I don't spend much time on SO, so I can't really compare. We do close quite a few questions (for Unix.SE of course — the scale is rather different on SO) — over the last 30 days, we closed nearly 20% of the questions asked, and “off-topic” questions account for nearly 20% of the questions closed (so nearly 4% total).

We tend not to edit questions to make them on-topic, so I don't think this sets up the expectation in the long run that people can just ask anything and let others fix their question. At least, people who set out with that expectation will have it quickly adjusted!

I do think this is representative of two aspects of Unix.SE:

• we like specific questions, so instead of asking on Meta whether a certain type of question is on-topic, it's easier just to ask the question — that will effectively result in a more specific Meta question (albeit not on Meta — the implied “is this question on-topic?” asked of any question on the site); if it's off-topic, we'll know exactly, and if it's on-topic, we've saved one step in the answering process;

• we're quite a welcoming community, and I get the impression we'd rather have new users err on the side of asking rather than worrying about how their question will be received (although sometimes I think many of us would like more users to search for themselves, but that's a general problem we can't solve here).

I don't spend much time on SO, so I can't really compare. We do close quite a few questions (for Unix.SE of course — the scale is rather different on SO) — over the last 30 days, we closed nearly 20% of the questions asked, and “off-topic” questions account for nearly 20% of the questions closed (so nearly 4% total).

We tend not to edit questions to make them on-topic, so I don't think this sets up the expectation in the long run that people can just ask anything and let others fix their question. At least, people who set out with that expectation will have it quickly adjusted!

I do think this is representative of two aspects of Unix.SE:

• we like specific questions, so instead of asking on Meta whether a certain type of question is on-topic, it's easier just to ask the question — that will effectively result in a more specific Meta question (albeit not on Meta — the implied “is this question on-topic?” asked of any question on the site); if it's off-topic, we'll know exactly, and if it's on-topic, we've saved one step in the answering process;

• we're quite a welcoming community, and I get the impression we'd rather have new users err on the side of asking rather than worrying about how their question will be received (although sometimes I think many of us would like more users to search for themselves, but that's a general problem we can't solve here).