Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions, influence site policy, or debate a particular topic, with the goal of reaching a community consensus.
680 questions
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Community Promotion Ads - 1H 2011 [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Community Promotion Ads - 2012
What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On Here?
TL;DR -- put images and links in the answers. If they get voted up enough, they will ...
40
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4
answers
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PSA: Just because *you* don't understand a question doesn't automatically make it unclear
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 ...
35
votes
4
answers
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Concept of "conditional" downvotes?
Down-voted questions seem to fall into two categories: fixable and unfixable. Some questions are just inappropriate, easily answerable with minimal search effort, or have other problems for which ...
35
votes
1
answer
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A new way to clean up tags
This is the proposal. Please see Help us clean up tags! for the result.
Let's face it, we have tons of horrible tags.
In the past, we used Old monthly tag cleanups to keep track of what needs to be ...
31
votes
3
answers
859
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What is the correct way to deal with obsolete answers?
Sometimes old answers were correct at the time they were written, but the march of technology has made them obsolete.
For example, the command-line video encoding tool ffmpeg used to have a 'vhooks'...
27
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11
answers
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Are video game questions appropriate for superuser?
Or is it time to create another site?
questions could be general discussion or tips/tricks
24
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1
answer
707
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What steps can I take to check and improve lower quality questions?
It is sometimes unclear in which way a question should be handled. What can I do to check why excactly it doesn't meet our standards? What could I do to inform the user and improve it to be of higher ...
16
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20
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Community Promotion Ads - 2014 [duplicate]
It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are ...
16
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2
answers
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How can we take care of our old duplicates?
What's going on …
There is a trend that is very easy to explain.
A question is asked.
It gets a few answers, and because it's the first of its kind (i.e. topic-wise), it receives a lot of popularity
...
15
votes
1
answer
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Mechanism for scrapping bad audit questions?
I occasionally see recommendations here to scrap specific review audit questions. It isn't clear whether there is actually a mechanism to do that.
I assume the system uses the audit examples over ...
14
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2
answers
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What could we do with the [error] tag?
Well, we have a tag called error. Its description says:
Please use a more specific tag instead.
Awesome. So what do all these 547 questions have in common? A non-descriptive tag. On Oct. 10, @...
13
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3
answers
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Are diagnostics/troubleshooting issues on-topic and not too localized?
Following on from this question. I made a comment there:
By the same token, we shouldn't automatically close any question that says "virus" anywhere in the subject or body, because it may be that ...
12
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1
answer
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Should I delete my own question if no new answer can be validated?
A while ago, I asked this question for which no solution was found. I have since re-installed the host in question and gave it to a family member.
So now I will be unable to validate any answers given ...
12
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1
answer
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Should potentially "Dangerous" answers be flagged/deleted?
Referring to this question: Restore MacBook Pro to factory settings without disc, I find it rather reckless to post an answer to an OP that obviously does not know what the effects will be.
Should ...
11
votes
1
answer
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Are "error" and "problem" meta-tags?
From http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/:
If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.
Clearly, error and problem fit this criterion.
If ...
9
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5
answers
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Why was the question "Why are there 8 bits per byte?" closed?
TL;DR: I'm looking for opinions on why this question should be open or closed.
Answer: I now understand why it has been closed: It is not a real problem because it has no practical use.
https://...
8
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2
answers
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Is it kosher to accept your answer on your own question?
I've on occasion come across the answer to my question, and feel that it's the best answer, but do not want to "rob" anyone of rightfully earned rep... What do I do? Also I'm assuming that I do NOT ...
5
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2
answers
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Should questions related to problems with beta software/prototype hardware be closed?
I saw that Windows 8.1 Preview No sound on Macbook Pro Retina was closed since it's Preview/Beta code and the issue may very well be fixed by MS or the PC manufacturer in the months to come before ...
3
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2
answers
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Software recommendation and software-rec tag [duplicate]
I think most people feel software recommendations are off topic here at SU - please correct me if I'm wrong.
Yet, we have a software-rec tag. Is this not confusing?
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1
answer
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How Do I Log Out? [duplicate]
Just as title says: how do I log out of this site? - I am certain that it is not good practice just closing my browser down, but I cannot find a sign-out link anywhere. - Has anyone else found one?
63
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3
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The monster that can't be killed
The microsoft tag is like something from a sci-fi horror movie. This manufacturer meta tag was cleaned out in March of this year, but people keep using it. I just fixed the third question in the ...
59
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2
answers
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Over 54,000 questions with no answers!
We have over 54,000 questions with no answers, this feels somewhat like a concern to me.
Some other ideas than just answering include:
Give bounties to the highest voted questions, helping them get ...
58
votes
1
answer
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Use of ChatGPT is now banned on Super User
Following the discussion (Should we ban ChatGPT on Super User? - Meta Super User) regarding the usage of ChatGPT to generate questions or answers on Super User the community have voted in favour of a ...
49
votes
0
answers
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Calling all bloggers.... Again
It's that time of the year again... Where I've completed my finals, my work tasks have slimmed a little and I think to myself I can get the blog back up and going again. So here we are! I'm calling ...
43
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14
answers
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Super User website applications policy
I recently asked this question on Super User, and a big discussion arose on appropriate questions. The issue came down to the new verbiage in the FAQ:
I had figured that the websites line was just ...
37
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2
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What the heck happened that made the question I answered so popular (and my answer along with it)?
I answered the question If 32-bit machines can only handle numbers up to 2^32, why can I write 1000000000000 (trillion) without my machine crashing? with a quick off the top of my head answer because ...
32
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1
answer
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The Master Spam List: Known spammers, spam domains, and associated IP addresses
This is a list of known spammers, spam domains, and IP addresses to which these domains point.
This list is derived from spam patterns observed on Super User as well as information from DNS and ...
29
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4
answers
345
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Correct way to handle users requesting scripts/formulae?
I'm still trying to work out the best way to handle questions where a user is requesting an Excel formula, VBA, a batch file etc. It seems the general consensus is to request the user to include what ...
26
votes
2
answers
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Why don't people upvote when browsing the site?
I've been on the StackExchange boards for quite some time now and it seems that people don't upvote other's answers anymore when browsing the site. At least from my experience.
Let's take this ...
24
votes
4
answers
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Are hardware (port, cable, etc.) visual identification questions allowed or not?
Are hardware (port, cable, etc.) visual identification questions allowed or not? Specifically when it's basically just "What's this port?" and a picture.
Examples:
What is a name of this port? And ...
22
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3
answers
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Unanswered questions that are answered without upvotes or accepted answers
The Unanswered tab at the top shows that there are more than 8,000 unanswered questions, it also seems to increase every day. I think it's a bad behavior that this keeps increasing...
Don't ...
22
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0
answers
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Reduce Tag Ambiguity by Requiring Objects for Transitive Verbs
It's all in the title I'd say...
In short, I'm suggesting that we add 'object' validation for single-transitive verb tags without object qualifiers... For instance ... 'split' would require the ...
21
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5
answers
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Are purely non-technical answers to technical problems on-topic?
I edited this question yesterday as part of a cleanup spree. It had already gotten a fair bit of activity, but someone tweeted a link to it after I edited it, and things really took off.
The topic of ...
20
votes
3
answers
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What time of the day is Super User getting the least traffic?
Due to the recent discussion about edit flooding, and one possible counter measure mentioned by @Grace Note ...
You may consider that it is often wiser to perform massive edit jobs during low ...
20
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2
answers
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The infamous "My PC is freezing" question...
We all know what they are:
My PC is freezing and I don't know
what to do? Please help me! Here's my
specs:
I think it's a windows 7
It has a power supply
There's some RAM ...
20
votes
1
answer
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Vote to Close the Vote to Close chat room
With the new Review System, questions are getting closed/reopened/improved more rapidly then before. Looking at the room activity, it's been 43 days since something was asked in there, other then one ...
20
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2
answers
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Where do EC2 and AWS questions truly belong?
I am a moderator on Web Applications, and I would like to address the points of this Web Apps Meta question to a wider audience, because we get more than a handful of questions on these topics that ...
20
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1
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What is the definition of "corporate IT support"?
I've run into a few questions like this one: Restricting certain printers to certain programs. The question was written by someone working in a company. I get the impression that it is a small ...
20
votes
6
answers
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Official stance on Facebook questions on SU?
https://superuser.com/questions/73214/facebook-profiles-for-non-people-okay
Ok, there are many questions that reference Facebook, but this one seems to be directly about facebook. I need an official ...
20
votes
0
answers
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Tag Synonym request: [task-scheduler] vs. [windows-task-scheduler]
A pair of tags I came across on Super User - both task-scheduler and windows-task-scheduler exist, but as far I can see they're both the same thing:
task-scheduler: a component in Windows that, like ...
19
votes
3
answers
506
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Add a 'No Caps Lock' message/hint/check on the website
I've seen a lot of questions that are originally in CAPS LOCK and with no formatting at all. Most recently, was this and this question with caps lock body, this question with caps lock title, and this ...
18
votes
4
answers
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Is it rude to answer a question that has been solved in comments?
In this question
Make system sounds louder than device
A couple different people helped the OP discover the solution to his problem in comments.
In cases like this, is it best to just suggest to ...
17
votes
4
answers
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Submit your Blog post for the Super User Contest here:
This is an area were users can submit their entries for 'best blog post' part of the Super User 2nd Anniversary Competition. Feel free to post your submission here in its entirety. Other user can ...
17
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3
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Should non-substantial edits be approved or rejected?
Should we accept/improve edit suggestions where the editors could obviously have done more?
Example 1: Fixing only one letter
Take this edit suggestion as an example. The only difference between the ...
16
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4
answers
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Is there a policy for or against providing executables and other self hosted downloads?
My specific case is on my answer here.
Is there any policy (on SuperUser or StackExchange) in either direction concerning providing an executable I uploaded myself for others to download? Of course, ...
16
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4
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Proposal: Sponsoring some Community FAQs and Canonical Answers
The other day in chat, Daniel Beck and Surfasb helped come up with the idea of sponsoring questions with bounties to create or improve some Community FAQs and canonical answer posts.
If you're not ...
16
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9
answers
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Is downvoting link only answers acceptable?
Related:
Ban lmgtfy (le me google that for you) links
Based on the Why is linking bad? question as well as Are answers that contain only links really good answers? question, is it acceptable ...
16
votes
1
answer
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Should we look up existing answers when reviewing?
Today I got an audit (which I passed because I tried to edit it - it throws a "has been deleted" error) of a seemingly good answer (I lost the link). The answer is good, however it has been removed ...
16
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2
answers
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Flagging posts that answer the question with something the OP has already dismissed
Note: This is a follow-up on Is “Y” really a valid answer to “I want X, and tried to do Y, but it doesn't work”? — because I don't think this is sufficiently answered, or at least doesn't seem too ...
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10
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How do I create the Super User Logo in text?
The superuser logo has a square bracket and a curly bracket. is there a keyboard or ascii character for the "eye" dot?