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I asked a question.

The question was very shortly after closed by moderators without any comments. Isn't this bad practice? This also annoyed another contributor who was writing a detailed answer to this "founded question" (his words) and the closing blocked him from posting the answer.

I asked for feedback on how to improve the question and after receiving it, I edited the still closed question to meet all the requirements (both those ones given by the moderator and the ones mentioned in the On-topic section of the help.

I waited a couple of days but I had no feedback on the edits and the question stays closed. So I then raised a flag for moderation attention. This is still pending since about 1 week.

What can I do in this stage?

Since the question is pretty clear and concrete, I am afraid that by asking a "new question" (the suggestion in the "closed" banner) I will ask the "same question" and then people will close it because they consider it: duplicate/spam/abusive/etc.

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  • The issue with this question is, though it is well written and presenting your own research as well as the problem constraints, that it provides a working solution and ends with "My question is: is there a better database schema?". Honestly, I have no idea what would count as "better". What other type of solution would you consider to be "better"? Why is your current solution not satisfying?
    – Doc Brown
    May 14, 2020 at 12:02
  • ... nethertheless, since Christophe said he likes to write an answer, I voted to reopen, so now you have at least 2 reopening votes.
    – Doc Brown
    May 14, 2020 at 12:06
  • 2
    ... and now, since your question was reopened again, you should edit the question and explain what kind of "better" solution you are looking for, and why your current solution does not please you. Otherwise don't be astonished if your question gets closed again. Thanks.
    – Doc Brown
    May 15, 2020 at 5:29
  • Thanks for triggering the reopening. Regarding the "better" it is explained in the last bullets of the question. I asked this question because: 1. somehow this does not feel the natural way to handle such data; 2. I don't have enough experience with different databases to known what better some databases could provide and 3. I am asking the community assuming I am not the first one to have this issue and they might point me in the right direction.
    – Gabriel Petrovay
    May 15, 2020 at 13:06
  • You wrote "* avoid multiple updates" - does you current solution require this? More than you think which is unavoidable? And you wrote "* simplify querying and aggregation" - your solution table looks quite simple and suitable for querying and aggregation at a first glance. So what is the actual problem here?
    – Doc Brown
    May 15, 2020 at 13:13
  • On "multiple updates": for every event you have to perform an UPDATE (close the previous interval) and an INSERT (start the new interval). This becomes 1 INSERT and 2 UPDATES if an event comes out of order. Plus all the reads to determine if this event is out of order and which are the events before and after that need to be updated.
    – Gabriel Petrovay
    May 15, 2020 at 13:28
  • On "simplify querying and aggregation": I am not aware of an aggregation way to do: group by name, sort by from, then eliminate consecutive duplicate status rows (hence joining the consecutive intervals with the same status). Then one would have the required intervals to report. All is doable in code or in stored procedures. Is this the only way? I know there are worse. But I don't know how to improve this.
    – Gabriel Petrovay
    May 15, 2020 at 13:33
  • 1
    And that is exactly the information which I think was missing in the question. No need to post it all here again, editing the question was quite enough, thanks for the clarification! I hope it will get now some good answers!
    – Doc Brown
    May 15, 2020 at 13:36

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You wait.

I closed it in response to flags. The post should now be in the review queue, since it was edited and has a reopen vote. Your second flag is still pending for a second moderator to review. I haven't handled that flag since I don't believe that the problems have been resolved and the question remains overly broad, but we'll see what either the community (through the review queue) or another moderator (via the flag) thinks.

Right now, there's only one reopen vote on the question - if it gets more traction, then I'll handle the flag to speed up the reopening. Closing was not done unilaterally - there was a close vote and multiple flags suggesting the closure. Reopening won't just one or two people overriding those multiple people.

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  • I see the issues with this question, but since Christophe said he likes to answer, I would not stop him. Often a good answer can balance certain "flaws" in a question.
    – Doc Brown
    May 14, 2020 at 12:11
  • ... and I am not sure if the OP can understand from your answer why you think it is too broad (I tried to explain to him why I think it is, but if you have a different or better explanation, you may add it to your answer)
    – Doc Brown
    May 14, 2020 at 12:17

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