Can the question about the Programmers bill of rights be saved?

Question

How can I encourage my employer to adopt the "Programmer's Bill of Rights"?

This question has already had a major revision, Several of us feel this revision changed the question from its original intent.

Original Question:

Programmer's bill of rights: does your workplace follow it?

Here's the link to the bill of rights of a programmer: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/the-programmers-bill-of-rights.html

The question is pretty simple, does your workplace follow the bill ? Or is it too good to be true?

This question was a discussion/poll question so it needs to be revised but what do we need to do to make it on topic and help the OP get to the answer they are looking for.

Revision 2 changed the question to:

The question is are there any workplaces that follow the bill? How does it work in practice?

Though I think this needs improved upon as well prior to reopening, it is still in the realm of what the OP was asking.

So what can we do to improve this question so the next edit can be reopened and left open. Or should the question be left to die?

Answer 1

Original text is:

Here's the link to the bill of rights of a programmer: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/the-programmers-bill-of-rights.html

The question is pretty simple, does your workplace follow the bill ? Or is it too good to be true?

I don't see a way to modify this into something which fits a Stack Exchange site without the asker clarifying.

While I think there are a whole variety of interesting angles to take this, I cannot in honestly suggest which of them will match the asker's intent.

Modifying the question for the sake of a "better question" when the original intent was not this case ignores the fact that there is a user (real person!) behind the hdman online account.

I dislike going through such extreme assumptions about what hdman wanted, and as such, until hdman returns and posts what they are looking for, I see no reason to edit this into something which likely doesn't match original intent.

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That being said I see no reason to not ask those interesting questions which are related -- but not directly relevant to the original text here.

tl;dr

No, it cannot be saved without strong and likely inaccurate assumptions about the asker's intent.

Answer 2

Separate it into multiple questions?

I like the question and originally voted to reopen once it became "How could one encourage an employer to adopt these practices?" However, I do agree that it's really a number of questions that should be answered separately (as evidenced by the fact that both answers to the question are disjointed "here's what you do for #1, #2, #3, etc." answers, including mine).

Answer 3

I feel the current version is OK for this site the way it is, however you are correct that it is not the same question the OP originally asked.

There is a comment on the question that says:

@hdman myself, rachel and chad have collaboratively made a few edits to hopefully make your question on topic for this site. Could you confirm for our sakes if this question still reflects your intended question?

I think we should wait to hear back from the OP before doing any further editing to the question.

If the OP is OK with the changes, I would reopen it, as I think it is a decent question for the site.

Sure it could possibly be broken up into 6 different questions, each asking "how can I get my employer to implement X" or even one question asking "how can I get my employer to buy me something", however ultimately the question deals specifically with a Programmer's work space, and specific tools that are typically accepted as being standard for any decent programming job, and I would not want to see it broken up or changed into something generic

(A separate generic question asking "how can I get my employer to buy me something" wouldn't be bad too, although I'm fairly sure I've seen one of those either here or on Programmers that had some great answers already)

If the OP is not OK with the changes made, then I would roll back to the original version of the question, re-close it as off-topic, and start discussing if the current version of the Programmers question would be on-topic instead, as it more accurately reflects what the OP is trying to ask. (Personally my vote is yes, it would be on-topic here, although I think it would be more on-topic at Programmers)

Answer 4

Turn it into a single over-arching question?

Instead of asking "how can I fix each failing in the Bill of Rights", turn it into "how do I open a discussion with my supervisors about improving the quality of the environment?"