9

Today two of my questions were closed.

The first as subjective and the second as off-topic. First of all, in my humble opinion, there is nothing, what so ever, subjective or off topic in these questions. Both can be clearly answered and deal with both software and hardware (I'd be grateful if you could review the questions and tell what is your opinion). However that's not the issue.

From what I know, mostly from Stack Overflow, closing and opening questions is done by voting. If enough users would have told me that I had been wrong, I'd say sorry and align to my peers. But why are there users that can single handedly close questions as off-topic? There probably should be moderators that can close questions as offending. But isn't the decision, about which question is subjective, is too subjective by itself to be decided by a single user, even if he has zillion reputation?

Quoting from The Theory of Moderation:

Moderators are human exception handlers, there to deal with those (hopefully rare) exceptional conditions that should not normally happen, but when they do, they can bring your entire program to a screaming halt, if you don’t have proper exception handling in place.

Might my questions, even if they are subjective, bring SU to a screaming halt?

Update 1: After rereading the FAQ three more times, reading the answers here and visiting the gaming site, I totally agree that the second question is both off-topic and subjective.

Update 2: I feel that this discussion deviates from its original intention. I'll created a different question that asks about the "discussion" issue.

2 Answers 2

6

Random did a good job explaining the reasoning behind closing the questions. To answer your title question:

Yes, it is community oriented and people can vote freely on Super User like you see on Stack Overflow. Moderators are the only ones who have one vote close power. You will see much more moderator interaction with questions on Super User as you may be used to the quick user responce found on Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow has many more users with vote privileges than Super User (only 112 users with 3k+ reputation as of this moment). You will see much more moderator interaction with questions on Super User because there is not a lot of 3k+ users yet. As Super User grows, you will see less moderator involvement in simple question closing and migrations.

3
  • 2
    Thanks. That explains to me clearly the moderators' zeal :)
    – FireAphis
    Nov 22, 2010 at 20:08
  • 2
    @Fire To add, SU has the most moderators of the whole network due to it's content and target audience, which also, through experience, has forced us to be more strict on applying the FAQ. The site has a much broader focus then SO and SF for example, and much much harder to moderate. In the end we tend to way up what is better for the community, and slipping with not closing questions has bitten a lot of us hard in the past. Super User is proactively moderated at the moment, compared to the rest of the network mostly being retroactively moderated. Nov 23, 2010 at 10:34
  • 1
    @Diago: "way" => "weigh"?
    – Hello71
    Nov 23, 2010 at 21:36
5

Windows7 64bit for gaming

Do you have any experience with gaming on Win7 64bit?

Along with the fact that the entire question hinges on gaming activity, this last bit clinches it as off-topic for falling into the gaming and discussion holes.

Hard drives and SATA3

On the subjective close, you lead the question with some weasel words:

this is a well known fact that SSDs are faster than HDs

But then the question of where it's actually subjective and/or argumentative:

I'm wondering why to use SATA3 in hard drives at all? [...] Is it so or are there other reasons?

You're leading this into a discussion and debate on setups. SU is not about discussion nor debate.

Across the Stack Exchange network, the close votes come from the community and/or moderators. For the latter, only a single vote cast is enough to seal the deal. It's always been this way.

2
  • Regarding the second question, I don't understand you. The difference in speed is an industry wide consensus. Cannot I use axioms at all? Also why should it lead to a debate? I see that SATA3 is used but I don't understand why. I suggested a theory. Why cannot it be approved or proven as wrong? What is subjective about that? It's all about speed comparisons.
    – FireAphis
    Nov 22, 2010 at 20:06
  • 2
    @Fire Exactly. It's all about comparisons. Comparisons aren't fact, nor answer, they are based on theoretical usage. We have had enough experience with these questions to know that they will become, and are inherently discussions. To be honest, as moderators we rarely look at who posted the question, but rather at the question itself, it just so happened that both these questions where from you, and not because it was reviewed in such a way. Why is a discussion, not a question. It would be similar to asking why a 2L engine is slower then a 3l V6 engine. Nov 23, 2010 at 10:19

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .