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I have asked a question that was very generic, thought it would be appreciated by others too. However, it seems it is not really like and the close counter voting is at 3.

Should I wait until it is closed, risking downvotes on the way or should I delete it myself?

The question is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9362021/handy-numpy-functions and in my opinion has some equality with the hidden features of python at Hidden features of Python

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  • 1
    Well, that hidden-features question should use the historical-protection-banner instead.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Feb 20, 2012 at 14:09
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    @Bobby No, historical protection is no longer valid, it should (and probably will be) closed as non constructive and moved into the tag wiki for python.
    – casperOne
    Feb 20, 2012 at 17:28
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    @casperOne: That's even better.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Feb 20, 2012 at 20:08

1 Answer 1

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I would just go ahead and delete that question. It's definitely not a good fit for Stack Overflow. It otherwise might not get deleted (though the attention brought to it from this Meta question might change that), but it should be because it presents no value to Stack Overflow.

The biggest clue to this is this part of the question:

  • Try to limit answers to numpy functions
  • One feature per answer.
  • Give an example and short description of the feature, not just a link to documentation.
  • Label the feature using a title as the first line.

If you have to give instructions on how to answer your question, it's not really a question.

What you've essentially asked for is a poll, not an answer. It's not singularly answerable, but instead solicits discussion and debate. As you're aware, such questions used to be acceptable on Stack Overflow. And some of them are popular enough that, while closed, they haven't been deleted. (Debate continues on what to do with them and how to otherwise archive valued-but-off-topic content.) But new contributions of that type aren't really accepted by the community.

As I look at the old question(s) in question, it occurs to me that a significant contributing factor to the unintuitive nature of this highly-upvoted-yet-off-topic content begetting further such content could be the lack of a creation date in Community Wiki content:

enter image description here

I was just about to propose a feature request, but it looks like there's an old one in place already.

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  • Ok I will delete it, but I really don't understand why the hidden features questions are that popular which are almost the same.
    – Michel Keijzers
    Feb 20, 2012 at 14:15
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    @MichelKeijzers: Because they're old questions. They've been around for a long time, have received many views and upvotes, etc. It's a bit of a conundrum on Stack Overflow, actually. Our highest-rated content is often off-topic. It's often unintuitive to users (and has been discussed before: meta.stackexchange.com/q/119748/148400, among others).
    – David
    Feb 20, 2012 at 14:28
  • Thanks ... I will never ask such generic questions again :-)
    – Michel Keijzers
    Feb 20, 2012 at 14:38
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    @MichelKeijzers: I've updated my answer here with some more information. It's definitely an unintuitive situation, and I think I've found a culprit which contributes to that situation. Hopefully the old feature request to which I linked can get some more attention :)
    – David
    Feb 20, 2012 at 14:43
  • I deleted the message, thanks for the answer and comments.
    – Michel Keijzers
    Feb 20, 2012 at 15:31

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