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This post highlights the issue with overly zealous mods on SO who marked the question as off topic. Nothing about this is off topic, and it turned out to be ver

This post highlights the issue with overly zealous mods on SO who marked the question as off topic. Nothing about this is off topic, and it turned out to be very interesting answer.

gortok 13y ago
The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it? To have it reopened, all the OP needs to do is give the community all the information they need to reproduce the issue. Should we ask any less? It's also worth noting that the question was not closed by moderators (denoted by diamonds next to their name), but by members of the community with high reputation (> 3000). These users have community moderation powers by virtue of their reputation, but are not moderators per se. If you have over 3000 reputation, you could vote to reopen. Full disclosure: I am an elected moderator for Stack Overflow: http:stackoverflow.com/users/16587/george-stocker
- RogerL 13y ago
  And yet the community did find the answer.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- overgard 13y ago
  A) The community did find the answer, regardless. B) Someone is gifting free interesting content to the site; even if it's imperfect does the reaction have to be so harsh? This is, personally, exactly why I never post on stack overflow. You're acting like you're doing them a favor by letting them post there, when they're doing you a favor by giving you interesting content in the first place.
  - Manishearth 13y ago
    B) "Someone is gifting free interesting content to the site". That's the attitude that caused Yahoo! Answers. SE has a higher quality bar, so that there are good, answerable questions. If a question seems unanswerable to many (not due to incompetence but due to incompleteness/clarity/broadness/etc), then it is put on hold. It can be reopened if it gets fixed; putting it on hold lets it get fixed, whilst preventing answers (which might use the wrong interpretation, etc) while it is getting fixed. Saves time for all.
  - insteadof 13y ago
    The community, not moderators, closed the question. The community also had an answer based on "Pure speculation" which means they can't replicate what the OP asked. A user can gift all the free interesting content they want. But if it's not scoped or on topic, then it's not scoped for the site or on topic and would be closed and/or deleted. Just because Rodney Dangerfield turns up to your bedroom and starts making jokes doesn't mean it's the time or place.
    - sanderjd 13y ago
      Your analogy is bad because it would be very hard to ignore Rodney Dangerfield in your bedroom, but it is very easy to ignore these sorts of questions. At worst it sits there and nobody comes up with an answer. We aren't running out of bits.
      - dionidium 13y ago
        Real-world analogies don't always work on virtual problems, even when they seem to on the surface. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard way to respond [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4273324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4273324
      - euank 13y ago
        We aren't "running out of bits", but we have a highly limited amount of time and screen real-estate. The reason it was marked as such was so that other people didn't waste time on an unreproducible problem until it was fixed to be reproducible. At worst, it sits there and wastes many people's time, thus getting in the way of actually reproducible questions getting seen and answered. Note, that this is not regarding this one question, but thousands - certainly there are a large number of items selected for moderator action.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it? Disagree. OP failed to exclude some possibilities by doing multiple randomized trials and so on (or at least stating whether he had done so), but he supplied the source code and a description of the behavior that was perfectly adequate to understand the issue. Nothing personal, but your post above is the epitome of deflecting a question instead of engaging with it.
  - rgovind 13y ago
    It would be very nice if we could share or clone our development environment and let contributors on Stackoverflow play with it, rather than try to reproduce on their computers. Of course it has its dangers, but once solved, it would be an awesome addition to SO.
    - davyjones 13y ago
      This is the exact goal of vagrant. The toolset is already in place. I just wish more people use it while filing issues.
    - peeters 13y ago
      I agree it would be cool, and occasionally useful, but I think overall such a tool would be a negative. The goal of boiling down code to the smallest, most portable example which demonstrates the problem isn't just to get more effective help. It's a vital step in isolating the issue, and when duly used, often results in the problem being found without help. Furthermore, it gives answers the quality of being more useful to those who find the question later. That's because while two actual pieces of code that have the same bug will appear almost unrelated, their simplest reductions will bear similarity to each other. I think adoption of a tool that just lets one share their dev environment would discourage this sort of due diligence, and encourage the useless "here's a dump of my code please fix it"-type questions.
    - jader201 13y ago
      At first, I thought you were being flippant, but then I realized in horror that you were serious. While I know you were coming from a good place -- I'm all about automating a testable problem (i.e. TDD, write failing tests first), and I think in the right hands, this would be a nice tool -- I could only see SO using this to further enforce strict requirements in what they consider a "valid" question. "You must set up a lab environment that fully replicates the issue in question." Maybe they wouldn't let it go that far (I would hope), but I think it would head in that direction.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  >" What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it?" Well in real life, those are the tough ones and where help is more appreciated. The only bugs that I remember are the ones that were random or that nobody else could reproduce and yet were there.
- est 13y ago
  > The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. Why close other's question because of your own incompetence? Why the fuck prevent a question from been answered because only five retards can't get it? Isn't the solemn purpose of the site is to wait until someone who is capable of reproducing it and solve it?
- moomin 13y ago
  Hard to see how the OP could have tracked this down, being unaware of the feature.
- talmand 13y ago
  I would say if a member with a high reputation has moderation powers then that member is a moderator. They may not have the full powers of an elected moderator, but that would just make them a lower level moderator. It seems the comment can be considered accurate.
ghayes 13y ago
If you're interested in this, then please vote in the SO elections, going on now. http://stackoverflow.com/election http://stackoverflow.com/election
- RogerL 13y ago
  But everyone is saying "elect me and I will close and flag more posts"
  - enscr 13y ago
    Sadly true. I despise those who take pride in flagging & downvoting just for the heck of it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- boie0025 13y ago
  "you need at least 150 reputation to vote" - heh
pavanky 13y ago
The problem the user was facing had nothing to do with java. I'd say that is pretty much off topic.
- cjensen 13y ago
  It had everything to do with programming, which is on topic. It's a pet peeve of mine. At least 10% of the time I google for a answer to a programming question it takes me to a StackOverflow question... which has been marked off-topic.
  - insteadof 13y ago
    If all your searches are "which language is better?", "what IDE should I use?" and "what is already in the documentation that I should consider a hidden feature?" then yes, it will be closed as off topic.
    - zorpner 13y ago
      What an unnecessarily antagonistic and intellectually dishonest response. It's obvious from the GP's post that he's talking about actual problems with possible solutions, and for what it's worth I've experienced the same phenomenon. Give your interlocutors the benefit of the doubt, it makes for a much more productive conversation.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  How was the user to know that the problem had nothing to do with java without knowing what the problem was? From the user's point of view, the answer could have easily been something like "oh yeah, java prints the 'B' character very slowly for xyz reason".
- ZoF 13y ago
  Usually I understand why a question is marked as offtopic, but I think an issue like this, that someone writing Java is encountering, is definitely on topic. If a future person were to run into that problem I think that is the most appropriate location for the answer to reside.
eieio 13y ago
It should be noted that the question has since been re-opened.
Shog9 13y ago
They reopened it too. That's what you get when you have a collaboratively-managed site: folks working things out, in public. Nobody said democracy was pretty...
dkersten 13y ago
My top voted and most commented on question (IIRC question has 60ish votes, top answer has 90ish, about 20 answers), which I asked five years ago, was closed as off topic about a year ago - FOUR years after 50+ people found it useful enough to vote and comment.
- GvS 13y ago
  My answer with 219 votes was deleted after 4 years by moderator Andrew Barber. It's really disheartening.
  - GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
    Do you lose the karma points that you gained from that answer?
    - ygra 13y ago
      Yes. At least if the question is actually deleted and not kept around as closed.
CSDude 13y ago
I once asked how the old DOS games was written, and they closed because it was not specific enough, although it gained enough upvotes and more than 5 good answers.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Do you have your answer now? It was mostly Assembly, Turbo C, Microsoft C or DJGPP in the later games Making the sound card work -> sucked (especially with interrupts >= 10) Multithreading -> Non existent / roll your own Graphics -> VGA or Vesa. Vesa was nice except for one small detail (next point) Real mode -> Awful! The bane of developers! Going from "16-bit" to 32-bit protected mode is like going from the worse stick-shift car to an automatic modern car. The reason this also influences VESA is that VGA fits into a segment 320*200 = 64k anything bigger doesn't.

This post highlights the issue with overly zealous mods on SO who marked the question as off topic. Nothing about this is off topic, and it turned out to be very interesting answer.

gortok 13y ago

The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it? To have it reopened, all the OP needs to do is give the community all the information they need to reproduce the issue. Should we ask any less? It's also worth noting that the question was not closed by moderators (denoted by diamonds next to their name), but by members of the community with high reputation (> 3000). These users have community moderation powers by virtue of their reputation, but are not moderators per se. If you have over 3000 reputation, you could vote to reopen. Full disclosure: I am an elected moderator for Stack Overflow: http:stackoverflow.com/users/16587/george-stocker

RogerL 13y ago
And yet the community did find the answer.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
overgard 13y ago
A) The community did find the answer, regardless. B) Someone is gifting free interesting content to the site; even if it's imperfect does the reaction have to be so harsh? This is, personally, exactly why I never post on stack overflow. You're acting like you're doing them a favor by letting them post there, when they're doing you a favor by giving you interesting content in the first place.
- Manishearth 13y ago
  B) "Someone is gifting free interesting content to the site". That's the attitude that caused Yahoo! Answers. SE has a higher quality bar, so that there are good, answerable questions. If a question seems unanswerable to many (not due to incompetence but due to incompleteness/clarity/broadness/etc), then it is put on hold. It can be reopened if it gets fixed; putting it on hold lets it get fixed, whilst preventing answers (which might use the wrong interpretation, etc) while it is getting fixed. Saves time for all.
- insteadof 13y ago
  The community, not moderators, closed the question. The community also had an answer based on "Pure speculation" which means they can't replicate what the OP asked. A user can gift all the free interesting content they want. But if it's not scoped or on topic, then it's not scoped for the site or on topic and would be closed and/or deleted. Just because Rodney Dangerfield turns up to your bedroom and starts making jokes doesn't mean it's the time or place.
  - sanderjd 13y ago
    Your analogy is bad because it would be very hard to ignore Rodney Dangerfield in your bedroom, but it is very easy to ignore these sorts of questions. At worst it sits there and nobody comes up with an answer. We aren't running out of bits.
    - dionidium 13y ago
      Real-world analogies don't always work on virtual problems, even when they seem to on the surface. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard way to respond [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4273324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4273324
    - euank 13y ago
      We aren't "running out of bits", but we have a highly limited amount of time and screen real-estate. The reason it was marked as such was so that other people didn't waste time on an unreproducible problem until it was fixed to be reproducible. At worst, it sits there and wastes many people's time, thus getting in the way of actually reproducible questions getting seen and answered. Note, that this is not regarding this one question, but thousands - certainly there are a large number of items selected for moderator action.
anigbrowl 13y ago
The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it? Disagree. OP failed to exclude some possibilities by doing multiple randomized trials and so on (or at least stating whether he had done so), but he supplied the source code and a description of the behavior that was perfectly adequate to understand the issue. Nothing personal, but your post above is the epitome of deflecting a question instead of engaging with it.
- rgovind 13y ago
  It would be very nice if we could share or clone our development environment and let contributors on Stackoverflow play with it, rather than try to reproduce on their computers. Of course it has its dangers, but once solved, it would be an awesome addition to SO.
  - davyjones 13y ago
    This is the exact goal of vagrant. The toolset is already in place. I just wish more people use it while filing issues.
  - peeters 13y ago
    I agree it would be cool, and occasionally useful, but I think overall such a tool would be a negative. The goal of boiling down code to the smallest, most portable example which demonstrates the problem isn't just to get more effective help. It's a vital step in isolating the issue, and when duly used, often results in the problem being found without help. Furthermore, it gives answers the quality of being more useful to those who find the question later. That's because while two actual pieces of code that have the same bug will appear almost unrelated, their simplest reductions will bear similarity to each other. I think adoption of a tool that just lets one share their dev environment would discourage this sort of due diligence, and encourage the useless "here's a dump of my code please fix it"-type questions.
  - jader201 13y ago
    At first, I thought you were being flippant, but then I realized in horror that you were serious. While I know you were coming from a good place -- I'm all about automating a testable problem (i.e. TDD, write failing tests first), and I think in the right hands, this would be a nice tool -- I could only see SO using this to further enforce strict requirements in what they consider a "valid" question. "You must set up a lab environment that fully replicates the issue in question." Maybe they wouldn't let it go that far (I would hope), but I think it would head in that direction.
pmelendez 13y ago
>" What good is a programming problem if no one else can reproduce it?" Well in real life, those are the tough ones and where help is more appreciated. The only bugs that I remember are the ones that were random or that nobody else could reproduce and yet were there.
est 13y ago
> The post was put on hold because the OP failed to provide the information the community would need to reproduce the issue. Why close other's question because of your own incompetence? Why the fuck prevent a question from been answered because only five retards can't get it? Isn't the solemn purpose of the site is to wait until someone who is capable of reproducing it and solve it?
moomin 13y ago
Hard to see how the OP could have tracked this down, being unaware of the feature.
talmand 13y ago
I would say if a member with a high reputation has moderation powers then that member is a moderator. They may not have the full powers of an elected moderator, but that would just make them a lower level moderator. It seems the comment can be considered accurate.

ghayes 13y ago

If you're interested in this, then please vote in the SO elections, going on now. http://stackoverflow.com/election http://stackoverflow.com/election

RogerL 13y ago
But everyone is saying "elect me and I will close and flag more posts"
- enscr 13y ago
  Sadly true. I despise those who take pride in flagging & downvoting just for the heck of it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
boie0025 13y ago
"you need at least 150 reputation to vote" - heh

pavanky 13y ago

The problem the user was facing had nothing to do with java. I'd say that is pretty much off topic.

cjensen 13y ago
It had everything to do with programming, which is on topic. It's a pet peeve of mine. At least 10% of the time I google for a answer to a programming question it takes me to a StackOverflow question... which has been marked off-topic.
- insteadof 13y ago
  If all your searches are "which language is better?", "what IDE should I use?" and "what is already in the documentation that I should consider a hidden feature?" then yes, it will be closed as off topic.
  - zorpner 13y ago
    What an unnecessarily antagonistic and intellectually dishonest response. It's obvious from the GP's post that he's talking about actual problems with possible solutions, and for what it's worth I've experienced the same phenomenon. Give your interlocutors the benefit of the doubt, it makes for a much more productive conversation.
sanderjd 13y ago
How was the user to know that the problem had nothing to do with java without knowing what the problem was? From the user's point of view, the answer could have easily been something like "oh yeah, java prints the 'B' character very slowly for xyz reason".
ZoF 13y ago
Usually I understand why a question is marked as offtopic, but I think an issue like this, that someone writing Java is encountering, is definitely on topic. If a future person were to run into that problem I think that is the most appropriate location for the answer to reside.

eieio 13y ago

It should be noted that the question has since been re-opened.

Shog9 13y ago

They reopened it too. That's what you get when you have a collaboratively-managed site: folks working things out, in public. Nobody said democracy was pretty...

dkersten 13y ago

My top voted and most commented on question (IIRC question has 60ish votes, top answer has 90ish, about 20 answers), which I asked five years ago, was closed as off topic about a year ago - FOUR years after 50+ people found it useful enough to vote and comment.

GvS 13y ago
My answer with 219 votes was deleted after 4 years by moderator Andrew Barber. It's really disheartening.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
  Do you lose the karma points that you gained from that answer?
  - ygra 13y ago
    Yes. At least if the question is actually deleted and not kept around as closed.

CSDude 13y ago

I once asked how the old DOS games was written, and they closed because it was not specific enough, although it gained enough upvotes and more than 5 good answers.

raverbashing 13y ago
Do you have your answer now? It was mostly Assembly, Turbo C, Microsoft C or DJGPP in the later games Making the sound card work -> sucked (especially with interrupts >= 10) Multithreading -> Non existent / roll your own Graphics -> VGA or Vesa. Vesa was nice except for one small detail (next point) Real mode -> Awful! The bane of developers! Going from "16-bit" to 32-bit protected mode is like going from the worse stick-shift car to an automatic modern car. The reason this also influences VESA is that VGA fits into a segment 320*200 = 64k anything bigger doesn't.