Opinion and Debate

Question

While I realize it's the goal of most SE sites to provide simple Q&A and opinion/debate is discouraged, would it not be appropriate to at least not discourage it in bicycles.SE?

Because some of the topics relating to bicycles and bike building are so completely subjective, it would seem fair to relax the discouragement. An example would be a question I asked here: Which spokes to get, Wheelsmith or DT Swiss Spokes?

I worded it specifically to elicit debate, opinions, and discussion - which would (and did) answer my question. Someone posted a link to Peter White, a wheelbuilder who ranted on the difference. His opinion, with some facts to back it up, were precisely what I needed.

Should this type of question be discouraged from bicycles.SE? Some bicycle questions just naturally lend themselves to this format, and they don't get answered well on forums.

Answer 1

Thank you for asking about this.

First off, I agree with zenbike.

I could've closed the question (made it unavailable for answers until re-opened). I didn't feel there was anything so wrong with the question that it required anything but an edit. The phrasing (asking for debate) I see as problematic. Basically, I thought your question was good, but could be made better.

Also worth noting that I think the accepted answer that keithmo started and you really pulled together into a complete answer is a good answer, and getting good answers is what we're all about.

All of the SE sites have a certain amount of opinion and debate. Stack Overflow is the first and biggest site in the network, and the computer programming questions there often have differing opinions and a certain amount of debate because there's often more than one way to solve a given programming problem. That doesn't mean the site gets optimized for debate. It works great being optimized for great answers.

Ultimately, we're trying make the internet better. In particular, make it so that people with questions that google for their answer find a really good answer on our site. Obviously restricted to bicycle-related questions here with other types of questions elsewhere on the SE network. Questions whose answer will never help anybody else are discouraged. Forum-style questions that create a discussion instead of clear answers are discouraged.

Here's a couple more references:

• Good Subjective, Bad Subjective
• Q&A Is Hard, Let's Go Shopping! (there's some relevant stuff in this one, but I don't think your question really suffers from any of the classic "shopping question" problems)

Answer 2

Every non-mathematical question is subject to debate, and I'm sure there's a mathematician out there who'd debate that with me.

Stack Exchange does not limit debate. It provides a structure for it.

On SE sites, that structure is limited to providing what you feel is the best answer, and letting others vote you up or down. Your response to other answers comes in the form of modifying your answer to respond to assertions made in other answers or comments, either by refuting them, or incorporating them, and the better your ability to debate in that fashion, the more likely your answer will be at the top, and/or accepted. You also get to vote on other users answers, and comment to tell them why.

The reason it is limited that way is that without structure, debate becomes argument, which becomes name calling, which means Stack Exchange becomes another forum.

You see a large number of comments by people who disagree on Bicycles.SE. What you don't see often is that disagreement degenerating into a flame war, and therefore the loss of that thread as a useful source of information.

In short, while you state that Forums rarely answer your questions effectively, you are basically requesting that Bicycles.SE become just another forum.