10 ms·

The War of the Closes

90 points by UweSchmidt 13y ago

1. “On hold” will replace “closed” on newly closed posts 2. New close reasons are nicer and clearer 3. Questions edited by the original poster automatically go to the re-open queue

archon 13y ago
> All dupes now must point to an answered question, and the new language focuses on getting you answers This one is the most useful, I think. I've stumbled across closed-for-duplication answers before via google searches and found myself wondering what the question duplicated.
- cruise02 13y ago
  Answers are never closed as duplicates. Only questions are closed as duplicates of other questions that ask the same thing. The change is that now the original question should have an answer.
sergiotapia 13y ago
I'm still kind of pissed off that useful questions are closed on Stackoverflow because it doesn't 'fit the Q&A style of the site.' http://i.imgur.com/VcqqSN9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VcqqSN9.jpg You see questions with 400 upvotes closed by some user who has been on the site for 6 months and is autistic about earning internet points.
- Afforess 13y ago
  I wish those questions would be moved to the relevant StackExchange site. Often times it's just a case of misplaced question, where it might fit better in superuser or it. It should be moved in those cases.
  - loumf 13y ago
    This is a feature of the closing process on StackOverflow -- don't use the other SE sites as much. You pick "off-topic" and is asks if it would be "on-topic" somewhere else and offers some suggestions.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    For that matter, a question could be connected to multiple SE sites.
  - cruise02 13y ago
    Stack Overflow has had problems in the past where unclear or otherwise low-quality questions get migrated to sites where they don't really belong. If a question is clear and you know for sure where it belongs, you can flag it for a moderator to migrate.
- klapinat0r 13y ago
  There have been numerous of such stackoverflow posts submitted here, so one might argue: there's a void. Would be wonderful to see a complementary service to stackexchange's (with the HN community that might be a possible venture? ;)), but in most of the cases I can recall, Quora is just that. Quora has the same "noise" problems as stackoverflow, what with "which ipod is best? lol", but for genuinely interesting questions, meta or opinionbased, Quora is the place I most often see that.
- insteadof 13y ago
  If it doesn't fit what the site is structured for, why should it stick around? Aren't there plenty of other sites that can host it? Or is Stack Overflow the only place to host code snips? Do you have any example 400+ upvoted questions you can point to that aren't of the type "everybody bring out all the snippets you've been saving, this time we're putting on a show"?
  - sergiotapia 13y ago
    It's not about hosting code snips or even nice Markdown css styling. It's about have your question reach the most amount of knowledgable people. Stackoverflow is the best place for that, regardless of their [stupid] closing policies.
    - mhaymo 13y ago
      But the attention of the community is still finite. It's hard enough to get a moderately difficult question answered already, without opening the floodgates to lower-quality, easier-answered material. Opinion-based questions can be asked in reddit or something, where the time would not otherwise be more usefully spent.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    If it doesn't fit what the site is structured for It's not complicated: questions and answers. This is common in sitebuilding though: "so unique we are." Well, at the end of the day it's just posts and comments, so quit milkin' it. A question that receives answers fits, I don't know how you could say otherwise. However, this is all just a nice example of NIH Syndrome on SO's part, since these are lessons that have been learned by anybody who's hung out in a large IRC channel with kick/ban bots and arrogant ops, as well as being practiced on a web level for over 10 years by the likes of Metafilter. It also reads to me like they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the community part without the humanity, since people's irrelevancies in questions fall into more than the 6 (or however many) preset reasons for closure. This may be an incontrovertible attribute of SO: their "model" (as criticized above) does not allow for the community, "topical identity" if you will, they are seeking to impose themselves,.
- soundgecko 13y ago
  I sincerely wish there were better ways of expressing ideas than memegenerated images that seems to be infecting almost every forum I read. Take a look at http://reddit.com/r/gaming http://reddit.com/r/gaming All the posts are image macros or comics. One might think that only images were allowed there, but memes seem to be honey to garner upvotes and have killed all other content on that particular subreddit.
  - isleyaardvark 13y ago
    That's going to happen on any popular subreddit that allows memes. This comment explains how it happens: http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/o1zjo/ban_memes_in_rpsychonaut/c3drsz4?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/o1zjo/ban_memes_...
    - counterpointer 13y ago
      That comment appears to be highly insightful and very relevant to the topic being discussed here. Low effort content eventually displaces high effort content in high traffic websites. I have seen this in every community I have been part of, I have spent the last 10 years on Slashdot, 7 years on Reddit and 4 years on HN and that comment is spot on. I can only pray that SO doesn't fall victim to it too and I support the admins in restricting content as long as it is subject to oversight and is not overdone.
- tnorthcutt 13y ago
  is autistic about earning internet points You may not realize it, but language like this is not only grammatically incorrect (you can't be autistic about something), but could be pretty offensive to people who are either autistic or have a friend or family member who is. Why use a neural development disorder as a derogatory term?
  - wtbob 13y ago
    > Why use a neural development disorder as a derogatory term? Because it's derogatory to accuse someone of disordered neural development.
  - sergiotapia 13y ago
    Then those people can be offended, it's their right, no? I have a cousin who is retarded but I don't wince every time someone says or writes the word. I didn't say autistic as an insult to those people but as a way to colorfully describe behaviour that is typical of people with autism.
dmschulman 13y ago
So will StackOverflow reinstate my account which was banned after asking 1 question? I love the fact that such a service exists but their moderation policies are (were?) not the least bit friendly
- gortok 13y ago
  I'm a moderator on Stack Overflow ( http://stackoverflow.com/users/16587 http://stackoverflow.com/users/16587 ). If you can post on Meta ( http://meta.stackoverflow.com http://meta.stackoverflow.com ), we can take a look and let you know why you're question banned. However, I can tell you from experience that no one is post banned after one question (also, you can't see your deleted questions on your profile, which may lead you to believe you've only had one post).
  - smackfu 13y ago
    I know you have good intentions, but consider that your response reads as: "I can help you. However, you are lying or incorrect."
    - gortok 13y ago
      I never claimed the OP lied; nor would I even try to imply it. I've long had issues with the policy that users can't see their own deleted questions ( http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2645/show-all-of-my-question-answers-to-me-even-if-they-are-deleted http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2645/show-all-of-my-... ), and I brought that up to say that I can understand if there's confusion there. No one is ever post banned for one post (it's a system imposed ban that takes into account a number of things: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-... ). It's our fault (moderators and members of the Stack Overflow community) if there isn't clear enough feedback regarding that cycle. That was my intention. I'm sorry. I'll try to communicate more clearly on this topic in the future.
      - 13y ago
jere 13y ago
Are you notified when your questions are closed? I had a question about about alternatives to Amazon's Product Advertising API that was there for a long time. I felt like it was fairly useful to people. It had 20+ upvotes and a dozen favorites. Then one day it disappeared without warning and leaving no trace it ever existed.
- loumf 13y ago
  I had a question closed on Cooking and was notified. There's a notification area to check (usually gives some signal in the upper-left to look).
smackfu 13y ago
Off-topic closes were definitely unfriendly before. It would show all five or six users who had voted to close, which felt excessive and like being ganged up on, and just had a generic message "Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming or software development within the scope defined in the FAQ." Where that FAQ link is to the whole FAQ, which had dozens of questions. I hope the new approach helps, but strict arbitrary off-topic lines are still going to come across as hostile, IMHO. Especially when there is no StackExchange site that the question is on-topic for.
- cruise02 13y ago
  You left out half the message. > Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming or software development within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here. The second part links to a section of the FAQ (now the Help Center) that explains why questions are closed. http://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions http://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions The off-topic bullet links to a detailed section on what kinds of questions you can and cannot ask. http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic
  - smackfu 13y ago
    It's tough because I think those bullets in the last link are way too fuzzy to actually be useful guidelines to someone who isn't already very familiar with the all the sites.
SeanDav 13y ago
The changes are a step in the right direction, however I see no mention of the situation where questions with many upvotes are closed. I find it incredibly arrogant that a mod can come close a topic that has many upvotes. It is basically saying to the community that all their opinions count for nothing, which is pretty disrespectful to a community that prides itself (rightly so) on its high number of domain experts. The other truly irritating thing about SO/SE is their propensity for closing opinion based questions. I am sure that I am not the only one that finds domain experts arguing about for example, the merits of 1 library over another, or language A over Language B, rather useful (I often use their answers as a basis for further research to see if I agree or can find supporting evidence). Allow the community to vote up the opinion based answers they like and downvote the trolling/flaming answers.
- rhizome 13y ago
  One of the changes they describe is about reformulating questions to better fit their "model." I didn't see any indication that people would be getting any indication or explanation of what their "model" is, but it's pretty much just another "closed...FU."
  - cruise02 13y ago
    The explanation of what the "model" is has always been there, linked in the close reason.
- jaydles 13y ago
  DISCLOSURE: I wrote that blog post, I work for SE, I AM biased. Thanks for the general support. You raise two concerns, though: 1. Upvotes - this is tricky. The problem with never allowing questions with lots of upvotes to be closed is twofold: - Sometimes, what's allowed changes over time. Communities start out allowing almost anything "What's a good snack to help programmers stay awake?", but eventually decide that they need to limit things to a narrower focus. If communities who do that can't close those questions, they'll attract more like them. - Some popular things are way off base to start with. You might be able to attract a ton of upvotes for an xkcd post, but you really wouldn't wan't the site full of them just because they're broadly loved. 2. opinion based questions - the changes are designed to help a little with what you're worried about: "primarily opinion based" now explicitly acknowledges that many good answers incorporate some expert opinion. But you still want some limit, no? "Which is better, Ruby or PHP?" isn't good for anybody, and the new reasons are designed to make it clearer that some opinion is ok, if it comes from expert experience or can be supported by facts, references, etc. Where that line belongs is for each community to decide.
likeclockwork 13y ago
What do they mean by 'programming questions you'd solve on a whiteboard'? Theoretical questions/design questions or..? I'm confused.
- cruise02 13y ago
  Programmers is more for design questions. There's a detailed list of guidelines on the Help Center. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic There's also a Computer Science site for more theoretical questions (http://cs.stackexchange.com/ http://cs.stackexchange.com/), and Theoretical Computer Science for research-level CS questions (http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/ http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/).
Goladus 13y ago
Nearly all of the cases where I've found myself annoyed at someone closing a question are the "off-topic" variety. Most commonly, they are questions asked, answered, upvoted, and google-indexed on StackOverflow and then closed because some mod decided it wasn't programmy enough and should have been asked at ServerFault. Due to the large overlap between programming and system administration, the same question asked at both SO and SF may generate different but equally useful responses tailored to their own communities. It's far too easy for an over-zealous moderator to fail to consider this and close out a question for no good reason. I'll be interested to see if the new "close reasons" will actually improve this problem. My guess is that it won't and there will still be overly draconian closures of edge-case topics that are relevant to multiple communities.
- cruise02 13y ago
  Can you share some links to those questions that were wrongly closed? As a general policy, questions that are on topic on Stack Overflow shouldn't be closed just because they might also be on topic on another site. We're aware of the overlap, and we're supposed to allow for it.
  - Goladus 13y ago
    This is the most recent question I was thinking of: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62222/centos-or-debian-as-a-server-os http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62222/centos-or-debian-as... But looking through my history, I was slightly incorrect-- at least one was closed as "not constructive" rather than "off-topic." (I remembered incorrectly because it's true the question is not about programming specifically) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630506/benefits-of-ebs-vs-instance-store-and-vice-versa http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630506/benefits-of-ebs-v... The question resulted in answers based on facts and expertise that I found extremely helpful. It was almost exactly what I was looking for when I put the search into google. The question got 161 upvotes and the best answer got 150. The most upvoted answer included 6 factual statements, 1 assertive opinion, and 1 testimonial. Here's an example of a question closed as off-topic from serverfault. I honestly have no idea why, or where such a question should be asked: http://serverfault.com/questions/5111/how-to-test-real-network-throughput-between-two-points http://serverfault.com/questions/5111/how-to-test-real-netwo... Once again, I found it on a google search and the first answer had exactly what I was looking for. Minutes later I had downloaded iperf and had used it to run the tests I wanted to run. Yet the question is locked with a disclaimer about how it's only preserved for legacy reasons and it's not on-topic for the site. To be clear, I don't have a strong preference for where these questions get asked and answered so long as the answers are high-quality and an itinerant surfer like me can find them and active+fruitful discussions don't get permanently squashed because the question caused a red-flag in some moderators pruning algorithm.
trotsky 13y ago
If you need that much detail to explain some of the new answers to current users, why such a focus on brevity when the actual ( responses || closes ) are generated? Also in the news today is the NSA FOIA response in which they took one bureaucratic statement "DENIED - CLASSIFIED" and softened it considerably by including a bunch of explanation in the response itself.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
StuieK 13y ago
For those who find the closed subjective questions useful, we are trying to build a home for them at slant.co, would love to hear any feedback.
- cruise02 13y ago
  Stack Overflow moderator here. I love Slant for so many reasons! I'm glad there's a place where people can ask subjective questions. It sucked when people used to ask where they could ask their question and we basically had to respond "not here, try reddit." I also think the design of Slant reinforces the argument that Stack Overflow just isn't built for that kind of question. Well done!
  - StuieK 13y ago
    Thanks mate :)
joelthelion 13y ago
Unfortunately they still haven't understood that "primarily opinion based" questions are valid, very useful and a perfect fit for Stack Overflow.
- grimtrigger 13y ago
  Also, completely impossible to follow. If I ask a question and there's only one answer: then its not opinion based. If there's two possible answers: then the question is opinion based. Of course, I don't know if it has one answer or two answers. That's why I asked the question!
- jackmaney 13y ago
  They are not. Take a look at: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/
  - joelthelion 13y ago
    Straw man. Some "primarily opinion based" questions are bad, that doesn't mean that they all are. As long as they are precise, they can be useful. Of course, they should be handled properly. They should be tagged as such, and managed differently from the other questions. For example, they could expire after a while, at least if they are not renewed.
    - jackmaney 13y ago
      Primarily opinion-based questions aren't necessarily bad. They just aren't a fit in Stack Overflow. If you wish to create your own Q&A site based upon primarily opinion-based questions, please feel free.
simonsarris 13y ago
"All dupes now must point to an answered question" is a good new rule. But you know what would be a better rule? Questions with over 50 upvotes cannot be closed as "irrelevant" unless they are moved to a different StackExchange site.
- nine_k 13y ago
  No. The question might be a good text, but a poor question, and a bad flamebait. SO is not a general discussion site. Closed questions are not deleted, still appear in search results, and sometimes are helpful at that role.
antman 13y ago
There goes my foolproof method of finding computing answers on Google: questionhere "closed as not constructive"
dionidium 13y ago
These are good changes, but if they insist on closing perfectly valid opinion-based questions, then the text should emphasize that that's their problem, not mine. I didn't do anything wrong. They're the ones making a mistake.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This comes up now and again on HN. Essentially, StackOverflow is a great site. It's premise was a free, frictionless, focused Q&A site and it was made possible by the wide audiences of Atwood and Spolsky. Atwood focused more on something that went between obscene OCD and just dogma. I think what wasn't realized after the beginning of SO was that SO became a success despite Atwood's ideology, not because of it. I think Joel realized it, just based on the podcasts, but since Atwood was doing most of the work, "whatever." The big problem came in with the ideology becoming enmeshed with the culture and the high council of Meta being sort of a sycophantic keeper of the faith. Basically, any question or answer or anything that might, some day, remotely look like a "discussion" (gasp) on SO is rigidly stamped out by the religious police. You could say this is hyperbole, but just use it for awhile. Heck, google any technical question and probably SO will be the first hit but that question will be marked "Closed, not conforming to the ideology of Atwood" or something like that to the point of being comical. It's even more farcical when you consider the abject snobbery SO has toward the "other Q&A sites." That has been there from the beginning, and to be sure many of the criticism of those sites are well deserved. But, SO has deeper problems, in some ways, particularly with the zealotry, but it is masked by the fact that there are so many technical people still on SO or, even if many have left, they have gathered such a large corpus that they will remain the big kid on the block. But at least they are trying to address it, if only at a surface level.
autoreverse 13y ago
Would it be an improvement if unanswered questions (or ones with no replies) were hidden from Google? I find it pretty frustrating when searching a topic and SO's unanswered or closed questions are at top the of SERPs.
- Shog9 13y ago
  We do try to remove unanswered questions after a while, though in the meantime it's important that they're able to be found - after all, someone out there might have an answer. We're stepping up efforts to remove closed unanswered questions more promptly though, since those won't be answered and just end up being noise in the search results. For details, see: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/enable-automat...

90 points by UweSchmidt 13y ago

1. “On hold” will replace “closed” on newly closed posts 2. New close reasons are nicer and clearer 3. Questions edited by the original poster automatically go to the re-open queue

archon 13y ago

> All dupes now must point to an answered question, and the new language focuses on getting you answers This one is the most useful, I think. I've stumbled across closed-for-duplication answers before via google searches and found myself wondering what the question duplicated.

cruise02 13y ago
Answers are never closed as duplicates. Only questions are closed as duplicates of other questions that ask the same thing. The change is that now the original question should have an answer.

sergiotapia 13y ago

I'm still kind of pissed off that useful questions are closed on Stackoverflow because it doesn't 'fit the Q&A style of the site.' http://i.imgur.com/VcqqSN9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VcqqSN9.jpg You see questions with 400 upvotes closed by some user who has been on the site for 6 months and is autistic about earning internet points.

Afforess 13y ago
I wish those questions would be moved to the relevant StackExchange site. Often times it's just a case of misplaced question, where it might fit better in superuser or it. It should be moved in those cases.
- loumf 13y ago
  This is a feature of the closing process on StackOverflow -- don't use the other SE sites as much. You pick "off-topic" and is asks if it would be "on-topic" somewhere else and offers some suggestions.
- rhizome 13y ago
  For that matter, a question could be connected to multiple SE sites.
- cruise02 13y ago
  Stack Overflow has had problems in the past where unclear or otherwise low-quality questions get migrated to sites where they don't really belong. If a question is clear and you know for sure where it belongs, you can flag it for a moderator to migrate.
klapinat0r 13y ago
There have been numerous of such stackoverflow posts submitted here, so one might argue: there's a void. Would be wonderful to see a complementary service to stackexchange's (with the HN community that might be a possible venture? ;)), but in most of the cases I can recall, Quora is just that. Quora has the same "noise" problems as stackoverflow, what with "which ipod is best? lol", but for genuinely interesting questions, meta or opinionbased, Quora is the place I most often see that.
insteadof 13y ago
If it doesn't fit what the site is structured for, why should it stick around? Aren't there plenty of other sites that can host it? Or is Stack Overflow the only place to host code snips? Do you have any example 400+ upvoted questions you can point to that aren't of the type "everybody bring out all the snippets you've been saving, this time we're putting on a show"?
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  It's not about hosting code snips or even nice Markdown css styling. It's about have your question reach the most amount of knowledgable people. Stackoverflow is the best place for that, regardless of their [stupid] closing policies.
  - mhaymo 13y ago
    But the attention of the community is still finite. It's hard enough to get a moderately difficult question answered already, without opening the floodgates to lower-quality, easier-answered material. Opinion-based questions can be asked in reddit or something, where the time would not otherwise be more usefully spent.
- rhizome 13y ago
  If it doesn't fit what the site is structured for It's not complicated: questions and answers. This is common in sitebuilding though: "so unique we are." Well, at the end of the day it's just posts and comments, so quit milkin' it. A question that receives answers fits, I don't know how you could say otherwise. However, this is all just a nice example of NIH Syndrome on SO's part, since these are lessons that have been learned by anybody who's hung out in a large IRC channel with kick/ban bots and arrogant ops, as well as being practiced on a web level for over 10 years by the likes of Metafilter. It also reads to me like they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the community part without the humanity, since people's irrelevancies in questions fall into more than the 6 (or however many) preset reasons for closure. This may be an incontrovertible attribute of SO: their "model" (as criticized above) does not allow for the community, "topical identity" if you will, they are seeking to impose themselves,.
soundgecko 13y ago
I sincerely wish there were better ways of expressing ideas than memegenerated images that seems to be infecting almost every forum I read. Take a look at http://reddit.com/r/gaming http://reddit.com/r/gaming All the posts are image macros or comics. One might think that only images were allowed there, but memes seem to be honey to garner upvotes and have killed all other content on that particular subreddit.
- isleyaardvark 13y ago
  That's going to happen on any popular subreddit that allows memes. This comment explains how it happens: http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/o1zjo/ban_memes_in_rpsychonaut/c3drsz4?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/o1zjo/ban_memes_...
  - counterpointer 13y ago
    That comment appears to be highly insightful and very relevant to the topic being discussed here. Low effort content eventually displaces high effort content in high traffic websites. I have seen this in every community I have been part of, I have spent the last 10 years on Slashdot, 7 years on Reddit and 4 years on HN and that comment is spot on. I can only pray that SO doesn't fall victim to it too and I support the admins in restricting content as long as it is subject to oversight and is not overdone.
tnorthcutt 13y ago
is autistic about earning internet points You may not realize it, but language like this is not only grammatically incorrect (you can't be autistic about something), but could be pretty offensive to people who are either autistic or have a friend or family member who is. Why use a neural development disorder as a derogatory term?
- wtbob 13y ago
  > Why use a neural development disorder as a derogatory term? Because it's derogatory to accuse someone of disordered neural development.
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  Then those people can be offended, it's their right, no? I have a cousin who is retarded but I don't wince every time someone says or writes the word. I didn't say autistic as an insult to those people but as a way to colorfully describe behaviour that is typical of people with autism.

dmschulman 13y ago

So will StackOverflow reinstate my account which was banned after asking 1 question? I love the fact that such a service exists but their moderation policies are (were?) not the least bit friendly

gortok 13y ago
I'm a moderator on Stack Overflow ( http://stackoverflow.com/users/16587 http://stackoverflow.com/users/16587 ). If you can post on Meta ( http://meta.stackoverflow.com http://meta.stackoverflow.com ), we can take a look and let you know why you're question banned. However, I can tell you from experience that no one is post banned after one question (also, you can't see your deleted questions on your profile, which may lead you to believe you've only had one post).
- smackfu 13y ago
  I know you have good intentions, but consider that your response reads as: "I can help you. However, you are lying or incorrect."
  - gortok 13y ago
    I never claimed the OP lied; nor would I even try to imply it. I've long had issues with the policy that users can't see their own deleted questions ( http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2645/show-all-of-my-question-answers-to-me-even-if-they-are-deleted http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2645/show-all-of-my-... ), and I brought that up to say that I can understand if there's confusion there. No one is ever post banned for one post (it's a system imposed ban that takes into account a number of things: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-... ). It's our fault (moderators and members of the Stack Overflow community) if there isn't clear enough feedback regarding that cycle. That was my intention. I'm sorry. I'll try to communicate more clearly on this topic in the future.
    - 13y ago

jere 13y ago

Are you notified when your questions are closed? I had a question about about alternatives to Amazon's Product Advertising API that was there for a long time. I felt like it was fairly useful to people. It had 20+ upvotes and a dozen favorites. Then one day it disappeared without warning and leaving no trace it ever existed.

loumf 13y ago
I had a question closed on Cooking and was notified. There's a notification area to check (usually gives some signal in the upper-left to look).

smackfu 13y ago

Off-topic closes were definitely unfriendly before. It would show all five or six users who had voted to close, which felt excessive and like being ganged up on, and just had a generic message "Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming or software development within the scope defined in the FAQ." Where that FAQ link is to the whole FAQ, which had dozens of questions. I hope the new approach helps, but strict arbitrary off-topic lines are still going to come across as hostile, IMHO. Especially when there is no StackExchange site that the question is on-topic for.

cruise02 13y ago
You left out half the message. > Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming or software development within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here. The second part links to a section of the FAQ (now the Help Center) that explains why questions are closed. http://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions http://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions The off-topic bullet links to a detailed section on what kinds of questions you can and cannot ask. http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic
- smackfu 13y ago
  It's tough because I think those bullets in the last link are way too fuzzy to actually be useful guidelines to someone who isn't already very familiar with the all the sites.

SeanDav 13y ago

The changes are a step in the right direction, however I see no mention of the situation where questions with many upvotes are closed. I find it incredibly arrogant that a mod can come close a topic that has many upvotes. It is basically saying to the community that all their opinions count for nothing, which is pretty disrespectful to a community that prides itself (rightly so) on its high number of domain experts. The other truly irritating thing about SO/SE is their propensity for closing opinion based questions. I am sure that I am not the only one that finds domain experts arguing about for example, the merits of 1 library over another, or language A over Language B, rather useful (I often use their answers as a basis for further research to see if I agree or can find supporting evidence). Allow the community to vote up the opinion based answers they like and downvote the trolling/flaming answers.

rhizome 13y ago
One of the changes they describe is about reformulating questions to better fit their "model." I didn't see any indication that people would be getting any indication or explanation of what their "model" is, but it's pretty much just another "closed...FU."
- cruise02 13y ago
  The explanation of what the "model" is has always been there, linked in the close reason.
jaydles 13y ago
DISCLOSURE: I wrote that blog post, I work for SE, I AM biased. Thanks for the general support. You raise two concerns, though: 1. Upvotes - this is tricky. The problem with never allowing questions with lots of upvotes to be closed is twofold: - Sometimes, what's allowed changes over time. Communities start out allowing almost anything "What's a good snack to help programmers stay awake?", but eventually decide that they need to limit things to a narrower focus. If communities who do that can't close those questions, they'll attract more like them. - Some popular things are way off base to start with. You might be able to attract a ton of upvotes for an xkcd post, but you really wouldn't wan't the site full of them just because they're broadly loved. 2. opinion based questions - the changes are designed to help a little with what you're worried about: "primarily opinion based" now explicitly acknowledges that many good answers incorporate some expert opinion. But you still want some limit, no? "Which is better, Ruby or PHP?" isn't good for anybody, and the new reasons are designed to make it clearer that some opinion is ok, if it comes from expert experience or can be supported by facts, references, etc. Where that line belongs is for each community to decide.

likeclockwork 13y ago

What do they mean by 'programming questions you'd solve on a whiteboard'? Theoretical questions/design questions or..? I'm confused.

cruise02 13y ago
Programmers is more for design questions. There's a detailed list of guidelines on the Help Center. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic There's also a Computer Science site for more theoretical questions (http://cs.stackexchange.com/ http://cs.stackexchange.com/), and Theoretical Computer Science for research-level CS questions (http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/ http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/).

Goladus 13y ago

Nearly all of the cases where I've found myself annoyed at someone closing a question are the "off-topic" variety. Most commonly, they are questions asked, answered, upvoted, and google-indexed on StackOverflow and then closed because some mod decided it wasn't programmy enough and should have been asked at ServerFault. Due to the large overlap between programming and system administration, the same question asked at both SO and SF may generate different but equally useful responses tailored to their own communities. It's far too easy for an over-zealous moderator to fail to consider this and close out a question for no good reason. I'll be interested to see if the new "close reasons" will actually improve this problem. My guess is that it won't and there will still be overly draconian closures of edge-case topics that are relevant to multiple communities.

cruise02 13y ago
Can you share some links to those questions that were wrongly closed? As a general policy, questions that are on topic on Stack Overflow shouldn't be closed just because they might also be on topic on another site. We're aware of the overlap, and we're supposed to allow for it.
- Goladus 13y ago
  This is the most recent question I was thinking of: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62222/centos-or-debian-as-a-server-os http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62222/centos-or-debian-as... But looking through my history, I was slightly incorrect-- at least one was closed as "not constructive" rather than "off-topic." (I remembered incorrectly because it's true the question is not about programming specifically) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630506/benefits-of-ebs-vs-instance-store-and-vice-versa http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630506/benefits-of-ebs-v... The question resulted in answers based on facts and expertise that I found extremely helpful. It was almost exactly what I was looking for when I put the search into google. The question got 161 upvotes and the best answer got 150. The most upvoted answer included 6 factual statements, 1 assertive opinion, and 1 testimonial. Here's an example of a question closed as off-topic from serverfault. I honestly have no idea why, or where such a question should be asked: http://serverfault.com/questions/5111/how-to-test-real-network-throughput-between-two-points http://serverfault.com/questions/5111/how-to-test-real-netwo... Once again, I found it on a google search and the first answer had exactly what I was looking for. Minutes later I had downloaded iperf and had used it to run the tests I wanted to run. Yet the question is locked with a disclaimer about how it's only preserved for legacy reasons and it's not on-topic for the site. To be clear, I don't have a strong preference for where these questions get asked and answered so long as the answers are high-quality and an itinerant surfer like me can find them and active+fruitful discussions don't get permanently squashed because the question caused a red-flag in some moderators pruning algorithm.

trotsky 13y ago

If you need that much detail to explain some of the new answers to current users, why such a focus on brevity when the actual ( responses || closes ) are generated? Also in the news today is the NSA FOIA response in which they took one bureaucratic statement "DENIED - CLASSIFIED" and softened it considerably by including a bunch of explanation in the response itself.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

StuieK 13y ago

For those who find the closed subjective questions useful, we are trying to build a home for them at slant.co, would love to hear any feedback.

cruise02 13y ago
Stack Overflow moderator here. I love Slant for so many reasons! I'm glad there's a place where people can ask subjective questions. It sucked when people used to ask where they could ask their question and we basically had to respond "not here, try reddit." I also think the design of Slant reinforces the argument that Stack Overflow just isn't built for that kind of question. Well done!
- StuieK 13y ago
  Thanks mate :)

joelthelion 13y ago

Unfortunately they still haven't understood that "primarily opinion based" questions are valid, very useful and a perfect fit for Stack Overflow.

grimtrigger 13y ago
Also, completely impossible to follow. If I ask a question and there's only one answer: then its not opinion based. If there's two possible answers: then the question is opinion based. Of course, I don't know if it has one answer or two answers. That's why I asked the question!
jackmaney 13y ago
They are not. Take a look at: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/
- joelthelion 13y ago
  Straw man. Some "primarily opinion based" questions are bad, that doesn't mean that they all are. As long as they are precise, they can be useful. Of course, they should be handled properly. They should be tagged as such, and managed differently from the other questions. For example, they could expire after a while, at least if they are not renewed.
  - jackmaney 13y ago
    Primarily opinion-based questions aren't necessarily bad. They just aren't a fit in Stack Overflow. If you wish to create your own Q&A site based upon primarily opinion-based questions, please feel free.

simonsarris 13y ago

"All dupes now must point to an answered question" is a good new rule. But you know what would be a better rule? Questions with over 50 upvotes cannot be closed as "irrelevant" unless they are moved to a different StackExchange site.

nine_k 13y ago
No. The question might be a good text, but a poor question, and a bad flamebait. SO is not a general discussion site. Closed questions are not deleted, still appear in search results, and sometimes are helpful at that role.

antman 13y ago

There goes my foolproof method of finding computing answers on Google: questionhere "closed as not constructive"

dionidium 13y ago

These are good changes, but if they insist on closing perfectly valid opinion-based questions, then the text should emphasize that that's their problem, not mine. I didn't do anything wrong. They're the ones making a mistake.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

This comes up now and again on HN. Essentially, StackOverflow is a great site. It's premise was a free, frictionless, focused Q&A site and it was made possible by the wide audiences of Atwood and Spolsky. Atwood focused more on something that went between obscene OCD and just dogma. I think what wasn't realized after the beginning of SO was that SO became a success despite Atwood's ideology, not because of it. I think Joel realized it, just based on the podcasts, but since Atwood was doing most of the work, "whatever." The big problem came in with the ideology becoming enmeshed with the culture and the high council of Meta being sort of a sycophantic keeper of the faith. Basically, any question or answer or anything that might, some day, remotely look like a "discussion" (gasp) on SO is rigidly stamped out by the religious police. You could say this is hyperbole, but just use it for awhile. Heck, google any technical question and probably SO will be the first hit but that question will be marked "Closed, not conforming to the ideology of Atwood" or something like that to the point of being comical. It's even more farcical when you consider the abject snobbery SO has toward the "other Q&A sites." That has been there from the beginning, and to be sure many of the criticism of those sites are well deserved. But, SO has deeper problems, in some ways, particularly with the zealotry, but it is masked by the fact that there are so many technical people still on SO or, even if many have left, they have gathered such a large corpus that they will remain the big kid on the block. But at least they are trying to address it, if only at a surface level.

autoreverse 13y ago

Would it be an improvement if unanswered questions (or ones with no replies) were hidden from Google? I find it pretty frustrating when searching a topic and SO's unanswered or closed questions are at top the of SERPs.

Shog9 13y ago
We do try to remove unanswered questions after a while, though in the meantime it's important that they're able to be found - after all, someone out there might have an answer. We're stepping up efforts to remove closed unanswered questions more promptly though, since those won't be answered and just end up being noise in the search results. For details, see: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/enable-automat...