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When a "duplicate" close vote or flag is cast, a box appears above the question visible to the question's owner. It prompts the author to either edit the question to clarify its non-duplicateness or accept the duplicity by pressing a "yes, that solved my problem" button. If the user chooses that button, the Community user casts the final duplicate vote, ...
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Let's see. You're:
Taking existing content from other users on SuperUser and re-posting a subset of it in your own answers.
Asking extremely simplistic questions which are of low quality and can easily be googled, and have already been answered multiple times on the site before.
Repeatedly asking and answering your own questions with answer content that, ...
12
If the new question showed a decent research effort, there would be no reason to close it as a duplicate. For example
I need an answer for a recent Firefox version (I have Firefox 42). I saw this question, but the answer provided there suggests installing an addon which is not compatible with Firefox 42.
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My position—and I'm adamant about this—is that useful, high-quality answers should never be deleted even if the question is closed.
The question got to the point where a truly great answer was posted to it. Our primary goal here at Stack Exchange is to build a knowledge base for readers as well as to provide a reliable venue for high-quality Q&A. The ...
11
Over the last months (years?), we've definitely changed our minds and raised our bar when it comes to shopping (or product) recommendations.
I'm looking for a simple yet effective software to watermark a lot of photos in batch.
This is definitely one of these. The questions we'd have to ask are: Which batch resizing tools have you tried? or Where are you ...
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Thanks for pointing out the other questions. They've been closed accordingly.
If you look at the other examples you linked to, you'll find that the most answers just consist of links to resources. This is a problem. We don't want to build up a list of links. We want actual answers here. But those link-only answers are of course just the symptom of the ...
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Most questions that ask "why" a manufacturer did or did not do something are unlikely to be answered with a clear, definitive questions and foster discussions. The answer with +14 votes was exemplary, but I assume that the closing of the question was on principle. (Good question too!)
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I'm having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind closing questions. Not that I think questions shouldn't be closed, but I do not understand the reasoning and/or thought processes behind closing questions, ...
The Super User FAQ goes into wide detail on the reasoning behind closing questions; most of the questions you have linked are subjective in a ...
10
Could we have fixed this question […] encouraging the user to edit or rephrase the question himself?
This is mentioned in the banner below:
Also, commenters have been very verbose, including Darth Android, who said:
If you could clarify exactly what criteria would define a "correct" answer to this question, it would be a large step to making it ...
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I would like to start off with the "negative" aspect of questions being closed. Yes, I agree that the [closed] might look negative and can scare away people. The team acknowledged that – and they are currently reworking the entire closing process to address this. For example, the reasons for closure will be rewritten, and the actual wording of the close ...
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There's not a lot to fix here. As far as I can see you've phrased the question correctly. You even specifically say:
i.e. the answer should be applicable in any case; I'd like this question to provide a good reference for those who want to calculate this cost.
This is what we absolutely encourage, and the question should be as canonical as possible. You ...
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First of all the question as it originally stood was way below acceptable quality standards, it simply posted some random lines of code with no explanation at to what the intention was, what it actually achieved, or what was going wrong. You are right that it should have been closed, whether for low quality or being off-topic.
This is one of those murky ...
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Because it was. You're asking for a list, which generally doesn't fit into the Q&A format, of products not supported by that product. An alternate close reason might be that its too broad
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I don't spend a lot of time here on a regular basis, so I'm mostly happy to defer to the elected moderator team. I thought about this question for a minute, though, and decided to add a concurrence on the issue.
When I think of Super User, the bottom line that comes to mind is "technical problems with a home computer." This question doesn't meet either ...
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"There's no actual problem to be solved" -> Does a question have to be about a problem? I don't see it specified on superuser.com/help/on-topic. Many questions posted on this website aren't about problems, e.g. How does a computer restart itself?, which has received 483 upvotes and 3 downvotes so far.
Questions just seeking general knowledge are fine, ...
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Addressing your 'bulk rename' question
Your question here on SU Meta has two distinct parts, so I'll give you my take one by one.
My question here has been closed. Rename files 000…001…002… to 001…002…003 as too broad. It is extremely clear what I am asking. I'm asking of a simple way for these files to be renamed, using anything in Windows or Linux.
I ...
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It was closed under the "shopping or product recommendation" clause of the off topic section.
If you had already bought a device and needed to get it working for your set up, that would be on topic. If it was about better understanding what you should look for in an item, that too would be on topic.
Super User works to give expert and knowledgeable advice ...
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In January 2012, I didn't happen to be a moderator yet.
Since the ♦ is added to the user names wherever they're displayed, this also retroactively affects all "closed as" messages, leading to:
closed as off topic by slhck♦, Mokubai, Journeyman Geek, Nifle, Sathya♦
Free unicorn for somebody who finds a question closed by five diamond moderators.
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Generally, if your question attracts a lot of answers that are merely statements of opinions, then it might be the fault of the question, but it doesn't have to be. In the former case, the question should be closed, in the latter, the answers should be downvoted and/or deleted.
In my opinion, both "Is FTP safe?" is very opinion-based.
If FTP is safe can ...
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Basically the community consensus is that software recommendation questions are off topic for superuser. You can ask them on Software recommendations, as long as you meet the quality criteria.
There's another issue here - SE as a whole isn't really a replacement for good research - While you have a clearly articulated idea of what you think you need - the ...
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Did a quick review of the question. Seems I closed an earlier version of it, but seems fine. I did have to prune a lot of the older answers, which weren't all that good.
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It was closed because it's been cross-posted, and there's no point in having questions accumulate answers on both sites, where they diverge and the information is spread across the whole Stack Exchange network.
I actually left a comment on the very same question:
I'll have to close this here since you've cross posted. In the future, please only post your ...
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In general, question regarding software recommendation are very often considered off-topic.
If you want to know more about this ongoing issue, I would advise you to look into the numerous questions we already have discussing that topic. Such as:
Why was my software-rec question closed?
How literally does SU take "not about a shopping or buying ...
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The problem with your question is that you mention the problem but you don't mention what do you want to do with it - are you looking at steps to correct what IE sends? Are you looking at ways of getting around the problem?
Please note that what's obvious to you after your hours of research isn't necessarily general perception.
Your question says
...
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This question perturbed me as it doesn't seem to have a clear home. I bugged mSO about it, and they say it doesn't belong there. There was a suggestion for SF, which it patently does not fit, and another for Pro Webmasters, which sounds iffy at best.
There is a slight quality issue, which contributes to the problem. There is no cut and dry question, but ...
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The easiest way to ask a good question is to have it about a real problem. Lets pick this question apart.
From your question
"This hypothetical setup would be a vanilla Debian installation with
nginx and such."
From the [FAQ]
you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______
happened?”
Also from your question
How does this ...
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Let's go through the original question, one bit at a time:
Lenovo Thinkpad W520 - Add 128GB or 256GB Vertex 4
It's nice that he was specific enough to list his exact hardware, but it seems that we would unable to offer him any meaningful advice in the general sense of having an SSD. For example, your storage strategy on a 64 GB SSD would be very ...
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Why is it that a closed thread can continue to be downvoted even if
it's legitimate, just needing tweaking by the question asker?
I’m not 100 sure of the official reason, but you can also up-vote a question if it is closed as well. And you can down-vote an open question and accepted answer as well. Votes are opinions and nothing more. Closed questions don’...
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tldr: That's how the site works, there's multiple mechanisms in place.
We need to balance between quality control and "user friendlyness". However there is essentially a need to close things that are clearly off topic and/or move them somewhere appropriate. Having too many questions that don't meet the scope of the site means its harder to find what they ...
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Your question does not relate to any actual computer hardware or software issue, and it's asking about best practices that are common for system administrators.
There are two issues with this:
Asking for best practices is often considered not constructive (although I think your question has merit)
We make a distinction between questions for home users (i.e....
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
