7

I trully understand when a question is unproper for a site, but this is ridiculous.

My question was 'Do you have a phone on your desk?'. Obviously my intent was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer's daily work.

I believe my question follows some of Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines

Am I that wrong? Am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and some up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.

Can anybody please explain why people closed that question?

4
  • I guess one question is: Could the question have been rephrased to make it "constructive" in the eyes of the mod team?
    – glenatron
    Oct 28, 2010 at 13:48
  • possible duplicate of Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?
    – Peter Turner
    Oct 29, 2010 at 13:06
  • Ha, I voted to close this. I think it's the first thing I ever voted to close. Anyway, I completely sympathize with you and I'm certain that if every question that I ask is closed and every question that I answer is closed that eventually I'm going to get sick of this website. The only reason I voted to close the question is because Mr. C gave a much better answer than that Robert Cartaino guy could ever give you.
    – Peter Turner
    Oct 29, 2010 at 13:07
  • 6
    Don't we all have phones in our pockets? Is this question out of 1995?
    – Eric Wilson
    Oct 29, 2010 at 16:37

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7

You could have provided some context to make it a decent question. I'll admit, at first glance, this sounds like a really silly, nonsensical question. It might as well read "how many people have all their teeth?" Who the h— cares?

But now that you expound on the question here, I started thinking about it: "Wow, that really is an interesting question. Is it a distraction? Does it enhance productivity? Advantages, disadvantages? Can we do without it altogether?" If you spent an extra minute formulating the question, adding a bit of context or clarifying what you were asking, maybe it wouldn't have come off as so flip and pointless.

Let's chalk it up to "decent question, poorly asked."

2
  • 1
    +1 Robert, I agree it is not well formulated now that I read it again
    – sebagomez
    Oct 28, 2010 at 15:05
  • 2
    And it can be reopen if it be written in a constructive way.
    – Maniero
    Oct 28, 2010 at 17:13

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .