57
Two things - it's on the hot network question list, and it's on Hacker News. It's also the sort of thing that geeks find hilarious.
I'd add it doesn't have one answer - we've occasionally had to shove a few bad answers out the airlock.
These things just occasionally happen ;)
32
Optimally, voting is how the correct answer is recognized. In practice, though, sometimes people vote up answers that are long just because they look thorough.
I notice that, in this case, neither answer has even a single link. The information might be true, but at the moment it's not backed up by credible sources. In many cases, links aren't necessary ...
23
I can think of a few things. The question as is seemed rather silly at first, but resulted in awesome answers with lots of geeky technical things. The former got it eyeballs initially and the latter got it votes.
The answers were extremely good, and got upvoted as well. This resulted in it being added to hot questions, where network effect took over.
So......
23
I posted the toaster question as I genuinely wanted to know what was going on with the toaster icon and was completely confused by it.
I'd googled around a bunch for it but couldn't find anything about it at the time. About half an hour after posting it I found someone else with the same question on Microsoft's own support site but no proper answer as to ...
20
I've nominated the question to be reopened.
The request is clear enough to me and is likely to be useful to other users as well. I believe the only issue is that there is no indication of what the user has tried. This in itself is not a valid reason for closing a question.
If users take offense at a perceived lack of effort, they should feel free to down ...
19
I agree with you Jeff, however I feel this might sound a little hypocritical to an outsider. I think we need a very clear definition of obscure before we start allowing certain shopping recommendations.
As of now it is easy since we take a hard line with shopping recommendations but once we start making exceptions we need to clearly define those exceptions ...
17
You are specifically looking for a (software) product recommendation.
This is not accepted on this site by the diamond moderators team due to the following part of the FAQ:
Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …
[…]
computer software
[…]
and it is not about …
[…]
a shopping or ...
15
Er.. what? Resize a Word document? A .png image? A text file? A Doom .wad file?
The question as stated makes no sense.
15
That close reason is basically there to give us a way to take care of questions where the answer is "Only [manufacturer] could know," or "it's a bug, that's what you get for running pre-release software". A question about how to use new features or how something works, as in the case of this question, is fine. We just don't want to become a support site for ...
14
The automatic comment used indicates that the reviewers thought you were asking a question to get clarification. I can understand why they would think that - if it's unclear what a question is asking, you should leave comments to accomplish that. If you're giving a solution that depends on information not given by the poster, that can be acceptable if you're ...
13
In general, an interesting question that inspires curiosity among readers is going to be a hit.
My question, "Why do computers count from zero?", proved to be a success as well (to a lesser extent). Once you start getting a lot of hits, the question naturally gets spread around, causing it to get even more hits, and the cycle goes on until the question runs ...
13
What should we do about these questions?
Answer them. Don't delete questions just because they have an answer somewhere else.
Some advice:
We don't generally migrate questions to other sites if they are on-topic for Super User.
If there is an answer somewhere else on the Stack Exchange Network it can be used as a source reference for an answer on Super ...
13
It was declined automatically by the system after 3 users reviewed it stating that it should be left open.
While there are indeed two problems listed in the question they appear, at a glance, to be very closely related and could actually have the same root cause.
The "asking too many questions" reason for closure usually means that they are asking for ...
12
You're soliciting a list. That's it.
The Stack Exchange Google+ Plussing share upthumbing of it said why the best:
There are a host of free and open sourced alternatives to the default Windows image app.
And most of the time, when it's linked to from the Google+ or Twitter accounts, it's going to be a bad question.
Asking for alternatives should be ...
12
In addition to those two sources mentioned by Journeyman Geek, this question has also appeared on reddit, under the /r/sysadmin sub amongst others. That subreddit alone drew at least 10,000 individual visits.
11
So, the rule on shopping recommendations needs to be revised, as there are exceptions which we can allow.
For example, Recommended gigabit 802.11n routers that work with DD-WRT is another one where expertise in our niche is required, why is this so? You can easily check out reviews around the web that help you choose a Gigabit 802.11n router which you could ...
11
Well, it can be interpreted in many, many ways! Are you trying to:
Resize an image to another resolution?
Resize a file by cutting away/splitting data?
Resize a file by adding/removing data?
etc?
It's too vague to tell what you actually want to resize in its current form. Furthermore, we don't want to check up on you. Most of the time, stating the purpose ...
11
Consider that it's talking about Windows XP, something regulars to the site likely no longer use unless forced, and you have mostly one-time visitors from search engines.
There's quite a bit of anonymous feedback for the question and its answers though, which is recorded similar to votes, but doesn't affect a post's score (and isn't visible on the site): ...
11
Well, I disagree it's off-topic for Super User. Per our Help Center
Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a
question about …
computer software
And compilers definitely do fall under computer software - and the question specifically asks about how do you compile a compiler using the language it's supposed to be ...
10
You could close the old question as a duplicate of the new one. This would solve two problems:
The old post is unclear, and thus should be closed
The same question was posed in two places.
10
This is the phrase that highlights why the question is too broad:
Would this be enough? What would be the most full-fledged way of going about this?
You can remove that, but you'll still be left with coming up with many ways to set up these false identities, the hoops to jump, trying to second guess whatever detection the other end has, etc.
Super User ...
10
Wait. Eventually someone will answer the question. There is also a system that automatically 'bumps' questions without answers to the front page after a certain amount of time.
We also have a section in the Help Center about this: https://superuser.com/help/no-one-answers
Bumping questions is also frowned upon:
https://superuser.com/questions/986865/...
10
Since I wrote the original question very badly, contextually and structurally, of course, everybody assumed I am not very sophisticated with technology or put zero to no effort into researching the problem, hence downvoting the question and upvoting comments with the intent of me bettering my question.
The community voted on the quality of the contribution ...
9
The title should be helpful in finding the question when someone with a similar problem does a search. You have a valid point that including random diagnostics in the title doesn't help and probably hinders.
Putting Windows Update in the title introduces the same problem. It presupposes the cause and may deflect people who don't recognize that a Windows ...
9
As comments have noted, the criteria I would use when judging which of two otherwise duplicate questions to be marked duplicate is based on quality, not time.
If one of the questions is very recent and hasn't garnered any attention yet, AND the older question it is being marked duplicate of is low quality to the point where its answers are not correct, then ...
9
Though I would like to point out that I am not asking for a product recommendation, service or learning material, though I can see why it seems like I am. (Although granted, learning material may/does apply.)
While you might not be asking for a product recommendation, you are seeking our opinion, in order to determine if a browser can be trusted. ...
8
Let me quote the FAQ real quick:
Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …
computer hardware
computer software
(emphasis mine)
… so, yes, your question is on-topic :)
And please, don't refrain from asking questions just because they are specific. Just make them good questions that can be useful ...
8
There are already 242 notepad++ questions, so yes asking a software-specific question, even about Notepad++ is perfectly on-topic
8
What does "mobilize" even mean? It is unclear what you're trying to achieve.
Why post another question on Super User if the same thing was asked on Stack Overflow already?
Your question shows no research effort.
8
It doesn't seem to be on topic
The question exists on SO, a site we have very little content overlap with. While you acknowledge its existence on SO, you don't explain why you're asking on SU. Which leads to…
It is unclear what you want
The SO question is from the POV of the web site owner. Yours doesn't seem to be, but you're still calling it "cross-post",...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
