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Related: Avoid tweeting bad questions

Sharing questions by Stack Exchange FB account is possibly automated, but shouldn't it avoid sharing questions with close votes?

For example this had (I believe) at least two close votes when it was shared.

FB share screen shot

It is very "helpful" when a question on its way to closure gets 45 likes and 2 shares (many of whom probably have association bonus to vote up what they like / share).

I don't know how questions are picked for sharing, but why would we advertise questions that are deemed inappropriate to be "shouted to the twitter universe"?

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    I don't think it's automated. More likely SE employee picks hot question he/she deems as excellent and feature it on Facebook. However, I agree they should avoid questions with close votes, regardless of how many upvotes it got.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 22:21
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    @ShadowWizard yeah, it is very "helpful" when a bikeshedding question on its way to closure gets 45 likes and 2 shares (90% of whom likely have association bonus to vote up what they like / share)
    – gnat
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 22:29
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    Yup, that's escalation of the Hot Network Question effect.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 22:41
  • The FB page looks like a joint project of SE and BuzzFeed. Definitely not automatic.
    – user259867
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 22:42
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    You use Facebook, @gnat? And I used to think you were cool.
    – Shog9
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 23:06
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    @Shog9 The screenshot shows gnat either doesn't have an account, or is not logged in. The fact that SE uses Facebook is mildly disappointing, though.
    – user259867
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 23:33
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    It shows we don't discriminate based on our user's choice of social media service, @raff. No matter how passé. Have you seen our Orkut page?
    – Shog9
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 23:35
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    @Shog9 you've got to see my selfies
    – gnat
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 0:24
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    @gnat I +1'd, but I'm second guessing myself. I mean, really , anything we post there will improve the quality of fb. Just think of it as charity work.
    – CRABOLO
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 0:26
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    @gnat I thought you were a Java guy. They're thisies. Selfies are for php programmers that have some class.
    – user213963
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 2:24
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    They should give us an option to automatically append [cv-pls] while sharing such posts on facebook, it will help. But until they provide [cv-pls], I support your FR.
    – Infinite Recursion
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 4:30
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    👍 I like this idea.
    – user213963
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 5:01
  • @MichaelT don't you know, Java guys can have it too, if device supports JSR 666 Mobile Selfie API. API package is javax.microedition.useless.selfie - as the name suggests it's the part of MUA, Mobile Useless Architecture, umbrella JSR 678
    – gnat
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 7:38
  • Since I couldn't easily find out how to share this QA to Facebook via the UA, I couldn't look this up myself, Does the one who is about to share the QA on Facebook directly see in the interface that there are close votes? Does the interface warn him and ask for confirmation when there are close votes?
    – Christian Hujer
    Commented Nov 28, 2014 at 4:31
  • @ChristianHujer if one uses share-this button then they can see close votes only if they are over 3K rep or have diamond privileges. If it's shared by an internal software bot, it can "see" everything. It can be a bot (utm_campaign=programmers-promo), as link shown in Facebook is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263589/how-to-break-up-a-programming-project-into-tasks-for-other-developers?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=programmers-promo&utm_source=facebook.com
    – gnat
    Commented Nov 28, 2014 at 4:57

1 Answer 1

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The Stack Exchange Facebook page is managed by humans: mostly me, with occasional input from others on the Community Team.

As you noticed, we are not always everyone's favorite DJ. Maybe that's because our Facebook page is mostly top 40, with some self promotion mixed in (blog posts, podcast announcements, site graduations, etc.). Notice, it is the network account, so if you're only into Stack Overflow, you might not be into our Facebook account.

But it's probably true that we should stay away from playing questions with close votes, so we'll be careful about that going forward (and going backward... we deleted the offending post in question).

Thanks for listening. And thanks for keeping us in check.

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