Linked Questions

21 votes
29 answers
2k views

Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative Phase II

Back in 2012, we launched the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative (STCI). It was very successful in identifying tags to create, merge, remove, and blacklist. However, it has been about 3 years since ...
46 votes
11 answers
22k views

Why was my question closed or down voted?

Help! My question was closed (or down voted). Why? And what can I do about it? Downvoted Duplicate Off topic What technology to take up next Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper,...
14 votes
8 answers
1k views

3 votes for closing/reopening experiment: the results

I'm sure you remember this experiment, which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost ...
Jon Ericson's user avatar
26 votes
5 answers
1k views

How to discourage crowd-pleasing non-answers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st-Hai1y54 A lot of good and fairly specific questions on P.SE end up getting answers that are witty, abstract, agreeable and popular -- but have no substance, and don'...
Rei Miyasaka's user avatar
  • 4,551
11 votes
3 answers
2k views

Why was "Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?" re-opened?

Every day we get opinionated questions asked here. People seem to think that this is the place to ask them. New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as ...
user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
536 views

To people who vote to reopen everything - *why*?

I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see. I've gotta ask... why do you do this? A bit ...
user avatar
12 votes
4 answers
554 views

Provide 10k users more close votes

Please provide 10k+ users more close votes. Why? Putting questions on-hold in a timely fashion is critical in providing useful feedback to new users. It's rare for salvageable questions to be put on-...
user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
728 views

Now that 3 close votes has been proven and implemented on Stack Overflow, can we have the same on Software Engineering, please?

I won't belabor the research by repeating it here. It's been described in exhaustive detail at this post. The executive summary: Closing, editing and reopening all become more effective. Can we ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
3k views

Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?

A common form of question that is often asked is the "what are some examples of..." While this is hinted at in the help center Please make sure that your question is not too broad, or strongly ...
user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
156 views

Not programming related

I just landed on Area51, and checked programmers.stackexchange description. So are we being unfair to close question which are related to career and indirectly related to software? Those are ...
TheTechGuy's user avatar
  • 1,045
20 votes
1 answer
1k views

Recent Trouble With Popularity

A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in The Trouble With Popularity article: we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too ...
gnat's user avatar
  • 20.9k
9 votes
2 answers
226 views

What questions recently closed can be salvaged?

When people ask about Programmers.SE being too negative, closing too many things, or needing to be more inclusive - the best way to approach this is probably to look at the questions that have been ...
user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
217 views

What is needed to really fix a question (an Atwood transform)

You've found a poor question that you really think has some merit to it. What things are needed to successfully do this transformation of making a poor question into a good one? The Atwood transform ...
user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
290 views

The system supports questions with multiple answers poorly (and is becoming worse at it)

TL;DR Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers? Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would ...
gnat's user avatar
  • 20.9k
2 votes
1 answer
97 views

How can this question be fixed?

In looking at various questions that are specifically mentioning a tool (as they are often tool questions that should have been asked on Stack Overflow years ago instead of here), I've come across ...
user avatar