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The default "off-topic" close reason on Meta is

This question does not appear to be about Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange engine that powers the Stack Exchange network, within the scope defined in the help center.

Alas, there is no way to choose it from the close dialog. There is no "default" bullet, and you cannot click the Close button unless you choose one of the bullets first.

Related
The New Closing Changes: On-Hold, etc.

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  • Should be rename the tag to "vote-to-hold" now?
    – random
    Jun 19, 2013 at 22:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
-5

The default reason exists for cases where no specific off-topic reasons are defined (new sites, or sites that effectively never get off-topic questions) and cases where there's no consensus on why a given question is off-topic (everyone votes for a different reason, failed migrations, etc.)

If none of the pre-defined reasons fit, use "other" and type something in.

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  • Hmm... The off-topic close reasons that were picked for meta don't exactly cover every possibility. Can we make the bullets optional (or make the default close reason one of the available bullets) so that the default close reason can be used if none of the others fit?
    – user102937
    Jun 19, 2013 at 22:13
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    This doesn't make sense. What do you do about questions that are plain off-topic? (As in, it doesn't match the site's topic area, e.g. programming for SO, as opposed to “there's some non-obvious reason why it is off-topic on this Stack Exchange site: while Arqade is about gaming, game recommendations are off-topic on the site”.) Does every closer have to enter their own free-form “This question appears to be off-topic because it is about gardening.....................”?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jun 20, 2013 at 12:10
  • Actually, just the first person to vote @Gilles - what they type will appear in the list for subsequent voters. The goal is to have a specific, already-written option (either predefined, or composed for the question being closed) available to the majority of voters.
    – Shog9
    Jun 24, 2013 at 3:59
  • @Shog9 so why isnt the first choice the specific reason of "This is not about gaming/gardening/security/whatever-the-site-topic-is"....
    – Reinstate Monica
    Aug 26, 2013 at 20:08
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    IIRC, the logic was that if we'd rolled out the new system with that reason available, folks would've just kept using it for things that were about gaming/gardening/security/whatever but were off-topic for some other reason, since that's what we've been doing for years. Note that one of the big side-effects of this is that folks are finally having some real discussion on how we label things "off-topic" that are, strictly-speaking, about the topic but disallowed for practical reasons. @AviD
    – Shog9
    Aug 27, 2013 at 18:52
  • @Shog9 thanks, that actually makes a lot of sense, in a roundabout non-intuitive manner ;-) I still think it should be there, but I absolutely agree about removing the conceptual default to force awareness.
    – Reinstate Monica
    Aug 28, 2013 at 7:02

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