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I've noticed a lot of questions lately where someone is complaining about a very specific technical process or concern related to programming. Shouldn't these details be edited out? These usually get derailed into a technical debate. I realize that most of us here are programmers or generally in IT. But if someone from outside of an IT related field posted such details in their question, they would undoubtedly be edited out.

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    "Are questions allowed to be too technical?" - seem pretty clear that lots of technical details are permitted. It would be better if most of those details were left off, so as to make the question more generally applicable. But apparently there is no requirement to do so. Jan 9, 2019 at 16:35

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Technical details, like any others, should be limited to what is required to lay the foundation of the question.

If the answer would be a technical answer, not a workplace one, it does not belong here.

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There have been a few questions here in Workplace Meta covering a similar concept - the idea that this forum skews heavily towards IT related professions, to the extent that content focused on IT concepts is allowed but the rare content focused on other subjects gets voted as off topic.

I don't think there's necessarily value in editing out details, but I do think there's still a need to deal with the bias.

If a question is purely technical in nature and has no workplace content, it should be moved to the appropriate technical SE site. If a question has workplace content, but it's expressed as technical problems, it's useful to take actions such as:

  • Comment on or edit the question pointing out that the real root "problem" has a workplace nature and not a technical nature. This can help others responding get in the right mindset
  • Answer the question yourself, and explicitly point out the generic workplace problems, and address them, without using technical language.
  • Comment on, or downvote, answers that focus purely on the technical aspects and explain the technical bias.

For instance, if a question asks something like, "how can I get my boss to adopt platform X, instead of Y, which we currently use?" you can answer focusing on getting your boss to respond to your ideas for improvement, and not even mention X or Y.

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