Timeline for answer to Off topic questions have to be cleared out of the way, but NOT via closure by Robert Harvey
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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32 events
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| May 23, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 9:34 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/
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| Mar 3, 2016 at 16:13 | comment | added | TylerH | @RyanO'Hara Largely, yeah. Just give us back the "Too Localized" and "Lacks Minimal Understanding" close reasons. | |
| Aug 28, 2015 at 23:17 | comment | added | Charles Duffy |
One issue with subjecting issues to the hoi poi before they get to high-rep users: The hoi-poi are often wrong. I can't tell you how many upvoted/accepted answers I see telling people to use eval (without any precautions to make it secure) in the bash tag when there are shell-native features that make it unnecessary...
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| Mar 26, 2015 at 15:16 | comment | added | Segmented | Admitting this to be a problem is not an answer in itself. Solutions and a plan might be nice... | |
| Jun 6, 2014 at 13:08 | comment | added | Ben Aaronson | For myself, I would be very hesitant to ask any questions as broad even as, say, this: stackoverflow.com/questions/21531135/… because I would expect them to be downvoted or closevoted for "too broad" or "opinion based". I'm not quite sure what happened with that one, I think there was possibly an orgnaized effort to make it a canonical question. | |
| Apr 23, 2014 at 21:34 | history | migrated | from meta.stackexchange.com (revisions) | ||
| Nov 8, 2013 at 20:55 | comment | added | Dan Lugg | "y'know, you really ought to show some self-initiative and read a book or two first before coming here" -- as a participant in the PHP tag, I can say this has become a mantra. | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 11:29 | comment | added | user221081 | yea exactly people bypassing the rules we created. one day i hired someone to do a job and told them specifically im paying £500 to get it done but I think it shouldnt take longer than 8 hours. The guy took his time (big time) and the job took him 12+ hours where he comes back to me saying oh you said you paying £500 for 8 hours, so how much are you going to pay for 12 now? i was like wtf? and this is exactly what happens here but in a different context. Give them a finger and they will bite your whole hand off. We change the site to be a better fit for newbies but then we can't handle it | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 11:19 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @mehow yeah, I take it as a key point of the whole answer (and, in a way, of my question too). Free online troubleshooting tool. I've seen many comments like "I am asking for help which is a purpose of this site - so, don't tell me my question is offtopic" | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 10:40 | comment | added | user221081 |
We're pushing the entire site towards being a troubleshooting tool, not a knowledge repository. that's a +1. this reversed should be a welcome message for a new user!
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| Sep 26, 2013 at 9:49 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | It certainly corrupts people when they can get a lot of rep answering knowingly offtopic question. | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 9:46 | comment | added | Your Common Sense |
@Servy honestly, I were thinking of a mere tag, something like [another-pair-of-eyes] - a tag to legitimize too localized questions. But reading your and Robert's comments I become not so sure I want it anymore - indeed it can make the avalanche even stronger. Well, there should be a push from another side - a penalty for answering a non-welcome questions. Too greedy to answer a deliberately too localized one? Lose all the rep you snatched from the answer and get -10 on top of it if question gets closed. Not sure if works though. At least it worth to give it try.
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| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:52 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @Servy no. I mean they have no choice either way. And, looking at questions like this one, I doubt the OP would care at all. They need an answer, not the answerer's regalia | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:43 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | Hehe I were writing my confession before seeing recent comments :) | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:43 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | Fifty-fifty. "How to store an array in database" often gets more "json" than "separate table" answers. Yet for the silly typos it's all right. But what I want to say: with the current system these "blind leading the blind" answers gets unnoticed anyway - as the flow is too fast. A bit offtopic, but I want to confess - am afraid of getting to PHP tag. It makes me uneasy and frustrated in a second and make me mean and cynical over the brim. So, for a long time I dwell in several second-rate tags only. Back to the topic: it's indeed important question. But situation already bad enough to care of. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:35 | comment | added | Robert Harvey Mod | The PHP tag is in desperate need of experts who can show people the right way of doing things. The Internet is already flooded with posts explaining the wrong ways to do it. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:31 | comment | added | Servy | @YourCommonSense So if, when asking a question, you were given an option to have your question answered by real experts or just enthusiasts how many people do you think would choose experts? My guess is almost all, or at least enough to make it an entirely unhelpful thing to ask. Also, it seems your experiences are specific to PHP. Many other tags have a dramatically higher ratio of professionals as the most active answerers. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:29 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | Another idea I had (and not only I) is a timeout which will allow a closure but won't allow an answer. I've no idea if it fired or not. Though if supported by some rep points, it could have worked. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:27 | comment | added | Robert Harvey Mod | @YourCommonSense: What would you say is the general quality of those answers? Are they generally OK, or is it the blind leading the blind? | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:25 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @Servy Well, my point is as follows: Real experts don't have much spare time to hang around. What we have is a lot of eager enthusiasts. Who partially have desire for sharing and partially for rep points. And they surely will answer anything that moves. Ugh well. Another condition to judge: time to answer. Under PHP tag sometimes it takes less than a minute to get a half-dozen answers. One can tell for sure that question is either a duplicate or a too localized one without looking at it. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:21 | comment | added | Servy | @YourCommonSense Why would someone mark their own question as some more polite equivalent of "low quality"? Any experts left on the site would focus on the "high quality" questions (or at least that's your goal) so everyone would want to mark their own questions as such so that the experts will look at them. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:21 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | A downvote considered to be an unfriendly action. But nobody wants to be unfriendly, save for the outstanding exceptional cases - this is how its currently works. So, voting won't work either. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:20 | comment | added | Servy | @RobertHarvey Which, given the OP's radically redesigned system, may not be an option. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:18 | comment | added | Robert Harvey Mod | @Servy: There's a deletion algorithm that removes low-quality unanswered questions, if people will downvote them. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:18 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @Servy sadly, but there is a truth in your words. Well, okay, we can keep the policy the same. Not attracting lazy questions and having bad question owners warned and banned as well. Yet there should be some sort of cleaning mechanism for ones that managed to get an answer anyway. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:10 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | Well, first of all I'd give the users the choice - to mark their question as a momentary one. It won't hurt anyone, I hope. Some amendments over the question list could be a good deal too - to show only "good" questions by default and all of them via distinct tab. Judging for myself, I would still browse all the questions, but knowing that "bad" ones won't pollute the site I won't feel so much frustration like I do at the moment. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 17:02 | comment | added | Servy | @YourCommonSense That strategy only encourages even more poor quality questions, since they're likely to be answered, further increasing the flood. As it is many users learn after a question or two that poor quality questions aren't welcome here, and those that ignore the warnings get q-banned after just a few more. If these people are encouraged to keep posting questions day after day it will likely be beyond the curating power of the active users to filter out the quality questions and remove the cruft, once answered. Also, what do you do with poor quality unanswered questions? | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 16:53 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @minitech it is. I don't know how but I positively sure I know what to do. "Bad" questions have to be answered and then removed. This will satisfy all the three parties: "new users", "answer enthusiasts" and "professionals". It is very important to admit that these bad quality questions is the source of the life on the site and source of good questions as well, as ore is a source for gold nuggets. So, bad questions shouldn't be cut off but handled. There should be some sort of mark, to designate one of two kinds Robert stated. And then a question have to be treated accordingly. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 16:52 | comment | added | Kate Gregory | see also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September - I was a major Usenet user (even wrote a book on it) but I wandered away in the mid 90s. The phenomenon is real and the influx is unteachable. So far SO has implemented a process that resists the worst of it. Is it enough? Could we do more? Good questions, but not - I think - this question. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 16:28 | comment | added | Ry- Mod | Yep. Is it fixable? | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 16:25 | history | answered | Robert HarveyMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |