13
  • @Hoid: If there was a tried-and-tested way to change question type that I knew was going to work, and was confident that sufficient votes would be coming soon (within a day) to change the type (if I couldn't unilaterally do it myself with a gold badge and/or 20+k rep in a tag), then I might answer right away. But I still might prefer to hold off primarily because people couldn't comment on my answer in the worse UI / layout, and secondarily I wouldn't get notifications from people voting on my answer (which is a signal I use to have a second look at answers I've posted new or old.) Commented Nov 14, 2025 at 13:46
  • 3
    People were worried that the new opinion-based Q&A would be more like discussions, but ironically they're much worse for it than traditional Q&A, with not even 1 level of threading, and no notifications! Now all you can do is broadcast your "opinion" into the void. (Or your answer in the majority of cases when the question isn't actually opinion-based.) Commented Nov 14, 2025 at 13:49
6

Vim 9.1 & Python Virtual Env looks as if it could be a traditional Q&A question, although an incomplete one.

Unfortunately, it lacks contextual information, a [mre], and an understandable (at least to me) motivation for trying to pull an existing Python virtual environment to use with Vim's built-in Python interpreter. It has the marks of an XY problem and I told OP so. Surely, there's example code to showcase the problem and an expected outcome; neither are in the question, sadly.

When asked for clarifications, OP posted a reply that added some code examples but did not make things much clearer, overall. At this point, I lost interest to engage with the question.

Bottom line: this could be a traditional Q&A question (and potentially even a good one) but as it's written right now, I'd vote to close as "needs debugging details".

5

Copy out file from build state to host is on the list above. It'd be fine as a "traditional" question with a little tweaking: if you pointed at specific files you wanted, it'd be a specific technical question with a MCVE that could get an unopinionated technical answer.

Three more specific thoughts on this question:

  1. I could almost definitely find a duplicate of it if I tried harder. I've already left a comment/answer pointing at a generic canonical around copying files out; I think this specific question is a little more "how can I get logs out of the build without persisting them in the image", but in a decade of Docker questions, it's got to be there. My real point is that the standard community-moderator tools need to be available on these questions too.

  2. I have a pretty strong opinion on How Docker Should Be Used™. This mostly only comes out in comments on Javascript questions, but there's some of it in this question too. Is my "you're using the tool wrong" opinion valid on these opinion-oriented questions...even when I know it's definitely not a consensus opinion?

  3. For traditional Q&A we encourage good-quality self-answered questions. Is this permitted and encouraged for opinion-based questions too? That seems like it'd start straying towards things I'd put into a personal technical blog, if I could get one set up.

2
  • Regarding the last point: I don't see why not. The opinion of the asker is as good as the opinion of anyone else. As a bonus you cannot get downvoted and your own opinion will always have the top spot. From your side this might be even more attractive. Now if that fills the place with useful content... would be another question. Commented Oct 31, 2025 at 19:45
  • 1
    "I could almost definitely find a duplicate of it..." A duplicate in normal Q&A or a duplicate in the set of opinion-based questions? Both might be possible although we should discuss the duplicate opinion-based question again, what it exactly means. Commented Oct 31, 2025 at 19:46
5

Robot for Websites should be a normal question, fleshed out with a minimal, reproducible example and full context for what OP is trying to accomplish. It's posed as a "best tool" question, but OP is already using all of the "best" (only) tools for browser automation. OP responded with a code fragment, trying to shoehorn a normal question into an opinion-based thread.

5

Is it the tty, the shell, or both that echos user input? is an "Advice" question that is literally just a regular question. There's nothing opinion-based about it. I think part of the problem in this experiment is that new users might interpret "Advice" to mean "Any Question."

Here's another factual question posted as "Advice": How to dynamically change window title in iced.rs?

3
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    (The author has since edited the Advice question to indicate that they've reposted it as a proper Q&A, and flagged the original post for deletion, so I've gone ahead and deleted it.) Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 22:55
  • 1
    @V2Blast Should I delete this answer then? Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 23:08
  • 6
    No, it's still a potentially useful example – it'll just only be visible to staff, mods, and those with 10k rep on the site. Commented Nov 13, 2025 at 23:10
4

This is posted as an advice question, but really should be a normal Q&A: How to not write a Firestore Converter for each type. (Firestore + Unity / C#). It is reasonably answerable in its current form (although it could do with some edits for clarity), so doesn't need the new UI.

The first response would actually a decent first draft for an answer, that we could then vote/comment on. But since this was posted as an advice question, the "answerer" got no chance to post an answer, and rather could only "join the conversation".

4

Reminder notifications on mobile devices (Android/iOS))

This topic has been covered quite regularly already. Since OP asks about specific pitfalls, they seem to have done some basic research. The question seems to ask for someone to summarize all available information in one post, which is not what Stack Overflow is for.

If they did try things already and got stuck, this should just be a normal "why doesn't my work?" question, where OP shows what they tried. Unless there is a specific problem already, it is not a discussion topic.

2
  • "where OP shows what they tried" That isn't helpful in a how to post unless it works & they are asking for something different. If it didn't do what they expected they should ask a question about what they misunderstand. Commented Nov 19, 2025 at 1:59
  • 1
    I'm also fine with that indeed. I updated my answer to clarify. --- Mostly the "discussion" on SO proper now reads as: "There's a lot of information out there, can somebody write me a single up-to-date guide?" Which isn't a discussion topic either. :) Commented Nov 19, 2025 at 2:57
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This advice question is blatantly off-topic. In a broad sense, it might "belongs" to Super User, but it's not a good fit for that site.

Any Hack Rules To Filter Outlook Evasive Emails

Originally, it was tagged with

3

The OP is requesting to get assigned resources for 30 days to learn

Request: Temporary GPU VM (NVIDIA T4, 30 days) for learning ML

2

Here's another question that is posted as an advice question, but should be (pretty much as is) posted as a normal question: Flutter digital odometer ocr

-4

I found an interesting discussion posted recently that, on its face, seemed like spam; however I don't think the person's intent was to advertise. They encountered a problem with Google Workspace and created an issue on GitHub. The discussion was a plea for help to upvote the issue in order to get it addressed.

Modernize Google Workspace Logs Export to BigQuery usage_ Schema and Resolve Unpopulated Fields

I'm not sure I like or dislike this question, but it's not entirely clear to me how to handle these situations. This is not an unsolvable moderating problem, of course, but I can see this happening in non-trivial quantities.

I've been cruising discussions more than Q&A, so I definitely like a more relaxed atmosphere, but I can also see how can increase moderator burden.

2
  • 1
    while it's not a textbook case of spam, it is spam in nature: it's trying to use the SO community to influence the results of a vote somewhere else, rather than a discussion to raise awareness of it. it's not much different from a discussion asking for users to upvote their question or answer on SO. Commented Jan 15 at 20:27
  • 1
    I just flagged it as spam. Thanks for the info. Commented Jan 15 at 20:58

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