It's been a couple of days since we're using the new off-topic close reasons, including:
- Questions seeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they tend to become obsolete quickly. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve.
- Questions about software development are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.
- Questions about the use of web-based applications are off-topic here, but can be asked on Web Apps Stack Exchange.
- This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network
- Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)
Here, the "but can be asked on …" is misleading: If we have a migration option, why not migrate it there? In the long run, this only encourages double-posting, and if the question is too bad to be migrated through close votes, then why even lead the user to the other site? We probably wouldn't want them to copy-paste their question.
My proposal would be to get rid of the two canned responses for software development and web-based applications. We could introduce a generic response:
This question is not about computer hardware or software as defined in our help centerin our help center.
On the Help Center page, we could add pointers to other sites and refine our scope—similar to what we proposed a year ago.
This would have the following benefits:
Questions worth migrating will attract migration votes, and bad questions (or those where no migration path exists) would point to our main Help Center page, where we could explain what other sites there are.
We'll get least one additional custom slot for a new canned response
What do you think?
