PSA: Just because *you* don't understand a question doesn't automatically make it unclear

Question

All too often, I'm seeing close votes (or even closed questions) as "Unclear" on questions that are perfectly understandable to me. It seems to happen roughly once a week, and that's just in the limited number of questions I look at.

Today's example is How to refresh System information on wsl2, which gathered 2 close votes for "Needs details or clarity" before I answered it.

There's just, IMHO, no good reason to be closing (or even voting to close) questions that have enough detail to be answered.

The issue in that question is 100% reproducible without any additional information. Simply starting WSL with the default distribution will demonstrate the problem -- The MOTD shows outdated system information. I was able to reproduce this in less than 10 seconds.

Understanding the question (let alone answering) does, however, require that the reader have the appropriate subject-matter expertise in the topic being discussed:

• Understanding what WSL is.
• Knowing that the default distribution on WSL is Ubuntu.
• Being up-to-date on WSL and Ubuntu enough to know that Ubuntu was just recently (in the last week) updated to 22.04 as the default distribution (this typically happens around 4 months after the release of an LTS version of Ubuntu).

One of the comments does ask for additional clarification (which is good and appreciated). Regardless, we shouldn't assume one way or another that a VTC came from the user who commented -- Nor does it matter. I do know that one of the votes came in well before that comment, so that earlier voter didn't request any clarification.

But again, even without any additional information, the question was clear enough to answer and IMHO didn't warrant close votes. It only takes 5 non-SME's that lack enough understanding to get from VTC to "Closed". And as we've established, it can be very difficult to reopen (short of mod-intervention) when that happens.

So to leave this as a question, to solicit responses -- What would be some good guidelines for voting "Needs details or clarity"?

Related Meta topics:

• I think SU has a newbie-biting problem
• We have bad question closing habits

Answer 1

Some thoughts/recommendations on voting-to-close for "Needs details or clarity":

• Does the perceived lack of clarity in the question lower Super User's quality as a question-and-answer site in general? If not, then is there harm in leaving the question open in the hopes that someone can answer?

• To vote-to-close, we should have enough expertise in the areas being discussion to be absolutely sure that the question can't be answered with the given information. Even then it would be good to second-guess ourselves! And definitely - Ask for whatever information you feel is missing in the comments!

• Questions that are not in English are considered (I believe) to be "Needs detail or clarity", but I would hope that the first person to vote-to-close on this basis would leave a polite comment explaining that policy.

• I will likely vote-to-close if the question is missing the most basic details. For example, a question that says simply "When I do [xyz], I get *an error" (without specifying the error message or other information) might warrant a VTC. Even in this case, I might consider myself too harsh -- It's entirely possible that another user here could have experienced that and be aware of what the error is, and even have an answer.

  But IMHO that lack of detail is too egregious to make it a "helpful" question to others. It doesn't enable search-indexing on the error message, and it's ambiguous (there may be multiple possible errors with different root causes).

• I may vote-to-close as "Needs details" if the user included only an image when the output could have been included as text. I may leave a comment in advance of the VTC, or I may just go ahead and do it. It should be noted that users with less than 20 reputation that attach an image are given a warning when doing so that they should include the relevant portions as text, so they have (intentionally or otherwise) ignored that warning already. I'm not sure another "warning" in the comments is justified, but I sometimes give it nonetheless.

Answer 2

I don't have much to add, but I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Questions (not spam/obvious duplicates/completely incomprehensible walls of copy/pasted text) should not be closable unless it has 100 (or some other reasonable number of) views

Even just this sample question has only 32 views, and that's after a meta question linking to it has made it to hot meta posts. Presumably it had gathered close votes with much less views. This only tells me that the question was looked at by only those that had no interaction with the question other than clicking the close vote button. Why should any question be closed, if it hasn't even had enough time to be viewed by someone who actually understands the problem?

As it stands, the close vote system is flawed, unfriendly and should be overhauled. Questions should only be closable after they have reached a certain age or have gathered enough views.

Answer 3

I think a great deal of this comes from inexperienced reviewers trying to get through their day's allocation of reviews as quickly as possible to bring in the rep points.

I don't understand it, therefore it's "unclear".

If the question needs only that you do understand the topic, then I flag these as 'no longer needed', which then means a mod has to go to the bother of removing it.
In the meantime, I'm trying to get at least a first draft of an answer in, before it gets hammered into submission.

More experienced users will tend to vtc inside the question itself, rather than from review. If it really is a garbled mess, fine & dandy, try to get the user to make some sense - no point doing all the work for them, if they can't be bothered.

If, however, it's nothing more than a bit of newbie formatting that can be quickly rescued… rescue it.
No-one was born already knowing that markdown needs two spaces before a return & two returns to make a paragraph. It's easy to see if they tried single new-lines, saw they didn't really work in the preview… but then didn't know what else to try. Maybe they thought it would 'fix' itself once posted - some online forums do this, the preview is an even less accurate version of the final post than ours is.

For those, then, that are suffering only from 'rep point rushing' we need education.

I see a lot of these that have a single review comment. I check the review history & can see who did it - but there's no way to contact them to try educate. You can't reply to the bot, of course.

Perhaps this is an issue with how the review queues open up at certain privilege levels. I'm not sure it can be 'fixed' because it's invariably newer users fresh to the queues who are doing this. Raise the amount of reputation required might be one idea - but it may just push the issue further up the chain, and also mean fewer users are actually reviewing. Double-edged sword.

So - how do we educate?
The only way I can see it happening at present would be if a mod messages them with some words of advice. More work for the mods. No-one is gonna want that.

Perhaps we could sit a banner above the review queues, or pop a notice if they want to add that particular review comment…?

Are you certain this is actually unclear, or do you just not understand the topic?
Don't review topics you don't understand.
Use the Skip button instead.

Here's another from today. Reviewer clearly rushing through the queue & hardly paying any attention at all. No names, no pack drill, but I can easily find who posted it. By the time you read this it will probably be expunged.

Answer 4

This behavior of bulldozing threads is destroying the community little by little.

I, for instance, can't make a SINGLE thread that is not edited, marked as off-topic, Minus Oned, or another BIASED/SUBJECTIVE reason moderators find to close them.

• It's irritating
• It's disrespectful
• It's unconstructive.

Here's why it is also ridiculous: When a question is flagged as off-topic, instruction-seeking, opinion-magnet, or whatever, you can change a few words on the question and it "loses" the appearance that triggered that flag. This fact exposes the lack of interest in quality, but the clear fixation/obsession on appearances, forms and rituals.

No. That is NOT quality. Not even close.

The OP was sharp on his phrase: "Just because you don't understand a question doesn't automatically make it unclear"

Frank Thomas above also nailed: "I really don't like the idea that somehow superuser's overall "quality" as a Q/A site is based on the quality of other peoples questions/answers rather than on trying to reliably help people with questions find answers"

Well... I don't like either.

But then, there's the other guy above that had the gut to suggest to PENALIZE when someone answers a "off-topic" question.

I find this to be the pinnacle of an unconstructive behavior.

About the edits:

On many cases, all the editor does is altering my writing style to replace by theirs. Changing words that I disagree that give a better meaning, so on. In very few cases (I can't remember one) the changes are technical. I let them edit anyway, even disagreeing. Don't like being seen as stubborn.

Edit:

There you are: a perfect example of one of the "I didn't like your question, so I'm gonna downvote it, bash it, say it's not technical, and say it's not worth answering"

Revive dead SD Card

Question posted seconds before this answer