Question: where on the web can you post questions that do solicit debate (the anti SO)?

I want an opinion on something from outside my own development sphere that likely does not have a right answer.

I've tried Quora but they want permissions to manage my contacts (which is just too scary for me).

Thanks in advance.

I am curious too. I thought programmers exchange would work for this but just get dismissed like on stackoverflow.

I may or may not have been drafting an email to devRants' admins asking how I could contribute.

Really I want to see what niche they see this platform fulfilling. I have some hopes of where this site might go.. anyway was making a point of how there's kind of an "untapped need" in the developer social-media-sphere, noting what someone might expect out of one of the big names

meh let me copy pasta some of that draft here

I found devRant yesterday and I'm addicted to it already! I think it fills a certain gap in the digital-social-plane that's been empty for far too long amongst the developer community. To illustrate this, here's some of the social media outlets I frequently use, and the niche they fill:

StackOverflow/Exchange: very academic, an amazing resource for finding solutions to specific problems.

But they're super picky about what type of content they deem acceptable. Filtering out the "how do I for(){} loop"-esque questions is fine with me, otherwise I'd be just a mess like yahoo answers. **Shudders** But they're sooo damn quick to stomp on anything that deviates from there idea of a question.

You can't really ask what are the merits of X vs Y design pattern/library/etc, nor will they let you ask hers is my situation, what do you suggest and you'll see something to the effect of "Locked: Not a real question" This smothers so much good discussion because it's not phrased in prose. It upsets me when I google something, find an SO question on it, see like one/two awesome comments and then... Locked.

tl;dr - what is wrong with this snippet?

GitHub: GitHub is currently my favorite haunt. Some totally fantastic stuff happens within issues. The collaboration I've witnessed theres makes me, um, well.. proud that open source is a thing. Everyday I'm amazed by it, its like random people just pass by making a single mark with a crayon and all together it becomes a beautiful painting. The conversations can focus on code, or more abstract things, but.., there's no way to ask something more general, its got to be specific to a certain repo.

tl;dr - how should we do x with the project?

.... and i go on to compare like 5 other platforms

anyway. There's nothing out there that I've found which allows for high brow, yet free form discussion.

This site is new. Its got very simplistic functionality, but its already got tons of devs on here because its simple, accessable, and open.

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I love the cynical tone of all the posts I've read. You guys are smart, and entertaining.

You are right there is no place to get architecture or program stack questions answered. I have even considered paying someone hourly to discuss my questions. Many will say there are tutorials online but many are too simple or encourage spaghetti code.

Yet, I think the scope could easily be expanded to include more esoteric discussion such as you mention @chrizzle

I LOVE the irreverent attitude here, but that doesn't mean we cant still discuss serious topics.

I haven't posted to SO in over 2.5+ years because they're just so high strung, its a pain in the ass to setup a question so they'll be happy. Sometimes I'd rather talk to other devs with just a simple question like they were, well people some require some stupid etiquette.

I'd love to see this become a place where someone could ask a serious question: have userA respond with a reaction gif, userB give some actual advice, userC make a joke, and userD post some pseudo code, and have those all be "equal" if that makes any sense.

There would need to be some division between purely silly rants/threads full of memes, and ones which seek substantive responses. I think the `tagging` feature could facilitate this if it was fleshed out more.

I don't think to two can coexist as they are polar opposites

I think both can exist. We rant because we care. We get tired of getting kicked around by managers, project managers and other jerks. Note that we don't dismiss it when other people ask questions. You can joke around and vent but help when needed. I think most of our rants are related to people who don't listen or are arrogant jerks. We are not jerks but are tired of being jerked around.

It is exactly an architecture question I wanted an opinion on. There is definitely a need.

By coexist i mean in a single platform, it's important that a product has a clear goal and adding to that only murks the waters.

I get that.

The backgrounds and skills of the devRant founders position them well to offering such a community. It can be a sister site of devRant. They just may be too busy at this point.
The opportunity is there for them though.

I dont understand why not quora. probably the question you want to ask is already answered there.

I feel Quora is really good, and if you use it on desktop or browser in mobile rather than app, it won't bother you with managing your contacts or any other privacy concern.

@sandmanx good to hear a positive review. Perhaps it is worth me looking into what they use the contact information for (as sadly they still claim this permission via desktop too).

Use Quora web? 😬

@chrizzle Is it? I am a regular user of quora, but it never asked me for any contact permissions, as far as I can remember. It just asked for an email id. Btw I have not synced my contacts with any email id.

@sandmanx that's some half arsed looking on my part. I couldn't see the sign up with email link on a desktop.

Maybe this solves the problem

@chrizzle lol 😀😀 Hope you enjoy Quora once you sign up😉.