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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 o
by 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 agoYou 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 agoIt'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.