Do we want this site to be forum-style, or Stack Exchange-style?

Question

Forums typically allow much more discussion in posts, along with several types of post that Stack Exchange frowns upon - list questions and shopping lists come to mind. If we want this site to be like a forum, we can have that kind of thing.

If we want the site to be more like Stack Exchange, however, then each question should have an objectively "correct" answer, instead of multiple such answers.

Personally, I don't mind. What does everyone else think?

Answer 1

As upvoted answers rise to the top, I do not think we need not regulate too much at this point. I often do not understand why questions are closed on SE. Let's wait and see how it develops. Perhaps this site will be in the middle ground between SE and Quora in this respect.

Comments

I agree with this advice of not over-regulating things.

As I understand it, the very  broad definition of the terms "list question" and "shoping question" as well as the corresponding close reasons  applied by StackExchange are too restrictiv and not  useful for research-level academic communities.

On MathOverflow for example, on-topic comment discussions are allowed to evolve more freely. Conversely to what StackExchange does, comments there are considered to be valuable information too and are always preserved (apart from obviously bad things such as spam, insults, etc that naturally dont occur to often in a research-level environment anyway).

---

I see it the same way - overregulation on SE has killed or otherwise infected many potentially informative discussions, so I think we should strive to do things in a bit more open-ended fashion here, unless strong reasons come up to change course on this.

Answer 2

I personally do not care as long as something (relevant discussion) is happening...