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I came across this question: Sort by id element using jQuery

I voted to close it because it is pretty much a gimme teh codez question. "Here is my HTML, can you write the javascript for my feature?".

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My question is, should this be answered? The answer was very simple and only took a few seconds to create. You can see it here: http://jsfiddle.net/pcCUd/

I did not post this as an answer though because it seems counter productive to feed the help vampires. Should these types of questions be closed and moved on from, or should they be answered as well as being closed?

I am just trying to make sure I am up to date on how to approach these since there have been some recent changes to closures.

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  • 5
    My definition from help vampire seems to differ from yours; did the OP badger you with follow-up questions in comments, sucking the will to live out of you?
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:34
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    The question is indeed basic, but is answerable. Just downvote if you feel the OP didn't do their research, and move on. If other people want to answer the post, I see no point in preventing them from doing so.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:35
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    Do vampires have to do that @Martijn to you personally? If they badger the community by constantly posting vampirish questions then isn't that the same thing?
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:35
  • @MartijnPieters - Hahah, no luckily it did not get that far. My view of it came from this well written blog post: slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires
    – Travis J
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:35
  • @benisuǝqbackwards: What I mean is that posting a basic question without research doesn't make the poster a help vampire, not in my book.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:36
  • Specifically, the part about being an enabler.
    – Travis J
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:37
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    What's the point of whiting out the OP's name if you link to the question?
    – Mysticial
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:37
  • @Mysticial - I guess I just did it reflexively. The link was to show authenticity, but I didn't want the post to be about this specific OP, but the style of question really.
    – Travis J
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:38
  • In this case, the question was correctly closed as a duplicate. Closing the question prevents further answers, and is the right action to take.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:38
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    There is difficulty when questions can't get closed as dups fast enough... bug that's a whole 'nother MSO set of posts. (Of note, the newly dup question does have a title that may help people in the future find the question and answer - its not just a "help me poor title")
    – user213963
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 19:41
  • I think a good take on this would be to edit the question to make it less "vampyric" (in this example rephrasing it to "How do I sort HTML table rows after a numerical value as id?") and then answering the bettered question, "Q&A-style" (although I don't like the approach OP is going for).
    – lindhe
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 21:37
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    This question should be downvoted and closevoted because you can get four Stack Overflow answers just by entering the question's title Jquery sort by id element into Google. Why some people think something like that deserves two upvotes, while loads and loads of great, well-researched questions stay at 0, is beyond me.
    – Pekka
    Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 23:26
  • @gnat (or others of the same view) - Can you explain why you believe there is duplication between this question and the linked question which attempts to differentiate canonical versus quick answers? I have no issue with a quick answer, nor with a canonical one. The topic I am raising revolves around whether or not questions of the type outlined should be answered at all under the current guidelines.
    – Travis J
    Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 0:24
  • @TravisJ question suggested as a dupe points out that spoonfeeding askers of low quality / zero effort questions is considered legitimate and welcome under the current guidelines
    – gnat
    Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 5:12

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Your assessment of help vampirism in action seems to be premature... The OP has an account in good standing; the automated quality checks and question bans weed out the most life-sucking of the vampires.

Further, the question "should this be answered" does not appear to be meaningful, since people will answer it if they want to answer it.

The actual question you should be asking: Is this question answerable? If it is, and you want to answer it, then answer it. If it isn't, then vote to close it, using one of the (legitimate) close reasons. If it lacks research effort, downvote it.

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