Introduce a "general reference" close reason

Question

There is a certain amount of questions that are absolutely trivial in nature: How to format a date, how to concatenate a string, et cetera. Questions that could be solved by taking a look into the manual.

Random examples from the tags I frequent:

• php timestamp function needed
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6613890/how-to-add-string-to-the-beginning-of-a-string
• How can I edit a binary image in PHP?
• Does PHP have an inverse of the date() function (other than strtotime())?
• Is goto supported in PHP 5.2.8?
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5880301/variable-string
• PHP - make all caps?
• Adding a background image to a <div> element
• Is it possible to get UNIX time from such date 2011-02-27 02:04:46?
• Time string to timestamp
• How do I create a PHP page which can accept file uploads?

What those OPs need is a link to the right manual, which we should give them. But the question serves no purpose. They don't even have a use by being searchable, because any sane search query would lead to the actual manual as the first hit.

Jeff discusses the possibility of introducing a new close reason for this over at Scifi.stackexchange.com. According to Robert's suggestion there, it could go like this:

general reference: this question is too basic; the answer is indexed in any number of general internet reference sources designed specifically to find that type of information.

Please please implement this.

Add a field (like the "enter duplicate ID here" popup) for users to suggest the correct manual link:

The suggested links would then be shown in a block in the top section of the question, like duplicate links.

Also, the amount of reputation earnable from these trivial questions is appalling. I'm sure a great portion of most high-rep users' points (including mine) is from answering "what was that function for replacing a string again?" type questions. This dilutes the value of reputation as a measure of true expertise a great deal.

I would suggest that answers to questions that get closed as "general reference" are made community wiki retroactively, taking away any reputation earned.

Answer 1

FYI, this close reason was implemented for testing on http://scifi.stackexchange.com and http://english.stackexchange.com

We've finished our evaluation. For background see the blog post: Are Some Questions Too Simple?

And specifically this:

Per the discussion in Stack Exchange Podcast #20, and after evaluating the close reason on english and scifi, I now agree with Joel: I believe this close reason has too much potential for abuse and misunderstanding. It is unlikely we will ever adopt this close reason network wide.

Answer 2

The problem I see with this suggestion is that the trivial questions are valuable - based on how they are asked.

I did a test to give an example. I Googled "How to concatenate a string in C#" and got the documentation as the first result. So in this case, your statement is correct.

However,

It seems like that's based on the assumption that everyone who needs to know how to concatenate a string in C# knows what concatenation is and understands what the string data type is. A look at some of the questions on SO will immediately prove this presumption is false. There are users of all levels that use SO and can benefit from it. To demonstrate this I Googled "How to add two variables of text into one in C#" and got this unrelated blog post as the first result. Google's first page has some related results, but the results are not as close to being what the user is looking for as the results that show up on SO's search page.

The fact is that if one person asks a question in a particular way, someone else probably will eventually as well, even if it isn't the correct way to ask it. If SO were to follow the recommendation to close all "general reference" questions, then it would be eliminating a particularly valuable aspect of having these questions - which is the implicitly cross-referenced terminology.

I think that the "duplicate question" close reason is sufficient in this situation, because it points questions asked "the wrong way" to a single question, thus teaching the correct terminology and answering the question.

Answer 3

What happened to the "no question too simple" under the proviso "it's well asked"?

I dislike the idea of firing users off to resources on the web. Give the community this kind of power and everyone'll start using it to be dismissive. A bit like the community wiki police (THIS SHOULD BE CW!!1!1) and the homework high inquisition (is this homework? is it? well you haven't added a homework tag!).

I have a personal policy of downvoting any answer that is just a link, no matter how correct or relevant.

The correct approach should be to link said resource into the question and paraphrase it with enough help that the OP feels the answer does actually answer, whilst the resource provides background reading. Not "yeah, that's like way too trivial for me to bother with". If a question is too trivial for you to deign to look at, please look elsewhere.

I agree we need to find a better way to remove duplicates. I don't think this is it. I recognise there is a problem with an influx of low level duplicates and it is on that level we should be looking for solutions. Some suggestions:

• Easier way to search tag-faq? Yeah I know, [tag-faq] how do I write hello world in tag in the search box, but....
• More prominent "this may be a duplicate" message? Perhaps interrupt answer posting (before you post, please consider whether this question has already been asked. If you have a better answer to what exists {link} then please do post it). A bit like "post another answer" functionality.

Answer 4

[TL,DR: general reference is “wikipede it”, not “google it”.]

I support a general reference close reason, though we need to be careful about the potential for abuse. Having the closer indicate what the reference is is a minimum barrier.

However, I don't quite agree with Borror0's flowchart. I think that Google should not be used as a tool to determine whether a question is a legitimate Stack Exchange question. Confronted with a Google question, I'm willing to embrace the non-Googlers.

The motivation for closing questions as “general reference” is that you do not need a human being to answer this question, because the answer can be found in the obvious place. (Hence the question is a waste of time for the asker, for the answerers and for future readers.)

If I want to know the meaning of an English word, I'm not going to look it up on Google, I'm going to reach for an English dictionary. If the word is too obscure for my dictionary, or if none of the definitions make sense in the context where I found the word, then I'll reach for other tools. Ok, so I google, and I find that according to www.urbandictionary.com it means “penis”. Hmm, maybe I'd better ask on English Language & Usage Stack Exchange.

If I want to know who a science fiction character is, I'll first look it up on Wikipedia. If I don't find what I want, I might use Google and find the wiki of a particular SF universe. But these wikis are not always reliable, and they are often written in an in-universe perspective that makes them hard to follow if you aren't a fan of that universe. So I might ask on Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange.

If I want to know how to get around a foreign city, I'm not going to start by looking it up on Google. In places with multiple transit agencies, a Google search could easily lead me to learning only about one of the agencies. So I'll look the city up on Wikitravel. If I don't find any answer, I might ask on Travel Stack Exchange.

If I want to know what a unix command does, I'm not going to start by looking it up on Google. I'm going to bring up its manual. Commands can differ from unix variant to unix variant, and that way I'll get an answer that's accurate for my system. If the command has no manual, or if I don't understand something in the manual, then I might ask on Unix & Linux Stack Exchange.

So… to qualify as a general reference, the place where the answer is found must meet a number of qualifying criteria:

• The reference should be one that a person asking such questions should know about, not some random site found through Google.
• The reference must be sufficiently trustworthy, the asker must justified in having some confidence in its reliability. (The reference manual, not Joe's blog.)
• The sought-after information must be found in that reference in an obvious place (i.e. the question is about X, and the answer is in the entry on X in the reference). (“What does function F do?” is a priori a general reference question, “What function can I use to do X?” is not.)
• The sought-after information must be reasonably comprehensible. (“I've read the reference article on X and I'm lost, is it suitable for purpose P?” is a perfectly reasonable question.)

Answer 5

This suggestion worries me. One of the best things about SO is that we don't have the RTFM and lmgtfy mentality found elsewhere. Namely because you're rewarded for the effort of finding and citing the relevant part of the manual. A built in RTFM tool will likely introduce an RTFM mentality in the SO community.

I also thought that one of the goals of SO was to be self contained, i.e., the answer to any SO question should be found within SO. External links breaks and contents of pages such as Wikipedia changes. Old answers with broken links are pretty useless and those aren't uncommon on SO as is and this suggestion, as it encourages external links, risks making that problem worse.

We're already encouraged to downvote trivial questions with no research effort and most of the general reference questions have already been asked, so new ones should in addition to being downvoted also be closed as duplicates. This has the same effect as closing it as general reference, except SO is still self contained.

I really don't see what value closing as reference would add, except it's easier to find the reference than finding the duplicate. A very simple way of making it simpler to find the duplicate is to mark the question as a general reference question and close it as a duplicate of the original general reference question. This way the general reference questions get closed without introducing the RTFM mentality in the community.

Answer 6

For quite some time, I was in favor of this general reference reason. However, some events and related discussion on scifi changed my mind on it. I still think some questions on SO deserve it, but I now agree that it is likely to be ... misapplied. Instead of closing a question as general reference, answer the question once, which, if it is indeed general reference, ought to be trivial, and you have your "general reference" which you can close (relevant) future questions as a dupe of 'til the end of time. This has the distinct advantage that the canonical answer/general reference is entirely on the same SE site. This has always been a concern, and is why we encourage users not to just post a link, but give at least a summary of the linked information - so that in case of link rot, the answer is still useful.

Answer 7

I'm worried that "too hard to parse" is going to be very subjective. Beginners are often baffled by even simple manuals such as the PHP documentation.

Yes, it's a big problem, and we should be looking at ways to address it, but the flaw with this one is that there's no easy way to objectively draw a line that everyone can agree on where a question is easy to dismiss as too simple, and others are kept as appropriate for the site.

It's difficult for experts to divorce themselves from their knowledge and cast themselves as a beginner. If you give them the tool that essentially closes the question with a big RTFM (and a link) then you're going to end up with scads of questions being closed because the "too hard to parse" part of the flowchart is simply not going to pass many questions for experts. It won't just be the simple questions getting closed, it'll be the, "I can't figure out the problem I'm having with the STL vector class..." which will get a big RTFM to some obtuse-to-newbies STL reference.

Answer 8

It is a very good idea to add the "general reference" reason to create them as wiki if there is no other similar question already in SO. Basic knowledge is also useful for many. But, in the case there is already one question about it (and, in those cases, there are usually many), the "exact duplicate" flag should take care of it, so I don't see it convenient as a reason for closing a question.

Truth is, many beginners may log in to SO and ask very basic questions and never appear again, but others may learn from the feedback and become productive members. Having those wiki questions will still give them the answer they need, while removing the duplicate questions should take care of the clutter.

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Addendum:

SO has already an engine to read your question while typing and suggesting related questions. How hard would it be to also link to the official documentation, at least for the most common problematic languages (c#, java, html, etc)? I'm sure this issue is not a big deal in perl, lisp or assembler questions...

Answer 9

There is also another group of trivial questions, which IMHO should be closed:

• how do I do XY - usually something trivial in principle, just requiring the work to be done, and usually again not a singular problem: like Get data from database and display with odd or even id number

P.S.: and yet another group, but this is not for closing, because then it can be improved by the asker:

• plz debug my looong code
  • often trivially solvable by debug prints
  • without any effort to narrow the code/question down to singular problematic case

Answer 10

I think this would be useful on the Japanese site, as well as possibly the German or other foreign language sites when dealing with simple translation requests. As Robert Cartanio mentions here, these foreign language sites should not serve as rudimentary "translate this word for me" services for simple words or phrases.

Complex words, or cases where there are nuances or strict usage guidelines (like idioms) are on-topic for the site, but if I can flip open any of a dozen Japanese-English dictionaries and find the appropriate translation almost immediately, it's not an interesting or beneficial question.

The community seems to agree with this, as simple translation questions were declared as off-topic in several meta posts as well as the site's definition. Also, simple translation questions are being voted closed by the community.

However, when voting to close such a question, there isn't a good close reason that adequately describes the real reason the question is being closed (namely, why didn't you ask your dictionary?). Currently, we're using "Not Constructive" which doesn't quite mean the same thing.

I think "General Reference" would be a better fit for these cases.

Answer 11

A useful follow-up to this would be an index of closed questions (a la use cases, other ways of thinking about concantenation as a problem) who were answered with the manual. The value to this is it (a) references the manual (presumably answering the question, but also (b) exists as a way of emphasizing the tag-wiki over wikipedia or some other external source.

The index in turn could be referenced on the tag wiki, assuming it is sufficiently general knowledge. It would be rad if there was a standard drop-down/type-complete of accepted "manual answers" that popped up when you used this flag.

Answer 12

I like the idea. I know some portion of my reputation comes from answering exactly this kind of question but I think the Internet overall could be improved with this information.

The list of URLs submitted here ought to be curated site-wide through some mechanism. e.g., if I paste in a linux.die.net manpage link, it'd be nice to have back-up manpage links available if linux.die.net goes down. Having a single list of all URLs used as general references could make finding dead URLs far easier as well as allow easier standardization.

Further, it'd be nice to provide multiple links to be shown on questions: I love using both the POSIX and distribution-specific manpages when both are available. What is standard and what is implemented are sometimes two different things, and having both sets of details within clicking distance of each other is immensely useful.