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> I see lots of volunteers answering questions and only voting to close the bad ones and they are bad ones. Before answering questions in future give them a bi

by corobo 7y ago

> I see lots of volunteers answering questions and only voting to close the bad ones and they are bad ones. Before answering questions in future give them a bit of a Googling. Find the ones someone like yourself didnt spend time on, the ones that instantly got closed as off topic or duplicate or moderator was grumpy today so closed. I get it, wealth of free information and that, sure. But these are the top results in Google. The top results, not a /new queue where you’re hiding. The pages that someone having this problem will visit. From the visitor’s point of view, SO is a cesspool of power tripping mods who love to close questions. The solution? SO should noindex closed questions and add canonical links for duplicates. Simple enough, tell the damn search engines things are closed/redirected as well as the user. It would improve the end user experience infinitely to stop arriving on what they perceive as unnecessarily closed questions.

greggman2 7y ago
isn't that what a closed as duplicate question does ? it has a link to the answer. noindex doesn't help. we don't know how to word all questions so leaving the duplicate question indexable gives search more chances to connect a questioner with an existing answer
- corobo 7y ago
  In theory yes, in reality it just serves to surface the duplicates that aren’t duplicates of the question at all. In the absolute ideal these questions would be answered instead of closed as dupe but right now it just means following a trail of dupes and closures to maybe find the answer before giving up and going back to the search results. Instead of that, give the user the wrong answer straight away so they can just back up one to the search to continue digging
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > in reality it just serves to surface the duplicates that aren’t duplicates of the question at all. Or the questions that are duplicate questions, but with an answer five years out of date that will never get updated because new people interested in the topic don't have enough magic beans to actually do anything.

by corobo 7y ago

greggman2 7y ago

isn't that what a closed as duplicate question does ? it has a link to the answer. noindex doesn't help. we don't know how to word all questions so leaving the duplicate question indexable gives search more chances to connect a questioner with an existing answer

corobo 7y ago
In theory yes, in reality it just serves to surface the duplicates that aren’t duplicates of the question at all. In the absolute ideal these questions would be answered instead of closed as dupe but right now it just means following a trail of dupes and closures to maybe find the answer before giving up and going back to the search results. Instead of that, give the user the wrong answer straight away so they can just back up one to the search to continue digging
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > in reality it just serves to surface the duplicates that aren’t duplicates of the question at all. Or the questions that are duplicate questions, but with an answer five years out of date that will never get updated because new people interested in the topic don't have enough magic beans to actually do anything.