Timeline for answer to Overhauling our community's closure reasons and guidance by Shog9
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20, 2022 at 18:33 | comment | added | Braiam | @jfriend00 I wish there is a process. There's none. The last several times that the network wide reasons were changed, it was done by SE without our input. | |
| Apr 20, 2022 at 17:33 | comment | added | jfriend00 | @Braiam - Now you're referring to some process that I'm not a part of or aware of. I'm just offering feedback that I don't think it's helpful to denigrate all "opinion" like this close reason does. | |
| Apr 20, 2022 at 17:27 | comment | added | Braiam | @jfriend00 thing is that that reason is used elsewhere on the network, so it can be a bit more difficult to get everyone on board. | |
| Apr 20, 2022 at 17:12 | comment | added | jfriend00 | Pretty much all advice on how to write code is a developer's opinion in some way on how to best write code to solve a problem. And, we actually want educated and reasoned opinions. So, I'm definitely in favor of nuking the word "opinion" entirely from the reasoning for closing a question and find a different way to describe whatever it is that you're trying to target. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 16:02 | comment | added | Shog9 | Then let's call a spade a spade, @Cody - maybe, "Mostly attracts uninformed opinons". That'd be a great fit for questions like this one I pulled off the recent list, but not so much for questions that explicitly ask for sources (e.g. this & this). FWIW, the software engineering site (due to its history as "Programmers") has had a pile of clear & specific reasons over its history aimed at various sorts of questions that inevitably garner uninformed opinions, speculation, etc. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 7:40 | comment | added | Cody Gray Mod | Except that we're trying to stop the problem of a pile of unsourced, low-quality answers getting posted. Closing the door after the horse has already left the barn is hardly a compelling solution. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 6:08 | comment | added | Shog9 | I think you gotta start by asking, "what problem are we trying to solve?" and then ... Maybe asking if a close reason is the right solution at all, @Cat. I mean, the original reason... Well, back in the very early days there was a close reason for spam too; that got dropped in favor of a flag that makes ZERO effort to avoid finger-pointing. OTOH, a question that isn't straight-up flame-bait ... Maybe it doesn't need to be closed. Maybe it only needs to be closed after it attracts a pile of unsourced answers (and then you can point the finger at those answers). | |
| Apr 7, 2022 at 22:17 | comment | added | Travis J | @Catija - imo opinionated needs to be fully remodeled. We want material which is based on specific expertise, however, often posts are closed which include any level of opinion. "Opinion-based": This question is asking for general opinions. Edit the question to address facts, references, or specific expertise." | |
| Apr 7, 2022 at 22:10 | comment | added | 0Valt | Something like "not authoritatively answerable" might work, @Catija. It is indeed a big issue that we often cling to the "opinion" word and close posts for being subjective rather than for what this reason is intended for - preventing discussions with no way to tell if a given answer is objectively good or bad. | |
| Apr 7, 2022 at 21:59 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | As a thought experiment,... If one were considering rewording the opinion-based close reason, ... just out of curiosity... would you have recommendations for how we could do better? I've been struggling with the dilution of it for a while but I'm not sure that I've been able to adequately get to a non-accusatory close description that manages to avoid people closing questions that may be subjective but likely fall into "good subjective". That said, I think that having different guidance in the close modal vs the post notice goes a long way. The modal can be more direct. | |
| Apr 7, 2022 at 21:56 | comment | added | Travis J | I could not agree more with your outlook on the opinionated closure reason. Productive yet slightly subjective material is critical to success here, and it is currently stifled. Decades worth of tested and proven expert opinion is being locked away. | |
| Apr 2, 2022 at 20:18 | comment | added | Shog9 | Well, that's one problem @cody; the other one is... The "reference" reason is currently used a lot more than the "opinion" reason. There'd have to be a lot of adjustment. Also... We've been through this; back before we rolled out the site-specific reasons, I went through thousands of closed questions trying to figure out why they were closed based on context... It was crazy; there were sites that had their own very specific reasons for like one reason and didn't align with anything else. Imagine trying to explain this... | |
| Apr 2, 2022 at 5:27 | comment | added | Cody Gray Mod | Keeping in mind that I've read all of the "further reading" and know all of the context—do you have a concrete recommendation regarding the value of maintaining a separate, site-specific "recommendation question" close reason (putting aside from the moment how we might rewrite the guidance to make it better), instead of collapsing all of that into the network-wide "opinion-based" close reason? If I had free reign, I'd definitely collapse them. My only hesitation is that the network-wide "opinion-based" reason's guidance doesn't seem to be editable by us. | |
| Apr 1, 2022 at 15:43 | history | edited | Shog9 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
some relevant links
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| Apr 1, 2022 at 15:27 | history | answered | Shog9 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |