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Can we stop up-voting questions about google's UX, like "why Google has a button" or "why Google has no button.."?

Nobody knows why until Google tells it publicly, and when Google does, it's available for everyone. Some Google UX related questions have 100 up-votes! Really? "Why does Google have a search button" question has 100 up-votes?

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This has already been covered in a more general sense by this question: Should "Why does x company do...."or "Is there a reason why x does y" questions be removed?

But as for Google-specific ones: Such questions should be - and are - flagged and put on hold as being 'Primarily Opinion Based'.

If all we can do is speculate on the reasoning behind why Company X has done something then that can only mean we would be giving our opinions on it rather than the answer.

Some questions are not so black-and-white though. Using Google (and other sites) as examples of a behaviour you are querying for use in a separate instance is not necessarily off-topic. But yes, asking 'Why does company X do {thing}' is. Please flag or close these if you see them and they will be handled by the rest of the community.

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  • Thank you for your answer. I didn't notice this subject was raised before.
    – Ivan Venediktov
    Commented Oct 10, 2016 at 16:15
  • @IvanVenediktov it's a bit of a quiet but omnipresent issue that pops up once and again any time one of such questions gets really popular. It's a problem when it's very high on the "interesting" scale but exceedingly low on the "useful" scale.
    – Zelda Mod
    Commented Oct 11, 2016 at 20:54
  • @BenBrocka I agree with you on "interesting" and "useful" scales. It is just very frustrating when a question as useless as "why does google have a button" gains such popularity. Makes you question the trustworthiness of the community.
    – Ivan Venediktov
    Commented Oct 11, 2016 at 21:23
  • @IvanVenediktov I don't think it's about trustworthiness. More an issue of 'bikeshed' questions. It's a problem for all SE sites. See this meta post: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/…. (Also this wikipedia article on the Law of Triviality is a good read too).
    – JonW Mod
    Commented Oct 12, 2016 at 12:36
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    @JonW I can see this situation is not something new. Thanks for the article, I enjoyed reading it. Do you think there is a solution?
    – Ivan Venediktov
    Commented Oct 12, 2016 at 14:46
  • @IvanVenediktov Part of how StackExchange platform operates does provide a solution, to a degree. Namely that you can only gain a daily maximum reputation. So hugely popular questions don't reward massive amounts of reputation, because once you hit 200 rep a day then that's all you get, even if you get another 50 upvotes. Over a few days the question popularity dies down.
    – JonW Mod
    Commented Oct 12, 2016 at 14:55
  • This is really satisfying, I didn't realise there was a cap on daily reputation.
    – Ivan Venediktov
    Commented Oct 12, 2016 at 15:15

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