Timeline for Modify the "recommend a tool" close reason to also forbid comparison questions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:23 | comment | added | Aaron Bertrand Staff | @Servy and I am talking about your comment on my answer, not your answer. If I were talking about your answer, I would probably comment on your answer, not respond to your comment on my own. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:21 | comment | added | Aaron Bertrand Staff | @Servy I'm not suggesting that every comparison question should be closed (with that reason or with a less clear reason). I'm saying that when such a question should be closed, there should be a clear reason that justifies its closure. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:21 | comment | added | Servy | I'm not sure if I'd want to say that every single type of "how do these two code snippets compare" question is offtopic. I'd think that there can be some cases where enough information is provided, and the relevant comparison is narrow enough to fit in an SO answer, to make it possible to adequately compare two possible solutions to a problem. It's certainly hard to do well, and if it's too hard I can understand rejecting those rare gems to avoid having to deal with the crap, but it does make me a bit wary. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:18 | comment | added | Aaron Bertrand Staff | @Servy All I'm saying is that if we define a reason that explicitly states that comparison questions are not on-topic because they're hard to answer, they won't wonder how they should add more detail to the question to get it re-opened, if we use your suggested close reason instead. It's about clarity. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:17 | comment | added | Servy | In the general case that's correct. I'm simply saying that from my personal experiences, most of those types of questions happen to not provide enough information to answer them, hence the "It depends" response. It's certainly possible for them to have enough information, just rare. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:16 | comment | added | Aaron Bertrand Staff | @Servy I don't agree that that quite fits - sometimes those questions have a lot of detail and aren't really requiring anyone to diagnose the problem. The problem is pretty clear: the user doesn't know which is faster: <code sample a, which may be very complete> or <code sample b, which may be very complete>. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:15 | comment | added | Servy |
"This question appears to be off-topic because it lacks sufficient information to diagnose the problem. Describe your problem in more detail or include a minimal example in the question itself." likely applies to many of those types of questions. That or "unclear" if the criteria aren't specific enough to evaluate them.
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| Feb 19, 2014 at 18:14 | history | answered | Aaron BertrandStaff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |