Where to ask “how to” questions?

Question

I see a lot of questions being marked as too general, and not specific enough. So where should we ask for opinions or discuss how to's?

Drupal has so many available configurations, and there are often more than one way of doing things, sometimes I just want to ask how someone might tackle a certain build or accomplish a requested feature.

An example of this is...

" I am building a Drupal car leasing website that will be handling 2000+ plus vehicles. Rather than my client managing each individual node, I will use feeds to auto import on a cron run, and update/delete/replace existing nodes of the car content type based on a Excel/CSV file listing all cars, with column for manufacturer, number of doors, colour, etc. The feeds will either use an imported excel database, or read from a file stored on-line. What is the best way to do this? Does anyone know of a simple secure on-line database management software that drupal feeds can get a csv from automatically, or is it better for him to manage the database offline and upload it manually? "

Answer 1

where should we ask for opinions or discuss how to's?

Anywhere but here :)

In all seriousness, there's nothing wrong with discussions, opinions, all of that stuff - they're very, very important and no one would be able to get by without them, no one would improve their skills, etc.

On the flip-side, it's also important that we have factual references that are for all intent and purposed devoid of opinion and ambiguity, so people can get a black and white answer to a black and white question.

Drupal Answers (and the Stack Exchange network in general) exists to fill that 2nd niche, while intentionally steering clear of the 1st. Making this separation has been proven to work over and over again, on site after site in the network, so we're happy it's the right thing to do.

So on to your question (I won't address the specific example question you included, as that isn't a "how to" question, it's just a request to find a 3rd party software tool):

For discussions, what you want is a forum. Drupal has its own forums, and there are others out there just a search away. I can't comment to their quality these days, haven't been there in a while.

There are also IRC channels, in which you are encouraged to "Chat with the Drupal Community", which is probably right up your street.

There is always Drupal Answers' chat as well, if you'd rather stick around this network.

Lastly, I'd recommend seeing what Quora have to offer - opinionated/discursive questions are welcomed over there and it's a great site.

Answer 2

IRC is very nice if you need to have quick and fast response.

For long, discussion I will encourage your to use Reddit - /r/drupal and/or Google + Drupal Community. These two places have ask very vague question and their discussion get really interesting with a lot different opinion from other people, which gives me many answers to my question.