Questions tagged [closing-questions]
This tag is for general questions about questions that have been closed because they are off-topic or otherwise do not meet the criteria defined in the FAQ.
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Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
This is intended to be a "humorous and friendly thread on how to ask a horrible question" (amoeba) which can help new users understand how to write good questions.
We hope you will ...
whuberMod
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I think we need to talk about the SO/CV interface again
Two hours ago (ish), a new user posted this question on two-tailed F-values - how to do them in R.
He (or she, but I'm going to say he) was told to take it to SO. So, he did what he can see to do -- ...
- 275k
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Are we closing questions too fast?
It seems to me that we have been closing more and more questions, and that we are moving them into the close votes review queue very quickly. This seems to have evolved naturally, but I wonder if we ...
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Should we reduce the vote threshold for closing questions?
Currently, it takes 5 close votes from users with the vote-to-close privilege ($\ge3000$ reputation), or 1 vote from a moderator, to close a question. If the question is being closed as a duplicate ...
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"Help I have some data and need to analyse it what do I dooo?"
I have been on this stackexchange long enough now to see there is quite a lot of questions along the lines of:
Help, I'm a data science intern/amateur statistician and I've been given a load of ...
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For "obtaining specific datasets" questions, let's recommend OpenData.stackexchange.com
Many of the questions closed with the reason "obtaining specific datasets" would actually be good questions for Cross Validated's new little brother:
http://OpenData.stackexchange.com
When closing ...
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Closing "software questions"
TL;DR: Recently, it seems to me like we have been a little trigger-happy about closing questions as "only about software/programming". I ask that we please ease off a bit.
Our help page on ...
- 115k
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Community moderating vs systemic attacks
I see a lot of programming questions here. I remind people that programming questions are off-topic here, that they could be useful for Stack Overflow, and that the requirements are a minimal working ...
- 59.4k
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What's wrong with this question about datasets?
This question seeking example datasets was recently closed as off-topic. Per the FAQ,
Questions about obtaining particular datasets are off-topic (they are too specialized).
As I interpret ...
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What is on topic on Cross Validated?
There have been many threads on CV-meta about whether questions are on-topic, off-topic, are too-localized, etc.
For example:
Are "find the distribution" questions on topic?
Is a ...
- 17.9k
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Do you flag absolute nonsense questions?
Here:
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/381309/cobbler-needed-right-now
Is a "question" from a bot or a troll.
Do we ever bypass "vote to close" and use the flag function if a Q is complete ...
- 59.4k
17
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1
answer
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Question closed, user asks it again
I made an interesting observation today. A user asked a question which was closed some time later, because the question needed more focus. As I scroll up, I see the same question being asked again ...
- 853
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A difficulty with self-study-like questions of the form "Is this correct?"
I've seen a spate of questions of a form more or less along the lines of "Is this working correct?" just lately.
While this is good from the point of view that the poster is clearly making a proper ...
- 275k
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2
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Should new users be allowed to provide questions similar to others?
Recently on CrossValidated I have found that new members may not have studied all the rules prior to asking their first question. I find that moderators and other users will quickly vote to close ...
- 41.8k
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When we vote to close a question as "unclear" should we state why in a comment?
Some questions are completely unclear and it's fairly obvious that they need to be closed.
But I've seen some votes to close as unclear that could really use an explanation - and sometimes the person ...
- 104k
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Is there a generic question to which we can redirect questions of the type "why does my neural network not generalize well?"
Thanks to Sycorax, we have an excellent question which can be used to close as duplicate (most of) those questions about neural networks which can't overfit the training set:
What should I do when my ...
- 17.3k
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Quant.SE is no longer in Beta. Can we add it as a migration target?
Occasionally we get questions with no statistical content, such as
Return on bonds and stocks
So our choices are to either close as off-topic or migrate. But right now, only a mod could migrate ...
SycoraxMod
- 87.6k
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When should programming questions be closed as off-topic, and when migrated to SO?
Questions can be closed as off topic because they are not about statistics or focus on programming. This is distinct from questions which are about programming and belong on StackOverflow. There is ...
- 59.4k
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What should we do with HW questions where the person says "I have no idea how to start"?
Our guidelines for homework question say to use the self-study tag and tell what you've tried. But what about when a person says, "I have no idea where to start?"
Should such questions be closed? ...
- 104k
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8
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Dealing with "do my professional work for me" questions?
There has been some discussion on CV Meta of how to deal with homework questions and also job-related questions. Either can be unreasonable in certain cases, but the latter really annoy me, since they ...
- 116k
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What to do if a question is both unclear and about software?
Recently, I've seen several questions marked as "unclear what you are asking" when the question is both confusing and about software. If we mark it "unclear what you're asking" then the OP may try to ...
- 104k
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I attempted to make a FAQ-style question; does it make sense?
There have been several discussions on meta about how to organize frequently asked questions, and one idea is that one can simply write and answer such a question, creating a thread that can later be ...
- 101k
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Customize criteria for automatic population to review queue?
I think we could dramatically improve the review queue process if we could auto-populate the queue with questions that are suspect for more refined reasons than currently exist. In the same vein as to ...
SycoraxMod
- 87.6k
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Is this an opinion question?
This question is put on hold as opinion based. The tldr version of the question is "Why are some people saying Frequentist statistics is no good?".
I have partial sympathy with putting it on hold. ...
- 19.6k
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What to do when a question with an open bounty is a duplicate?
Question
Basic question about standard error in predictive model
is clearly a duplicate of either
How to compute prediction bands for non-linear regression?
or
Shape of confidence and prediction ...
- 17.3k
12
votes
2
answers
290
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How to ask a good [references] question?
It's very common for users to want to find references about a specific topic in machine learning, statistics, or probability. Often, these questions start from a place where the user doesn't know what ...
SycoraxMod
- 87.6k
12
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3
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Handling of cross-posted questions when flagged
I have been flagging questions that are cross-posted. Usually this leads to the question being closed; sometimes, my flag is marked helpful but no action is taken and the question is left open. Can ...
- 6,528
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Do we have an authoritative answer on why validation accuracy can oscillate or even increase, when validation loss keeps increasing?
I know that accuracy is an improper scoring rule, thus it shouldn't be used to choose among classifiers. In particular, it should not be used to choose the best hyperparameters for a NN. However, ...
- 17.3k
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Improve closure-to-migrate voting
We often get questions that focus on how to do something using R (or Python, rarely SAS, MS Excel or others), with little to no statistical content. Such questions are off-topic and should be closed.
...
- 115k
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What's the point of putting unclear questions on hold?
I understand the need to make questions clear when asking them and agree telling the OP to make the question clearer, if it is not, is a good thing. But can't this be done without locking the ability ...
- 1,397
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3-vote close - how's it going?
UPDATE: While the testing period has ended, this change has been well-received by the community so we have opted to not reset the votes needed to close/reopen to 5 while we look at data.
Please let me ...
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Why does the “programming” closure message not mention Stack Overflow?
When we close questions that appear to be about programming, a message appears that links to Open Data or to a CV Meta post about software support.
Not mentioning Stack Overflow seems like a gigantic ...
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On the "too broad" reason for closing
Regarding "too broad". I think there are two sorts of ways a question could be too broad. One is the sort of question that amounts to summarizing an entire course or text book: "Please tell me all ...
- 104k
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Extract software-specific default close reason
Almost four years ago there was a discussion on Meta that lead to formulating the "not about statistics" default close reason description as following:
This question appears to be off-topic because ...
TimMod
- 134k
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What happens to reputation score if checked answer to on-hold question?
I recently answered a question on CV and the asker checked my answer. Subsequently, the question was put on hold as off-topic. I invested time and effort into answering this question, and I believe ...
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My question about visualization got on hold
I think that one question I asked recently (Showing a correlation and its p-value as a color) got incorrectly in hold. The reason is because:
This question appears to be off-topic because EITHER it ...
- 585
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Suggestions on modeling or forecast techniques - too many possible solutions
Some questions, often from new users, pose a practical problem of modeling or forecasting a behaviour of some system and ask for suggestions for modeling or forecasting techniques. In some cases the ...
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How can we encourage new users to edit their closed posts?
New or inexperienced users are sometimes faced with their question (or answer) being closed without any detailed feedback, or even without any comments on their post.
While this is definitely the way ...
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How do people find old posts to review, edit, or close them?
I've noticed that some people seem to find posts from years ago and moderate them, closing them as off-topic, duplicate or whatever. This seems valuable, since people can search the whole database of ...
- 104k
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I object to the closing of the following question
I see no other forum to raise this, so I'm raising it here.
Question: Is there any consensus or literature on the proportion of font parameters within plots?
I feel that this is a reasonable thing to ...
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Does unanimity of reasons to close matter?
When I look to the close review queue I sometimes find that other voters have given a different reason to close from the one I has eventually decided on. Sometimes though I was only 60:40 in favour of ...
- 17.3k
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Include 'asking for datasets' reason in the off-topic dialog
Since we have this rule very clear in our help center that questions asking for datasets are off-topic, could we include this reason in the off-topic dialog?
The initial suggestion would be to ...
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What to do with a question which is a duplicate of a question on Math SE
This question
What is a distribution over functions?
is a duplicate of
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2297424/extending-a-distribution-over-samples-to-a-distribution-over-functions
but I ...
- 17.3k
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Should we remove the "datasets" close reason from the list?
Our recent proposal for adding one more close reason was declined. The reason was that we could re-use the "datasets" reason
Questions about obtaining specific datasets are off-topic on Cross
...
TimMod
- 134k
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Can we clarify the off-topic closing options?
Evidently, when we vote to close a question as off-topic and appropriate for Stack Overflow, the thread will not actually be migrated unless we select:
...
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Closed, later reopened, question on mgcv: how to review "niche" questions with substantial code content
The question R/mgcv: Why do te() and ti() tensor products produce different surfaces? has had a very interesting history. It was asked by a new user who may not be quite so aware of where we draw the (...
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Migration that went wrong
Recently we migrated question about repeating simulation function in R to SO. Initially I voted to migrate it to SO, however then it got quite nice answer by Xi'an that focused on its statistical ...
TimMod
- 134k
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Should we replace the "data set request" with distinct "this is an off-topic software question" and "this is not about statistics" closure reasons?
This is a follow up to Should we retire the "data set request" closure reason?
My interpretation of the votes and answers on that thread is that there is some support for retiring the "...
SycoraxMod
- 87.6k
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Show reason for closure when reviewing questions for reopening
It would be helpful if the reopen review queue always explained why the questions were initially closed. When reviewing close votes, the system shows the reasons other reviewers gave for closing the ...
- 20.5k
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Should we consider grandfathering old R (and other programming-heavy) posts?
I have noticed quite a lot of too-old-to-migrate software-heavy questions (mostly R, but not entirely) coming through the close review queue.
They are often clearly off-topic by current standards ...
- 22.5k