Timeline for A broad question has many near duplicates — How to decide whether to suggest it for closing?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 25 at 9:14 | vote | accept | dipetkov | ||
| Jan 17, 2023 at 19:10 | history | edited | dipetkov | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 3 characters in body
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| Jan 17, 2023 at 16:16 | comment | added | Sycorax Mod | Another reason to close as "too broad" instead of a duplicate is iteration: when a Question contains, say, $n \ge 3$ questions, closing it as a duplicate of 1 existing question isn't a great solution because then OP edits to exclude the duplicate, leaving $n-1$ questions, whence finding a second duplicate might mean repeating this whole process, and likewise for the $n-2$, $n-3$, ... questions ad nauseam, to the frustration of all parties. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 15:55 | comment | added | dipetkov | @NickCox Your comment made me realize that I made a mistake using the word "clarity"; "focus" is much better in this case since, yes, "not clear" can mean many things. I'm wondering more about duplicates. I find existing answers useful. So I errored on the side of "this has already been answered". Wouldn't others also want to read those threads? But I understand why "lack of focus" was a better choice. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 15:55 | answer | added | dipetkov | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 14:32 | comment | added | Nick Cox | On duplicates, I flag outliers as territory where I often think "This is just the same old question as often asked" but it can be hard to find an exact duplicate. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 14:30 | comment | added | Nick Cox | I would separate the main issues as (1) making sound decisions about closure (2) giving reasonable feedback to the OP (if not a spammer or offensive). The two are linked but not identical. My impression is that being unclear is the most difficult reason for OPs to understand with common reactions (a) the question is clear to me, so why call it unclear (b) I am being as clear as I can, but my whole point is that I am confused or uncertain. So, if there are multiple grounds for closure go for something else if possible. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 18:59 | comment | added | Sycorax Mod | I share your concerns about these imperfections of the process, especially when a question is so broad that most users on this statistics forum will be able to write a responsive answer to one of the post’s many questions. But also note that the same “time lag” exists when voting to close with "too broad" as does voting to close with a duplicate, because more votes must accumulate. If the site had larger number of active reviewers, this flaw might be mitigated, but probably not eliminated. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 18:24 | comment | added | dipetkov | @Sycorax One challenge with the "lack of focus" questions is that they often receive a flurry of answers before being flagged. At that point there might be little incentive for the OP to improve their question; after all they already got a lot of engagement from the community. This could be a self-reinforcing kind of behavior. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 16:40 | comment | added | Sycorax Mod | This is hardly a perfect system, but if there are a dozen question marks in a question, as there are in this case, then it's very likely that the question needs more focus. Finding duplicates for each of its 12 questions is a big task, and even if you can find 12 duplicates, the software will only allow you to attach a maximum of 5 to the question. Finding duplicates is an important and valuable contribution, but an asker should focus their question enough that it is concise and answerable in a few paragraphs. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 16:35 | history | became hot meta post | |||
| Jan 16, 2023 at 15:43 | comment | added | User1865345 | In fact, if you have many posts which have the potential to address the present queries, and one cannot narrow it down to one single dupe candidate, then plausibly the present question could lack focus (of course, this is not a proposition to go for). | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 15:36 | comment | added | User1865345 | I appreciate your effort in sieving out the relevant posts from the CV vault: sometimes it cannot be easy to pinpoint a single post out of all those relevant ones that can be marked duplicate. But for this particular matter, the given one was more appropriate (& I voted to close). Now whether it should be closed on the grounds of lack of focus or some closed duplicate depend on the context. IMO, the post in question is too broad. In a nutshell, I would love to see a formal rule to vote to close on which basis but if it is at the confluence of two, either could suffice with proper dupe links. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 14:50 | comment | added | dipetkov | @kjetilbhalvorsen This time it's for lack of focus. This is probably more appropriate grounds for closing. I think I'm converging to the conclusion that searching for duplicates should be about finding and reading examples of effective technical writing, not so much about the close vote. I only do it for topics I find interesting anyway. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 12:45 | comment | added | kjetil b halvorsen Mod | After you posted this, it has been closed again ... | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 8:40 | history | asked | dipetkov | CC BY-SA 4.0 |