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WillSullivan / idownvotedbecause

I downvoted because...
http://idownvotedbecau.se
MIT License
265 stars 66 forks source link

Downvote reason for question being off-topic #48

Open Sirmyself opened 6 years ago

Sirmyself commented 6 years ago

some people just think stackoverflow is like a forum. A page explaining what a relevant question is could be great

There also already is a closure reason named like that.

Pamblam commented 6 years ago

If you don't think this violates the Acceptable subjects rule, I can do it.

WillSullivan commented 6 years ago

This would be a good example of when it's acceptable. Explaining what is and is not on topic happens all the time. But the range of reasons is pretty broad. I'm not sure if there should be one huge page on the subject, or multiple pages.

Maybe start off with the simplest case, where the question is blatantly off topic as defined in the help center. Then, we can see if hanging more edge cases feels right, or if other pages should be added as desired. Feel free to send in a pull request.

LindaLawton commented 6 years ago

I think something could be created for Stack overflow.

However the question would be can you make something general enough to work for all of stack exchange. As it stands most of these pages could probably be used for all of stack exchange.

@WillSullivan what is your intention with this? everything or just stack overflow?

WillSullivan commented 6 years ago

SO is the primary focus, but that's just because that's where I hang, and I got tired explaining why something deserved a downvote. There's no reason why not to branch out. The contributing file details how to add pages for other sites. I'd consider pages that can apply across communities to be put in a subfolder called "stackexchange", or something more general if they apply across domains.

klutt commented 6 years ago

I don't see any big reason for this. At least not for Stack Overflow. If a question is off topic, then vote or flag to close it.

WillSullivan commented 6 years ago

Yeah, that's the other side of the coin... Can an example of an off topic question being improved (or even the situation as a whole, such as a general misunderstanding of scope) by linking to a page here? I don't really have one, yet. Interested in feedback, tho.

klutt commented 6 years ago

Weel, depends. I think the definitions of "off topic" is a bit iffy. I don't know if I should consider a question without a clear problem statement necessarily off topic. Often I would consider it a bad question instead. But when it comes to questions that clearly belong to other pages, such as Superuser, Serverfault or Codereview I just vote to close without downvoting.