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Possible Duplicate:
How to deal with questions from people who don't know enough to ask?

I don't like this question, but I don't know how to deal with it.

From the FAQ, "Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers".

I fall in to the second part of that statement, but I would think even the professionals would know how to deal with a negative number :)

I don't think the question is off-topic, but....

I want to flag it, but what flag is suitable?

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  • Generally, not a real question would be used for this.
    – animuson StaffMod
    May 4, 2012 at 23:22
  • @waiwai933 Yes, it could be a duplicate of that, although I had to read it a couple of times to realise. Although I'd like to think my question was slightly less angry :)
    – vascowhite
    May 4, 2012 at 23:33
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    89.27854% of the time? Note this is a very accurate estimation, based on my keen guesswork based on what I've been going through in the flag queue.
    – casperOne
    May 5, 2012 at 19:14
  • Haha, sounds like a reasonable percentage to me.
    – vascowhite
    May 5, 2012 at 20:29

2 Answers 2

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Flag to close it as "Not a Real Question", because that's what it is.

But "hate" is probably too strong a word for some harmless bytes on the internet... Go grab yourself a beer and relax.

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    OK with the hate comment. I already had the beer :)
    – vascowhite
    May 4, 2012 at 23:23
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    If I could relax I wouldn't be looking at SO at 01:25. But it's good advice.
    – vascowhite
    May 4, 2012 at 23:25
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    and it wasn't "harmless bytes", it was something wrong on the internets!!
    – vascowhite
    May 4, 2012 at 23:49
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If I were to flag that, I would probably go for "too localized":

This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.

While this isn't exactly one of the scenarios listed, this question asks for a solution of a very narrow (negative number + toast) and trivial problem - this qualifies it as "not helpful for future visitors" IMHO.

Then again, I might consider the downvotes sufficient in this case...

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