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I mean no disrespect, but how is my question any different from Can anyone recommend a free geocoding service? or Is there any free address validation service?

How would you suggest I rephrase it to improve the fit? If the question cannot be recovered, can you recommend an alternate place to ask if not on Stackoverflow?

UPDATE: I've cleaned up the question. Please vote to reopen it if you agree. Otherwise, please comment on why you think it should remain closed.

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    The way you've asked your question makes it sound like you want the community here to run a google search for you.
    – M. Tibbits
    Jul 10, 2011 at 4:50
  • Whoa! Why the negative votes on this question?! Do I really deserve to lose reputation for asking for clarification?
    – Gili
    Jul 10, 2011 at 19:04
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    Meta voting means something very different from the standard stack overflow. Check out the faq
    – M. Tibbits
    Jul 10, 2011 at 19:11

2 Answers 2

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The first question you posted (other than yours) is asking for a free service using a language other than javascript. The second explains that he wants to use it to check addresses during his checkout process. Those two contexts make their questions programming related. They also provide specific details of what they are looking for (100 requests from street address to geocode for the first, street address validation in Europe for the second). Your question does not provide any context to show that it is programming related, which is why it is off topic. However, it is also asking for a list of answers and provides only one restriction (not required to display on map). It sounds like you are asking other people to do your research for you. Stack Overflow is for asking specific questions, where a single answer can be determined to be better than the others. Even if it was determined to be programming related, your question may have been closed as not a real question for being too broad.

To get your question reopened, you should add details about how you want to use the information, which will make it programming related, and change it to ask for a service with specific features instead of a list of all services and the features they have.

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    Additionally, the other questions show signs of having done some research on their own. This one indicates no research and the tone sounds like someone giving their subordinate an errand to run for them.
    – Brad Mace
    Jul 10, 2011 at 4:52
  • @bemace: You make a good point. I didn't want to influence other people's opinions by providing my own research, but I guess the end-result was even worse than if I had.
    – Gili
    Jul 10, 2011 at 19:06
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Are you by any chance a teacher? Because the question was phrased as almost like a quick homework assignment you'd give to students, in which you specify the broad category of information you want and some information on how you want it presented.

This is not what Stack Overflow is about. It is for finding the best answer to a question you have. If it were me, I would have voted to close it as "Not a real question" rather than "Off topic."

Edit to be slightly more helpful: this sounds like it could be useful on Wikipedia, in fact there is already the beginning of something like this there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding#List_of_some_geocoding_systems

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