Yes, this is a duplicate of Using Programmers as "learning and training area" for Stack Overflow kind questions intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.
For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions. These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.
The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even attempt to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.
For 10k users, poke at the question close stats for the last 30 days.
To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:
This question appears to be a fix-my-code-dump request, an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is about: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773
or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the "I have no idea why you are asking this question here." There is also a smattering of other close reasons:
- We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.
- We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also How to Debug Small Programs.
- Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a "fix my code" request.
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.
There is also a fair amount of "I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]" and variations on that reason.
The first thing is realizing that no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow. Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.
However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see "1 new active question" and then look to see it is another poor quality "debug this for me" question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the recent meta questions (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).
Yes, there are a lot of questions here.
So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?
Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?
Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?
How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?
And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do you have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the "questions asked and closed within 48 hours" rate recently compared to historical trends?