Timeline for Off Topic variations
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 18, 2013 at 23:24 | comment | added | Nathan Reed | I'd also change "not permitted on this site" to "not appropriate for this site" - again, to make it sound less draconian. | |
| Jun 17, 2013 at 17:06 | comment | added | Laurent Couvidou | I'd also drop the "per the FAQ". It makes it sound these are the Tablets of Law. I'd rather like a softer "check the FAQ for details". | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 5:52 | comment | added | Tetrad Mod | For what it's worth I do think you have the bulk of the reasons that we close questions down. Going by the "being more specific with the reason the question is closed" logic, I like your wording for the most part. I'd just drop the "per the faq" as it's redundant, and change "can be handled on SO" to "should be asked on SO" in #3. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 1:17 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @mh01: Ultimately, the point of the exercise is not to explain why the rules are what they are. It's to explain exactly which rule they broke. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 1:15 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @mh01: Indeed, the "guideline" seems to be "how can we make the system convey what specifically made a closed question off-topic, with as little navigation as possible?" So what specifically made a "getting started" question off-topic? The fact that it's a "getting started" question and we don't accept those. Explaining why "getting started" questions are off-topic is not part of the guideline. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 1:14 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @mh01: "Remember - this is not what I think, these are the guidelines we've been given to work within." All that means is that the "guidelines" are hopelessly naive. Furthermore, none of the suggestions on that MSO page explain why any of those things are bad. They don't say why shopping questions are bad. They don't explain why SU believes Smart Phones to not be computers despite that being prima facie stupid. So if those are the "guidelines", they're doing a poor job of meeting them; all of the suggestions are about what was done, not why that was bad. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 1:05 | comment | added | Maximus Minimus | But the purpose is not just to say "this is not appropriate", it's to say why it's not appropriate, and it's not aimed at the ~99% (or whatever) of people who will just ignore it, it's aimed at the remainder who may just pay attention and start asking good questions (a secondary purpose is to discourage "why was my question closed as X" questions on meta). Remember - this is not what I think, these are the guidelines we've been given to work within. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 0:51 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @mh01: But I've suggested will already be saying more than they do now. The nebulous "Not Constructive" reasoning would be replaced with a clear message that what they specifically asked for is not appropriate on this site. The person who wants to ask a "getting started" question is going to consider most attempts to explain why such questions are bad to be specious. Just look at people on meta here or MSO who just don't understand why those are bad questions. Do you honestly think a couple of sentences is going to change their minds? | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 0:15 | comment | added | Maximus Minimus | I don't disagree with you on that; it's also the case that the type of person who asks this kind of question is generally the type of person who doesn't read the FAQ. Nonetheless, "per the FAQ" isn't going to change that (it's basically just an instruction to read something they're not going to read anyway, so it accomplishes nothing), and if doing it by the current guidelines helps turn even one bad person into a good one, it will have been worth it. | |
| Jun 14, 2013 at 0:09 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @mh01: "we need to convey that information with as little dependence on other sources (FAQ, etc.) as possible" I don't agree with that at all. Quite frankly, the kind of person who won't read the FAQ is the kind of person we want to not be here. It is not wrong to be selective about the kind of people who come here. And I'm perfectly happy with a basic criteria of selection being the willingness to follow a link to find out what you did wrong. Remember: they are the ones who screwed up, not us. | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 23:58 | comment | added | Maximus Minimus | A mere "not permitted on this site" or "we don't want it" is exactly the kind of problem that's discussed here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/… - the intention is clearly "We can do a much better job helping posters to understand why their question is off-topic" and it's worth reading that entire topic because it shows how this line of thinking is not in the spirit of the new closing reasons. Also "we need to convey that information with as little dependence on other sources (FAQ, etc.) as possible". | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 21:53 | comment | added | Tetrad Mod | I'm mainly going off the examples in the question you linked to in the OP as well as the examples given here in the accepted answer about how to solve the "off topic is too vague" problem (we've been typically using as "not constructive" instead of "off topic" to close those kinds of questions) meta.stackexchange.com/a/169824/149294. Some of those reasons go into detail (e.g. "mobile phones are not considered computers"), but then again some do not as well. | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 21:36 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @Tetrad: But this way, the message is tailored specifically for those kinds of questions. It's much clearer what the problem is than the generic "too broad". Also, it makes it more clear that the problem cannot be rectified. If you ask a broad question about game design, you can make it reasonable by adding details that narrow the scope. However, if you ask a broad "getting started" question, you can never add enough details to make it reasonable. | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 21:33 | comment | added | Tetrad Mod | I think the "getting started" questions easily fit under the "too broad" example, and the "which tech to use" questions fit under the "primarily opinion based" example from the MSO | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 21:30 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @Tetrad: The reason is "we don't want them." To add anything to that would require an explanation of why we don't want them, which goes into the nature of SE sites and other things that can't be summarized in one or two sentences. The "succinct reason" is "we don't want it." Furthermore... why does it matter why we don't want it? It's not going to help them fix their question. | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 21:28 | comment | added | Tetrad Mod | I think we should have some wording beyond just "see the faq". It would be better to have some succinct reason for why a question is bad other than "the faq says it's not permitted". There's a reason those kinds of questions get closed, let's make that reason more apparent. With the exception of the generic "off topic" close reason in the MSO thread you linked to, all the other close reasons are good examples to follow. | |
| Jun 13, 2013 at 20:08 | history | answered | Nicol Bolas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |