10

Wording of close reasons has changed recently.

For questions asking code (e.g. VBA macro) without demonstrating self effort I've voted as "too broad" in the past, however with the new wording I'm not sure which fits better those situations:

enter image description here

For me both above options contains useful information, however none of them clearly describe the problem.

5
  • 2
    The description of both those reasons have not actually changed. It’s just the “reason” that has changed.
    – Ramhound
    Dec 19, 2019 at 9:20
  • 1
    @Ramhound: you're right. In the past at least title was better, now neither that, neither description Dec 19, 2019 at 12:05
  • 8
    I absolutely hate the new “does this answers your question ...” comment for duplicates, these new “friendly” descriptions are absolutely horrible, nothing (blank text) would be more accurate then the new close reasons.
    – Ramhound
    Dec 19, 2019 at 17:47
  • 1
    "Does this answer your question?" Reads as far more sarcastic than "Potential duplicate of…" Actually, the first time I saw it on a question of mine on SE Meta, where I'd failed to correctly search the dupe first, I just deleted the question in a huff. It was two weeks before I realised it was supposed to be the "new friendly" version. FAIL.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 21, 2019 at 11:10
  • @Ramhound - after I posted the above comment I decided to run it by Meta.SE … I'll see how the dust settles, but right now voting is only slightly over 50/50 - meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340788/…
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 21, 2019 at 16:17

2 Answers 2

9

I always vote to close these with a copy/paste from Ask Different, which has this specific close reason…

Questions must demonstrate a reasonable amount of research & understanding of the problem being solved. Please edit to either a) clearly describe your problem and the research done so far to solve it or b) include attempted solutions plus why they didn't work. In either case, be sure your expected results are clearly presented.

I actually have this & many other frequently-used SE snippets as an auto-replace in my OS typing control panel.

4
  • The problem with this is that if you use custom close reasons, the reason that will be displayed will be "blatantly off-topic" (at least it used to be, correct me if they changed that). Dec 21, 2019 at 10:28
  • @DonaldDuck - As far as I'm aware, the 'blatantly off topic' close reason disappears at about 2 or 3,000 rep, & until you pass that point you can't see close votes at all. I don't have any SE site where I'm in that range to be able to test. A mod might be able to confirm or correct my info.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 21, 2019 at 10:57
  • @​Tetsujin I don't think it says exactly "blatantly off-topic", I think it says something like "has nothing to do with [the site's topic]". In fact, when I think about it, if I remember correctly "blatantly off-topic" is what <3k users have instead of custom reasons. Anyway, my point is that I'm quite sure that closing with a custom reason will say something about that the question has nothing to do with the site's topic, even though I'm unsure about the exact wording. Dec 21, 2019 at 14:44
  • The custom message starts with "I am voting to close this question as off-topic because" to which you supply your own reason. On AD the above wording is a site-specific reason & so if closed by that, that's exactly what it says to the user.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 21, 2019 at 15:54
16

"Needs more focus" seems right to me. A question that amounts to "give me teh codez" is not "a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer" - as opposed to "here is the macro I've tried, I'm getting error XYZ"

1
  • 4
    This is the correct answer. We used to close "gimme the codez" questions as "too broad", which has been replaced by "needs more focus"
    – DavidPostill Mod
    Dec 19, 2019 at 19:02

You must log in to answer this question.

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