29

Recently, it feels to me that every single poster who had a question closed comes ranting to Meta, with accusations of unfairness and high-rep users' power trips, insinuations of a Vast Unicorn Conspiracy and attempts at rule-lawyering (most commonly "many similar exist", but such pearls of absurdity as "I want my question to be closed differently" are also becoming common), possibly with a side order of Godwin. Essentially, though trying to masquerade with Highest Moral Principles (tm), it usually boils down to this one question: "How dare you close my precious unique snowflake of a question 'Foo or Bar which better kthxbai'?!?!one!!??!"

I've tried searching high and low for a similar meta-Meta question, but all I found were myriads of recent questions on this same topic. I'm aware that Meta works as an appeals process in such cases, but it seems that the site is being overrun with such persistent fillibustering and pointless defiance of the rules ("I don't care what the FAQ says, me want, me post!").

Note that this is not limited to new users - recently, I've seen such questions from people who have been on SO for many months and otherwise interact sensibly with the site - but just look weird at one of their questions and they go crazy. (I don't find an account hacking of such scale plausible)

So, essentially, do you see a way out of this? I'm thinking that closing these Meta questions as duplicates of a wider historical explanation "why is this-and-this, noted in the FAQ, done in such way?" might be helpful ("why not subjective?" -"we tried, multiple times, and almost drowned in them as everyone felt compelled to add one (or ten)", laid out in greater detail). These questions possibly exist here on Meta, but I seem unable to find them - could you point them out?

EDIT: I'm NOT suggesting to get rid of this "appeals process", that would be indeed dangerous, as @yms points out. What I'm trying to say is this: iff the closed question is found to have been closed correctly ("gimme codez","what is your favorite X","Foobar sucks", you know the drill), I'm suggesting to close the resulting Meta question on "my question should be allowed on SO" as duplicate of "why is subjective not allowed, how it was tried and failed". However, I'm having trouble finding those wider explanations; am I just failing at search, or are they still waiting to be written?

Improve this question
10
  • 6
    Are you impling that "SO moderators/hi-rep users with close vote" will never make a mistake while closing a question? I find your very proposal unfair...and even dangerous.
    – yms
    May 24, 2011 at 23:40
  • 4
    +1 for the sentiment, though I completely agree with yms: it's important to have a place where moderation decisions by multi-k and diamond users can be reviewed.
    – jscs
    May 25, 2011 at 2:13
  • 5
    I'm particularly tired of the people who argue that their question was closed for the wrong reason. The argument goes something like "You closed this as 'not a real question', but it's really a duplicate, see here..." Okay? So what? What do you want me to do about it? Re-open the question and then close it again as a duplicate? Who is that going to help? The question was closed, and you agree that's the right thing. Forget about the reason.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    May 25, 2011 at 4:52
  • +1 I always support efforts to abuse the whiners a bit more. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43038/…
    – Pollyanna
    May 25, 2011 at 13:03
  • 1
    This question lists no examples of people whining inappropriately. If you can't list examples of the problem, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. Mocking such people (eg "me want, me post") is also unhelpful.
    – Andrew Grimm
    May 26, 2011 at 5:22
  • 1
    @Andrew Grimm: Edited. Also, anything in meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/closed-questions with a score < 0 is quite certainly one of those.
    – Piskvor left the building
    May 26, 2011 at 9:28
  • 4
    What is the first rule of the Vast Unicorn Conspiracy - you don't talk about the Vast Unicorn Conspiracy.
    – Chris Walton
    May 26, 2011 at 10:46
  • I wouldn't think they are incorrect. I am not comfortable as a "replier" how would the question owner be. I am also experiencing closed questions just because some moderators do not understand the content (I have solid understanding that they don't because otherwise the question is clear enough to be answered if one is trained enough on the given tag's discipline). Sometimes their complaint is the OP didn't spend enough effort without realizing they would just be drawing circles as a beginner without some help. If you are not helping, get out of the way instead of closing the question.
    – Cetin Basoz
    Jul 24, 2018 at 15:22
  • Also closing as a result of being a duplicate sounds like being irrespective to the repliers. Why should a replier first google instead of replying first? Almost every answer could be assumed to have duplicate with today's accumulated information on the internet., so close them all, close SO it sounds to be.
    – Cetin Basoz
    Jul 24, 2018 at 15:26
  • Has that not been answered in meta.stackexchange.com/a/92594/19746, seven years ago? "Canonical answers," not "answer is assumed to exist, QED, closed."
    – Piskvor left the building
    Aug 22, 2018 at 15:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
20

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/

Help us build a great library of canonical answers. If you keep seeing the same form of questions, whether it’s mod_rewrite rules on Server Fault, freezing computers on Super User, or how to use regular expressions to parse HTML, write a great, canonical answer, once and for all. Make it community wiki so that as many other people as possible can make it great. Work really hard on writing something that is clear, concise, and understandable by as wide an audience as possible.

Meta has canonical answers too...

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .