##Guidelines for reviewing Close Votes

### Basic workflow

 1. You may select filters to focus on a particular category.  Selecting a set of tags you are familiar with will allow you to focus on questions within your own areas of expertise.  There may still be many situations where skipping is vastly preferable over hastily forming an opinion.
 1. Each question will ask you "Should this question be closed as X?", however you may vote to close for any reason, or leave open.  These reasons are based on previous close votes and automated algorithms, and usually accurately identify the "risk" area for the post.

### Off-topic

Stack Overflow requires more than just being programming-related for a question to be on-topic:

1. Questions about **general computing hardware and software** are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used primarily for programming. You may be able to get help on [Super User](http://superuser.com).

2. Questions on **professional server- or networking-related infrastructure administration** are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve programming or programming tools. You may be able to get help on [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/). 

3. This question was caused by **a problem that can no longer be reproduced** or **a simple typographical error**. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a manner unlikely to help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and closely inspecting [the shortest program necessary to reproduce the problem](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting. 

4. Questions seeking debugging help ("**why isn't this code working?**") must include the desired behavior, a *specific problem or error* and *the shortest code necessary* to reproduce it **in the question itself**. Questions without **a clear problem statement** are not useful to other readers. See: [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). 

5. Questions asking us to **recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource** are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it. *Most [shopping list questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) fall under this reason.*

6. This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network. Remember there are [numerous other SE sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites#traffic) the question may fit under.  When you vote to close as off topic, you will be given a list of candidates it may be a better fit at.  *Only vote to migrate if it passes your judgment as a good quality question in its own right.*  We don't want to be passing poor questions to sister sites.  If the question is a fit at an unlisted site, you may flag it for moderator attention, and a moderator may move.

7. Custom reason. For users without enough rep to vote to close, this is shown as **Blatantly off-topic** (this question has nothing to do with programming)

See also: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/196815/why-is-my-question-off-topic-on-stack-overflow-even-though-its-programming-rel

### Unclear what you're asking

The text in the closing dialog is self-explanatory: *please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.* 


We regard [our help center](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) as the ultimate guide to what is and is not on topic.  When in doubt, consult there.


### Too broad

The text in the closing dialog is self-explanatory: *There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.*

### Primarily opinion-based
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

Note [Gorilla v. Shark questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) almost always fall under this category.  *However*, please note there are exceptions - in Gorilla v. Shark, Jeff uses the question, "Are Google+ Circles better UX for sharing among friends than Facebook Groups?" as an imperfect but potentially salvageable question.


### Duplicate

 1. Remember we are asking whether an [*answer* is found at the duplicate-linked question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166514/183887) moreso than whether the questions are identical.  You should look at the question linked and verify that it has an *answer* to the question being proposed for closure. If it doesn't, it should not be closed as a duplicate. (You can't vote to close questions as duplicates when the proposed target has no upvoted or accepted answer(s).)

 2. If the duplicate is closed with another reason, then evaluate whether the question is a duplicate question. If the proposed question is of better quality and worth leaving open, leave open.