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21 Example Questions

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up vote 14 down vote

added by vazexqi Nov 16 '12 at 6:03

	Questions requesting empirical studies on these things are asked frequently on P.SE and are completely in-scope there, here's a Q with a very thorough answer similar to this one programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10032/… for further evidence of scope overlap note the question scores here: programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=studies – Jimmy Hoffa Nov 23 '12 at 22:27
	Except many of those questions get closed for being off-topic, not a good sign. – gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:47

up vote 10 down vote

added by vazexqi Nov 16 '12 at 6:23

This question is a good fit for this proposal because it's a research-level question. Moreover, this question is a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question doesn't solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. Rather, it's asking for a list of publications that answer this question. It's common for experts in the field of software engineering to write about acceptable research methods. – reprogrammer Nov 21 '12 at 0:13

@reprogrammer The problem is that you are asking for a list. List questions are generally non-constructive. It is expected that questions have answers that can be judged on their rightness or wrongness, not generate a bunch of answers which are all equally right. – Thomas Owens Nov 23 '12 at 20:38

@Thomas: I agree that there may be a problem with this question since it invites list answers, but in reality, many SE questions have multiple answers which are equally right in general. The contextual information required to determine whether one is a bit more correct in a specific situation is so vast that it's practically impossible to give all that contextual detail. In other words, many SE results "depend". Also, several questions have some research worth mentioning but have no single answer that is verified to be the "right" answer yet. That said, questions should aspire to the ideal. – Fabian Fagerholm Mar 13 at 20:11

up vote 8 down vote

added by reprogrammer Nov 19 '12 at 23:29

This question is a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question doesn't solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. Rather, it's asking for a list of research publications that answer this question. – reprogrammer Nov 21 '12 at 0:12

up vote 7 down vote

added by lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 9:33

@lsinger: Someone has voted to close this question because he/she thought that this question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. I think this is a good example of a research-level question. Can you clarify it a bit? – reprogrammer Nov 21 '12 at 0:17

I'd like to know how "proficiency" is distributed in the population of software developers. I'm not sure how to clarify this -- is proficiency too vague? Is "all developers" too broad? – lsinger Nov 21 '12 at 9:19

Maybe an ancillary question: What is the standard definition for measuring proficiency of programmers. – gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:45

up vote 6 down vote

added by gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:40

up vote 5 down vote

added by gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:49

up vote 3 down vote

added by reprogrammer Nov 15 '12 at 17:08

up vote 2 down vote

added by CesarGon Dec 5 '12 at 7:20

up vote 1 down vote

added by reprogrammer Nov 19 '12 at 23:13

No one can present evidence of absence, questions phrased in this way often live idle forever because of that.. – Jimmy Hoffa Nov 23 '12 at 22:09

up vote 1 down vote

added by lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 9:29

	Could fit on Programmers. – akuhn Nov 23 '12 at 17:46
	Best practices fits programmers -- the second part, "what are their effects" fits research. – gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:55

up vote 1 down vote

added by gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 3:25

up vote 1 down vote

added by CesarGon Dec 5 '12 at 7:21

up vote 0 down vote

added by vazexqi Nov 16 '12 at 6:28

	Let's limit this site to software engineering questions and leave the HCI questions out. – reprogrammer Nov 16 '12 at 15:44
	I can see how it would make sense to include HCI questions that are concerned with designing SE tools. How do you design the UI for a debugger, a refactoring tool? If there's research on that, it would be (relevant to) SE research. – lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 9:26
	@lsinger: That's a good point and I agree with you. My first comment was too general. However, I consider this specific question to be specific to HCI. – reprogrammer Nov 20 '12 at 16:04
	Yes, I agree. Can we find a suitable rephrasing of the question, or should we just add a new one? – lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 19:19

up vote 0 down vote

added by reprogrammer Nov 19 '12 at 23:46

up vote 0 down vote

added by lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 19:23

	Could fit on Computer Science. – akuhn Nov 23 '12 at 17:45
	Computer scientists (excluding HCI) don't generally have to deal with human subjects -- there just isn't the sufficient concentration of expertise there. – gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:42
	@gameweld do you think having a research-focussed site will draw a greater concentration/depth of research expertise than cs/cstheory drew? I understand you hope for that, but do you think that's likely the case? – Jimmy Hoffa Nov 24 '12 at 6:34

up vote 0 down vote

added by vazexqi Nov 21 '12 at 16:45

up vote 0 down vote

added by gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:35

up vote 0 down vote

added by gameweld Nov 24 '12 at 2:58

up vote 0 down vote

added by vijay Mar 9 at 20:57

up vote -1 down vote

added by vazexqi Nov 16 '12 at 3:46

@vazexqi: Several people have voted to close this question because they think that this question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. Can you rephrase this question to or replace it by a different one? – reprogrammer Nov 21 '12 at 0:20

up vote -1 down vote

added by cdmihai Nov 16 '12 at 22:41

I think this is more of a programming question and fits stackoverflow.com – reprogrammer Nov 16 '12 at 23:11

@reprogrammer in it's current form this question does not belog to StackOverflow and will be closed there. – jachguate Nov 20 '12 at 0:30

This question would fit well in the mining software repository domain and would be useful to researchers. – gameweld Nov 20 '12 at 2:04

I agree with gameweld -- how to mine repositories is important information in SE research. – lsinger Nov 20 '12 at 19:20

There's a huge body of research on mining software repositories. However, this particular question fits SO. For example, see a similar question at stackoverflow.com/q/12882049/130224. Our example questions should justify the need for a new site. Otherwise, one could argue that existing SE sites accept our example questions just fine. – reprogrammer Nov 20 '12 at 21:47

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