Is this question appropriate for SQA?

Question

I, personally, think that Is the "Joel Test" appropriate when looking for a QA job is a great question.

That said - given how subjective it is and the fact that there really is no one right answer as the way the question/title is phrased it's effectively a poll with two answers {yes|no}, is it a question that's appropriate for our site?

More specifically is this type of question appropriate for our site?

Answer 1

I think not. It is too broad and very subjective.

Answer 2

I think it is appropriate.

Yes, it is subjective. But if you read the guidelines for allowable subjective questions, you find it meets the criteria quite well.

• Great subjective questions inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”

This question does not specifically ask for it, but I would not expect anyone who answers it to not give an explanation of why the various points do or do not apply.

• Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.

The answers to these questions are not walls of text, but the aren't one liners. I think they qualify the question to meet this criteria.

• Great subjective questions have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.

Not much explanation required here. I don't think anyone is questioning the bias of the question toward any particular answer.

• Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.

Again, while not explicit, this question does invite sharing the personal experiences. The fact that it's a list, for some reason, we just naturally break things down by lists. shrug In any event, the answers DID share experience. (Personally I love the Alan Test :-) )

• Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.

The question does not make this explicitly clear. However, I feel if the OP would have thought there would been a question on the subjectivity he would have made this clear. Instead, I think by default we expect facts over opinions, or at the very least, expect that opinions are explicitly detailed as such.

• Great subjective questions are more than just mindless social fun.

Finding a job you'll be happy in is most certainly not simply mindless social fun. The intent of the question was to legitimately correlate an accepted list of attributes to one profession to a related profession.

So while I do feel it was subjective, I do not necessarily feel it is "too subjective." While it doesn't in its present form meet all the criteria of the list of great subjective questions, it certainly would be trivial to edit it to do so without changing the intent of the post. Poor subjective questions are typically intentionally subjective. The ones that aren't intentionally subjective usually are easily adaptable to confirm to the subjectivity guidelines.

If it did get voted to close, I would vote to reopen, personally.

Answer 3

The key word here is "discussion".

SE isn't the right place for it. SE is not the right place to tap community genius to discover new answers. If the question produces a long discussion to find out what the answer might be, then the question is not appropriate.

However, if experts have already considered this question in depth and have wisdom to share, then this question is fine.

A good metric of a question is the quality of the answers that it invites.

Answer 4

I think that it is appropriate. When it comes to testing and quality, finding definitive answers isn't always going to be easy. It's a broad question, yes, but I'd love to see the discussion about it.