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I recently received this review audit: https://superuser.com/review/first-posts/1065904

The question is here: Will my computer run Windows 11?

It was obviously anonymized for the audit purposes so I did not see the current upvotes (I believe it displayed 0) nor who asked the question (just anonymous or something to that effect).

The question title is:

Will my computer run Windows 11?

The question body is:

I have a couple of very decent computers, I am wondering if they will run Windows 11, and I am trying to determine how to proceed.

I chose to flag it as needs improvement > Needs details or clarity as it seemed very vague. I have seen questions closed for less (or actually more detail, in this case).

Now looking at the question and answer, it's clear that it is intended as a catch-all page for Windows 11 compatibility. Windows 11, and whether or not certain hardware will support it, is currently a topic receiving a lot of attention and speculation, so I do think it's a good idea to have a page that provides general information on this. The answer is obviously very good and provides a good candidate to mark repeat questions on this topic as a duplicate.

One part of the audit that stood out to me was:

This was an audit, designed to see if you were paying attention. You didn't pass.

I definitely was paying attention and from all of the information I had, I believe my flag made sense. Is there a way we can improve the question or is it truly a high quality question?

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  • There was a "request" a while back for a "standard" answer for "Will my PC run Win 11?" I tried this. @Mokabai (a) encouraged me and (b) suggested a Q and A approach. The bland question was the result of my effort as I felt the Answer was the place to provide information. This was an effort for the particular time.
    – anon
    Commented Jul 4, 2021 at 13:16
  • Also the question has been edited several times as I initially posted a more detailed question.
    – anon
    Commented Jul 4, 2021 at 13:33
  • 1
    The question does indeed make sense, albeit bland as you mentioned, and the Q&A approach seems to be the best way to catch all Windows 11 compatibility questions. It provides a good generic question that will easily be found and a good candidate for duplicates so we can direct all questions to the answer which provides all of the detail. Perhaps the discussion to be had is whether this question makes sense as an audit.
    – MC10
    Commented Jul 4, 2021 at 22:42
  • And to state the just about obvious: Will my PC run Windows 11 questions have just about dried up. So purpose was served in this case.
    – anon
    Commented Jul 5, 2021 at 1:02
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    Frankly this question shouldn't be used for audits. Sure, it's not that detailed, but like @John mentioned it serves it's purpose very well.
    – MMM
    Commented Jul 8, 2021 at 13:15
  • 2
    @MMM Lol. "Audit question points out that our review standards sometimes fail hard. Solution--get rid of the audit question!" Sigh, SO bureaucracy sucks.
    – Aleksandr Dubinsky
    Commented Jul 9, 2021 at 10:36
  • @AleksandrDubinsky every rule has its exceptions.
    – MMM
    Commented Jul 9, 2021 at 11:40
  • @MMM My point is that reviewers need to be aware of and appreciate the exceptions, by including them in training material and audits. This will make them better reviewers with less assholish tendencies to close useful questions (such as this one).
    – Aleksandr Dubinsky
    Commented Jul 10, 2021 at 7:13
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    tbh, reviewers need to learn to actually click through to the QA itself & see what it's all about. Reviewing based solely on a short question will lead to poor reviews, as we see here.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 10, 2021 at 7:14

2 Answers 2

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At 1000 views per day it's the type Q&A thread that although simplistic gets lots of search engine hits.

In general this type of question is poorly received by the community. With a few exceptions, when such a question is asked early (around the time a technology is first launched) or it receives an exceptionally good answer.

So yes, my first reaction would be to close as "lacks focus" or "needs details or clarity" (we all know hundreds of questions like that one tend to get closed everyday across SE).

Is there a way we can improve the question

Maybe adding a couple of well chosen key phrases to the body of the question could benefit it. Like "what are the minimum recommended system requirements" just to increase the number of hits.

I'm not entirely sure how Google searches work, but short questions seem to find their way to the front page, so this one sentence format actually seems to have potential for becoming front page material.

This was an audit, designed to see if you were paying attention. You didn't pass.

I have 10k reviews on Stack Overflow and I've stopped trying to make sense to this. The trick for an experienced mass reviewer is opening a new tab and checking the question out. Otherwise every 200-300 reviews you'll stumble on a question that defies all usual logic, or you'll fail every bad audit you come across.

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The question definitely does need improvement. For instance changing "I am trying to determine how to proceed." to "What are the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11?*" would help a lot in several ways.

But far too many explanations on SE sites either say too much or too little.

We understand exactly what the question is asking, so the "as it seemed very vague" doesn't apply to this question, which means that the "needs improvement" flag doesn't apply. But neither does any other choice. One has to choose this one, not because it is right, but because it is the least wrong of all the choices.

Meanwhile I still can't parse "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful" in any reasonable way. The "or" implies that the ";" means "and", so no matter how unclear or not useful it might be, if there is any sign of research effort at all, a question can never be downvoted.

This problem isn't limited to these two examples or to this site. The overall SE implementation seems to be lacking the concept of "collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive".

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  • The solution to borderline cases like this is to “skip” the review, or take it upon yourself, and suggest an edit.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 4, 2021 at 22:44
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    @Ramhound I've failed audits on "good" posts before because I suggested edits that fixed hard grammatical errors or typos :/
    – MMM
    Commented Jul 9, 2021 at 11:42
  • @MMM You can always (well, with >2k rep) go back and edit the post outside of the review system.
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Jul 12, 2021 at 19:16

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