33 ms·

Can you provide examples of some of those questions? Usually when I encounter that, it's been closed as a duplicate with a link to the original.

by cheald 12y ago

arfliw 12y ago
Going to be hard to reproduce that bug since they are totally random long tail questions, but I have it happen a lot too FWIW.
- orbitur 12y ago
  My experience with StackOverflow is that the long-tail questions are still open 2 years later, but lacking any answers.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Moreover, you'll stumble across them as you search for your own answers.
gdw2 12y ago
When searching for the best tool for the job, I often get pointed to SE and the questions are closed as "not constructive". I seem to recall, however, that they opened a separate site for such discussions?
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  "Best tool for the job" doesn't sound like something that should be on SO. Far too subjective and likely to result in stupid opinionated arguments that go nowhere.
  - SoftwareMaven 12y ago
    Except those are the hard questions in software engineering. "How do I draw a triangle with OpenGL?" is an RTFM question. "How do I decide between R and Python?[1]" is a much more challenging, but much more important, question. I've said it before: SO is useful for the first 5 years of a software engineer's life. After that, it's occasionally useful when you need to pick up a new technology. The questions that are hard, for real senior software engineers, are rarely found on SE sites. Programmers.SE was supposed to fix it, but it hasn't worked, because of the same moderation. This is a moderation problem, but the solution chosen was the easy solution: just don't allow hard questions because hard questions beget arguments. Instead, requiring people to have civil discourse, perhaps even requiring that people show they can have civil discourse before allowing them to participate, is much, much more difficult. I'm not sure SE could survive the second type of moderation. But by not having it, it certainly makes it usefulness to somebody like me, with many years of experience learning and using various technologies, near zero. 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181342/r-vs-python-for-data-analysis http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181342/r-vs-p... [closed as off topic]
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      >> "SO is useful for the first 5 years of a software engineer's life. After that, it's occasionally useful when you need to pick up a new technology." That's what I find in my use and I don't think that's a problem. I think the harder to answer questions should be on their own Stack Exchange system. Moderation on that system would have different rules. I think if you keep it separate the second type of moderation you describe could work, however mixing the two types of moderation with Stack Overflow would lead to more problems imo.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    So instead people just pick whichever thing is first on Google. Is that better?
- nhzmju 12y ago
  best tool for the job is off topic on Stack Overflow. They did open Software Recommendations Stack Exchange. Closed answers get deleted in some regular interval. If they for some weird reason aren't, you could consider flagging them, there is always a response to that.
  - redler 12y ago
    Next up: "I'm frustrated because my question on Software Recommendations SE was closed for being 'constructive' and 'a real question'".
jgh 12y ago
This is an example I ran into recently: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317075/read-anonymous-json-in-xcode http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317075/read-anonymous-j... Although the question was framed badly it could have simply been edited to be more clear about what it was asking and what the answers are answering. It was helpful to me and I'm sure it's been helpful to others as well.
- Shog9 12y ago
  So, edit it then! Even if you don't have an account, there'll be an "improve this question" link right below the question that'll let anyone submit improvements. They'll be reviewed, and, if approved, will immediately submit the question itself to a "reopen review" - if the edits are able to resolve whatever problems existed, it doesn't have to stay closed. It's easy to assume that every reader is able to look past a poorly-written, half-implicit question and suss out the underlying need - but that's not the case. If you're able to understand a question and it's clear that others are not, don't hesitate to share your insights - they can make the difference between a question being downvoted and deleted and one that goes on to help many others.
dale-cooper 12y ago
Very often when searching (with google) for subjective things you'll find a closed stackoverflow link high up in the results. I know stackoverflow isn't appropiate for those questions but i still keep going to those results. I understand their position, it's just annoying. This is an example of something i found today: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-rich-text-editor-that-is-simple http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-ric...
Amezarak 12y ago
Sometimes that's just as bad. Often the questions I see that are closed as "duplicates" are not actually duplicates, just closely related. The answer to one is not always the answer to another. I don't have an SO example on hand, but consider this Sci-Fi StackExchange question: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/79363/why-was-the-ring-necessary-for-sauron-to-control-middle-earth/ http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/79363/why-was-the-r... The question is "Why does Sauron need the Ring to control Middle-Earth?" The correct answer is that he doesn't; he can control Middle-Earth without it, his victory is inevitable, but needs it to remove the only possible method his enemies have of overcoming him. After being correctly answered, the question was flagged as a duplicate of "What was the point of Sauron making the One Ring?" which is a very different question and comes with different answers. This is, in my experience, extremely common across the StackExchange network. In that example, the "duplicate" question was answered before being closed, but that's not always the case.
gildas 12y ago
Post a technical question about how to make your single page application crawlable, if it includes the word "SEO", there are great chances it will be closed. Some examples: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21044302/make-ajax-loaded-content-crawlable-by-google http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21044302/make-ajax-loaded... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26298780/how-to-make-ajax-content-indexed-by-google http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26298780/how-to-make-ajax... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14887710/ajax-deep-linking-and-google-indexing-seo-is-it-a-bad-idea http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14887710/ajax-deep-linkin... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21785074/seo-with-single-page-website http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21785074/seo-with-single-... The comment to justify why the question is closed is always the same: "This question appears to be off-topic because it is about SEO".
- Shog9 12y ago
  Questions that imply you're looking for better ways to spam also tend to fair poorly; can't imagine why. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3905734/how-to-send-100-000-emails-weekly http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3905734/how-to-send-100-0... FWIW, legit SEO questions do have a home on SE: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo
  - gildas 12y ago
    > Questions that imply you're looking for better ways to spam also tend to fair poorly; can't imagine why. I do not follow you. > FWIW, legit SEO questions do have a home on SE: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo I know that Webmasters SE is supposedly the right place to ask questions about crawling issues and Ajax, but in fact you will find more questions on SO (see links below) because this is mainly related to technical issues with JavaScript. 234 questions tagged http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newest&pageSize=50 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newe... 74 questions tagged http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newest&pageSize=15 http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo+aja...
- 12y ago

Can you provide examples of some of those questions? Usually when I encounter that, it's been closed as a duplicate with a link to the original.

by cheald 12y ago

Can you provide examples of some of those questions? Usually when I encounter that, it's been closed as a duplicate with a link to the original.

arfliw 12y ago

Going to be hard to reproduce that bug since they are totally random long tail questions, but I have it happen a lot too FWIW.

orbitur 12y ago
My experience with StackOverflow is that the long-tail questions are still open 2 years later, but lacking any answers.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Moreover, you'll stumble across them as you search for your own answers.

gdw2 12y ago

When searching for the best tool for the job, I often get pointed to SE and the questions are closed as "not constructive". I seem to recall, however, that they opened a separate site for such discussions?

k-mcgrady 12y ago
"Best tool for the job" doesn't sound like something that should be on SO. Far too subjective and likely to result in stupid opinionated arguments that go nowhere.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  Except those are the hard questions in software engineering. "How do I draw a triangle with OpenGL?" is an RTFM question. "How do I decide between R and Python?[1]" is a much more challenging, but much more important, question. I've said it before: SO is useful for the first 5 years of a software engineer's life. After that, it's occasionally useful when you need to pick up a new technology. The questions that are hard, for real senior software engineers, are rarely found on SE sites. Programmers.SE was supposed to fix it, but it hasn't worked, because of the same moderation. This is a moderation problem, but the solution chosen was the easy solution: just don't allow hard questions because hard questions beget arguments. Instead, requiring people to have civil discourse, perhaps even requiring that people show they can have civil discourse before allowing them to participate, is much, much more difficult. I'm not sure SE could survive the second type of moderation. But by not having it, it certainly makes it usefulness to somebody like me, with many years of experience learning and using various technologies, near zero. 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181342/r-vs-python-for-data-analysis http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181342/r-vs-p... [closed as off topic]
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "SO is useful for the first 5 years of a software engineer's life. After that, it's occasionally useful when you need to pick up a new technology." That's what I find in my use and I don't think that's a problem. I think the harder to answer questions should be on their own Stack Exchange system. Moderation on that system would have different rules. I think if you keep it separate the second type of moderation you describe could work, however mixing the two types of moderation with Stack Overflow would lead to more problems imo.
- smackfu 12y ago
  So instead people just pick whichever thing is first on Google. Is that better?
nhzmju 12y ago
best tool for the job is off topic on Stack Overflow. They did open Software Recommendations Stack Exchange. Closed answers get deleted in some regular interval. If they for some weird reason aren't, you could consider flagging them, there is always a response to that.
- redler 12y ago
  Next up: "I'm frustrated because my question on Software Recommendations SE was closed for being 'constructive' and 'a real question'".

jgh 12y ago

This is an example I ran into recently: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317075/read-anonymous-json-in-xcode http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317075/read-anonymous-j... Although the question was framed badly it could have simply been edited to be more clear about what it was asking and what the answers are answering. It was helpful to me and I'm sure it's been helpful to others as well.

Shog9 12y ago
So, edit it then! Even if you don't have an account, there'll be an "improve this question" link right below the question that'll let anyone submit improvements. They'll be reviewed, and, if approved, will immediately submit the question itself to a "reopen review" - if the edits are able to resolve whatever problems existed, it doesn't have to stay closed. It's easy to assume that every reader is able to look past a poorly-written, half-implicit question and suss out the underlying need - but that's not the case. If you're able to understand a question and it's clear that others are not, don't hesitate to share your insights - they can make the difference between a question being downvoted and deleted and one that goes on to help many others.

dale-cooper 12y ago

Very often when searching (with google) for subjective things you'll find a closed stackoverflow link high up in the results. I know stackoverflow isn't appropiate for those questions but i still keep going to those results. I understand their position, it's just annoying. This is an example of something i found today: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-rich-text-editor-that-is-simple http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-ric...

Amezarak 12y ago

Sometimes that's just as bad. Often the questions I see that are closed as "duplicates" are not actually duplicates, just closely related. The answer to one is not always the answer to another. I don't have an SO example on hand, but consider this Sci-Fi StackExchange question: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/79363/why-was-the-ring-necessary-for-sauron-to-control-middle-earth/ http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/79363/why-was-the-r... The question is "Why does Sauron need the Ring to control Middle-Earth?" The correct answer is that he doesn't; he can control Middle-Earth without it, his victory is inevitable, but needs it to remove the only possible method his enemies have of overcoming him. After being correctly answered, the question was flagged as a duplicate of "What was the point of Sauron making the One Ring?" which is a very different question and comes with different answers. This is, in my experience, extremely common across the StackExchange network. In that example, the "duplicate" question was answered before being closed, but that's not always the case.

gildas 12y ago

Post a technical question about how to make your single page application crawlable, if it includes the word "SEO", there are great chances it will be closed. Some examples: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21044302/make-ajax-loaded-content-crawlable-by-google http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21044302/make-ajax-loaded... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26298780/how-to-make-ajax-content-indexed-by-google http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26298780/how-to-make-ajax... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14887710/ajax-deep-linking-and-google-indexing-seo-is-it-a-bad-idea http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14887710/ajax-deep-linkin... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21785074/seo-with-single-page-website http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21785074/seo-with-single-... The comment to justify why the question is closed is always the same: "This question appears to be off-topic because it is about SEO".

Shog9 12y ago
Questions that imply you're looking for better ways to spam also tend to fair poorly; can't imagine why. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3905734/how-to-send-100-000-emails-weekly http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3905734/how-to-send-100-0... FWIW, legit SEO questions do have a home on SE: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo
- gildas 12y ago
  > Questions that imply you're looking for better ways to spam also tend to fair poorly; can't imagine why. I do not follow you. > FWIW, legit SEO questions do have a home on SE: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo I know that Webmasters SE is supposedly the right place to ask questions about crawling issues and Ajax, but in fact you will find more questions on SO (see links below) because this is mainly related to technical issues with JavaScript. 234 questions tagged http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newest&pageSize=50 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newe... 74 questions tagged http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo+ajax?sort=newest&pageSize=15 http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/seo+aja...
12y ago