<p>I don't think that questions that are strictly nuts-and-bolts software operation belong here.  As I've ranted about before, that's how things are done on the GIS StackExchange, and I think it's very detrimental - the vast majority of questions are technical questions that would be better answered by asking on StackOverflow, RTFM, checking with the software company, etc.  It's correspondingly very difficult to find questions that actually address interesting conceptual challenges.  Bluntly put, it's boring.</p>

<p>To the argument that there are plenty of R questions of a similar flavor, I suggest that many of those questions should also be booted over to StackOverflow (including the one Srikant mentions, and <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2271/how-to-plot-a-violin-scatter-boxplot-in-r">this recent one about plotting</a>).  We certainly have to address statistical software if we're going to talk about statistical analysis, but in order to attract and retain expert users, we need to have questions that expert users are going to be interested in <strong>on the front page</strong>.  If it's 20 questions about how to read data into Software X to one question about actual analysis, they aren't going to stick around.  And if those who do stick around have to resort to using tags to sort through the data import questions, I suspect that we'll get many fewer eyes on each question as people select out only those questions that they "know" will be of interest.</p>

<p>Conversely, the StackOverflow R community has a wealth of questions that have already been answered, and a stable body of experts who frequently answer questions <em>within minutes</em>.  The same isn't true of SAS, but SAS questions do get answered there and there are plenty of other community resources for SAS, STATA, etc. (and, as any programmer can tell you, community is also a feature).</p>
