Questions tagged [close-reasons]

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Are we abusing "Request for learning materials" as a reason to close?

Request for learning material, from what I gather, is a request for links or pointers to offsite learning materials, or books, courses, etc. In fact, How do we feel about requests for learning ...
garethTheRed's user avatar
  • 33.9k
24 votes
1 answer
302 views

Trigger Happy Close Voting Revisited

I realize this issue has been addressed here before a few months ago, but it seems to me we are still a little overly eager to close/hold questions as soon as they appear. Do I need to worry about &...
goldilocks's user avatar
  • 87.6k
22 votes
4 answers
394 views

Should we get rid of the "cross-posted" close reason?

TL;DR Should we remove the "cross-posted" close reason and instead flag for mod attention as they do everywhere else on the SE network? Cross-posting on multiple sites of the Stack Exchange network ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 242k
16 votes
2 answers
549 views

Closing votes on a historic question about Plan 9

I just scored 4 close votes on my question regarding the reason behind using the "snarf" word instead of "copy" in Plan 9 applications (link). I thought that questions about history (there are 234 ...
Mateusz Piotrowski's user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
377 views

Rejecting obvious questions?

Shouldn't we reject questions for which the asking people obviously didn't do their homework? Like this one: What does ^d mean in ls -l | grep ^d? Not that I'm really annoyed, but I think it would ...
alex's user avatar
  • 7,223
13 votes
2 answers
208 views

What do we do about abandoned questions, with a correct answer never accepted?

What do we do about abandoned questions, with a correct answer that was never accepted? If we suspect the original poster forgot about it completely? Not sure if we have any sort of process, or if ...
J. M. Becker's user avatar
  • 4,891
12 votes
2 answers
201 views

New off-topic close reason for question that are... off-topic?

Lately we've seen a bunch of question about Windows, english usage, general programming questions, and when we should take the dog to a walk... so, I was thinking that instead of writing up a "custom" ...
Braiam's user avatar
  • 36k
11 votes
2 answers
125 views

Is there a policy for dealing with orphaned questions?

People sometimes ask questions that need clarification. That's quite understandable. But I can see that occasionally, some people just leave such questions and don't come back to improve them in ...
rozcietrzewiacz's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
205 views

Learning the art of the close-vote review queue

(Forked from Learning the art of the review queue) For those who often "Skip" in reviewing close-vote items because of lack of confidence / experience / training, is there: A more detailed guide to ...
Jeff Schaller's user avatar
  • 67.3k
9 votes
1 answer
201 views

When a computing problem becomes moot what should you do about the question?

Suppose you ask a question, say on Unix & Linux Stack Exchange, but after asking it, the question becomes irrelevant. Say for example you ask if you can fix network protocol(s) which Windows says ...
Peter David Carter's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
218 views

Flood of off-topic flags, is this the norm here?

I just reached the rep to get into the close votes review queue. What I see there are a lot of off-topic flags with which I often do not agree. That's sketchy so I'll add two examples: Midnight ...
grochmal's user avatar
  • 8,647
9 votes
3 answers
165 views

Should we close general reference questions?

This is a continuation of Rejecting obvious questions? and Is it okay to ask questions here when Wikipedia already has the answer?. We get the occasional question where the best answer is to refer ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
71 views

What close reason should be selected when migration site is not available?

I frequently run across questions that should be migrated to other sites, but right now the only site we have an option for is stackoverflow.com (as well as unix meta). Most of the time I want to ...
phemmer's user avatar
  • 71.8k
8 votes
2 answers
144 views

Add specific close reason and explicit point in the help pages for learning material requests

Prelude: How do we feel about requests for learning materials? I'm tagging this as feature-request and discussion since there was already previous discussion about the topic, but recent events may ...
Braiam's user avatar
  • 36k
8 votes
1 answer
66 views

Why isn't an unrepoducable problem too localized?

In What process is running before I even get a prompt?, the OP describes a problem with their login shell, soliciting several answers containing troubleshooting suggestions, but no real solution. ...
depquid's user avatar
  • 3,881
8 votes
0 answers
72 views

Why can't I change my close-vote reason or not close-vote anymore after retracting?

I just close-voted this question with reason "Needs details or clarity". Afterwards, I saw, that this question fits very well, and I would like to change my vote to "Duplicate of ...&...
pLumo's user avatar
  • 22.6k
7 votes
1 answer
968 views

Systematically closing Kali questions

When I asked the reviewer who originally posted the duplicate link why he was duping this question, he referred me to this Meta post: What should we do about Kali Linux questions?. In the top-upvoted ...
karel's user avatar
  • 2,030
7 votes
1 answer
159 views

Close questions as "Needs details or clarity"

Would we close questions (like https://unix.stackexchange.com/review/close/343371) if the question itself does lack information but that information has already been made available in the comments?
Hauke Laging's user avatar
  • 90.2k
7 votes
3 answers
230 views

Is solving a CTF too localized?

Unix files system related puzzle This question is about a capture-the-flag exercise. It's on-topic since the point of the exercise is to use various unix features. However, it's too localized in the ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
168 views

How should we word the off-topic reason for learning material?

Background: Add specific close reason and explicit point in the help pages for learning material requests I think that I made a mistake with my earlier proposal, since I didn't included proof of ...
Braiam's user avatar
  • 36k
7 votes
1 answer
811 views

Which duplicate should be closed?

I'm raising this issue because it seems to me that when we find a new question that has an obvious duplicate, it should not necessarily be the new question that is closed. We already have a good ...
goldilocks's user avatar
  • 87.6k
5 votes
2 answers
71 views

Is the "On hold" message sometimes wrong?

Looking at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/307879/does-linux-operating-systems-not-run-as-hot-as-windows-10 I see the question has been marked as "put on hold as unclear what you're asking by ...
Stephen Harris's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
71 views

How is this question too broad?

The question How can I highlight matches using GNU grep? got closed for being too broad. I would like to know why this question is considered as too broad? Was it because of the first edit today? Or ...
Bernhard's user avatar
  • 12.3k
5 votes
0 answers
57 views

Grammatical error (inelegance at the very least) in a close reason

One of the canned messages for closing a question reads Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, itā€™s hard to ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 242k
4 votes
1 answer
129 views

Why was my question about perceived PulseAudio problems put on hold?

I asked Why do people dislike PulseAudio? a little while ago. It was put on hold as primarily opinion-based. It seems to me that while the question possibly invites more opinion-based answers than ...
strugee's user avatar
  • 14.9k
4 votes
1 answer
207 views

Can we have Super User as a site for off-topic close reasons?

I'm looking at Mac equivalent application "shortcat". While it technically relates to Unix & Linux, I think it would be a much better fit for Super User. However, I was only able to ...
strugee's user avatar
  • 14.9k
4 votes
2 answers
107 views

why was this question not closed?

I was surfing through U & L site and stumbled upon this question titled: Recommended reading to better understand Unix/Linux internals. According to the site's rules, the same question would have ...
Ramesh's user avatar
  • 39.3k
4 votes
2 answers
71 views

Duplicates cross different sites can be reported?

Well, just referring to this question, Since the possible duplicate of it was on another site, would it also be closed as duplicate ?
daisy's user avatar
  • 54.5k
3 votes
1 answer
153 views

Why was this "unclear what you're asking" flag declined?

I flagged this question on February 25 and now I see my flag has been declined. There is no reason visible in the flagging history on my profile. I raised that flag because the question appears not ...
fra-san's user avatar
  • 10.2k
3 votes
1 answer
51 views

What to do with answers to off-topic questions?

I just found this question in the first posts review queue and voted to close it (see my comment to it) because I cannot see how U&L would benefit from it. Next, I found one of the answers in the ...
countermode's user avatar
  • 7,523
3 votes
1 answer
68 views

Avoid being put [on-hold/close]: What are the required question elements in order to be evidently clear?

Have posted a question on Unix&Linux in which I described what the inconsistent symptoms of a critical Debian-Linux behavior is here: "How to alter Memory/RAM errors on Linux Debian 8 Jessie [...
alex's user avatar
  • 983
3 votes
1 answer
43 views

Add askubuntu.com to Closing > Off-Topic > Migration [duplicate]

According to https://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic:- Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-...
Pandya's user avatar
  • 24.6k
2 votes
3 answers
185 views

In what way my question is actually too broad

Now I am not trying to say my question is not too broad to get it unheld, but I am asking what really what makes it too broad? Really, the question gives some information a Linux expert would need, ...
OverCoder's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
82 views

How to handle questions which can not be answered?

Sometimes there are questions, where there doesn't seem to exist a sensible answer. E.g. Fedora GUI package installer takes very long (>15min) to start where the question is how to use improved ...
fschmitt's user avatar
  • 8,780
2 votes
2 answers
105 views

Should we close questions because they only MIGHT be caused by MS Windows?

I've been reviewing more close votes recently. There's been certain trend of a few questions being impossible to review correctly to my mind, and I wanted to ask if there's a community view on how to ...
Philip Couling's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
144 views

Is historic reasoning by really opinion based?

I'd like to discuss whether or not there is a difference between querying historic design decisions and asking for opinions. The difference is subtle enough... "why should I ..." can often ...
Philip Couling's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
76 views

Should we advertise when vote close as non reproductible when it's only a typo

how to link 2 or more images one after the other, having the same dimensions? This question might get close because it's only a typo, but I found sometime question on the site where the mention of a ...
Kiwy's user avatar
  • 9,534
2 votes
1 answer
78 views

Flagging questions that are "Very Low Quality"?

I currently encountered this question: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/314774/unix-script-to-pass-variables It made me wonder how questions that are "very low quality" should be handled. ...
Centimane's user avatar
  • 4,480
2 votes
1 answer
40 views

Question closed for wrong reason, seems like it needs to be migrated?

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/199017/how-to-artificially-cause-a-page-fault-in-linux-kernel Was closed as unclear (which it was, but the comments fixed that), but it is realy off topic as ...
hildred's user avatar
  • 5,829
2 votes
1 answer
35 views

See close vote initiater, not just the close vote queue reviewers

I was the first, close vote queue prompted reviewer of this question. The original close reason was that it was cross posted on multiple sites. Since there was no comment pointing to the "other" post....
Anthon's user avatar
  • 79.2k
1 vote
2 answers
42 views

Are problems that turn out to be caused by hardware off topic?

I recently posted a question, How to recover after messing with hard drive during mid-session sleep?. It appeared to be a Linux issue, which is why I posted it here. After a lot of diagnosis, it ...
fixer1234's user avatar
  • 681
1 vote
1 answer
48 views

460439 put on hold and then closed without explanation?

My recent question, Read address from MSI Capability Structure, was first put on hold as unclear then closed. With respect to the question requirements: The answer to this specific question ...
Cain Rose's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
34 views

How can I tell if my question has been reviewed and left closed?

I recently asked this question, it was put on hold and asked me to reword the question. I did as such but my question has not reopened. How can I tell if it has already been reviewed and still ...
natral's user avatar
  • 305
0 votes
2 answers
50 views

Question about distributions offering certain software labeled as "too broad"

Can someone please explain why this question of mine was closed as "too broad". It seems to conform to the site guidelines. And it is very specific.
Eaten by a Grue's user avatar
-1 votes
4 answers
112 views

add a new close reason : homework?

refering to https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/200528/how-to-copy-the-lines-in-multiple-files-between-two-given-dates and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/200467/i-will-use-switch-...
Archemar's user avatar
  • 31.5k
-1 votes
1 answer
46 views

Should answers be closed because they are wrong? [duplicate]

I'm trying to become a better reviewer and I am seeing posts in the 'Low Quality Posts' review queue that are flagged for review 'Because of their length and content'. Sometimes I see answers there ...
111---'s user avatar
  • 4,496
-2 votes
1 answer
198 views

Why was my post closed as "opinion-based"?

Original. I thought it's very irrational to abuse the test statement rather than using a case statement for string comparison in a shell script, in viewpoint of portability and performance.
user avatar
-2 votes
1 answer
78 views

How is this question unclear?

How is https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/194320/wifi-not-working-after-a-fresh-install-of-arch-linux unclear? Both in the title and then in this markdown environment I ask the question again ...
dustin's user avatar
  • 372
-2 votes
2 answers
109 views

`exact duplicate` as a flag option not well categorized

The 40k-rep-heavy user Gilles commented on this question Why do you need the "./" when executing programs in the current directory? (ups - why is no link-button here?) that it is a possible ...
user unknown's user avatar
  • 10.5k
-4 votes
1 answer
149 views

Add one additional reason for closing or reword the "opinion based" reason

Facts : There are a couple of posts, here (on meta), from contributors wording their misunderstanding about the reasons that motivated the closure of their question for the reason that : This ...
MC68020's user avatar
  • 7,941