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What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?

I realize that the point of that criteria is that questions should be helpful for other users, as well as answering the question. But isn't the primary purpose of stackoverflow to be a question and answer site? Why is a question considered unacceptable simply because it is only relevant to the asker? For example, this post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12835046/unsure-how-this-z80-assembly-code-outputs-to-a-screen I fail to see why that post should be closed, simply becaus it's unlikely that anyone else will need to know that information.

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  • Probably people don't think it is something common enough that it can get some answer.
    – nhahtdh
    Oct 14, 2012 at 3:22
  • In this particular case, the poster is writing an emulator for an ancient (30 years) system, and forgot to emulate the equally old operating system. What are the odds that someone else will run into this problem?
    – Bo Persson
    Oct 14, 2012 at 8:30

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Closing isn't the same as not-allowed or not-answered. The asker still gets to see the solution, even if the question's deleted for everyone else in the end.

Often this happens to avoid cluttering up the site with questions that are too niche - often the question is closed after it's answered. For example, if you ask me the bug in your code, but your code is convoluted and your program does something unusual, that's worth closing because no-one else needs that solution.

Sometimes it's human error - someone reads the question and thinks "Who would want to know that?" and votes to close when maybe a lot of people who think rather differently do want to know that. Sorry about when this happens.

(If the bigwigs at Meta agree it shouldn't have been closed, it might be re-opened.)

See this answer for good reasons for "too localised".

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