I detest that questions are being closed because they are subjective. Often I am interested in subjective questions. Opinions on Clojure vs. Scala and the like. Discussions are even better.
StackOverflow has been very clear that they don't intend to be a discussion site. Even if you like subjective questions, that doesn't mean that a site shouldn't be able to specialize in something else.
I like basketball. But I wouldn't expect stackoverflow to allow basketball questions.
This isn't a judgment on the value of discussions... but there are other sites for that.
Asking if a question is subjective may, itself, be a subjective question.
Communities of Practice (Lave, Wenger) are held together by sharing a common repertoire of practices, and opinions. Newcomers may want to explore these shared opinions. SE is obviously not a place where they can do that, so I end up agreeing with your final sentence.
Just because you like something doesn't mean that it has to featured on Stack Overflow. Same as politics discussion on HN, many might want to debate Romney vs. Obama with the HN folks here, that doesn't mean HN has to tolerate that and turn into another Reddit.
I don't understand all the complaints about having discussions that can easily degenerate into flamewars with thousands of "answers" on Stackoverflow. If it's moved to a Stackexchange with less traffic, go hang out there and make it a better place.
Ah, the slippery slope argument. "If WE aren't tight on the rules, the site will quickly degernate into a useless mess." Where have I heard that before? On Wikipedia. It vastly overstates the job of those that delete stuff. They aren't the ones creating a great site. Those that ask and answer questions are.
My experience with online communities tells me that the slippery slope in this case is very real. When new and immature folks generate content with back and forth among themselves(voting each others' comments up), the old timers simply pack up and leave since the site doesn't interest them anymore. Happened to Reddit right before my eyes.
So why not use programmers.stackexchange.com for such discussions? The more people use it, the more active it gets. Stackoverflow has already made their opinion clear on this.
