56
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
Questions which are just photographs of your homework sheet or old exam paper
Why these questions are closed
We have a policy on self-study questions, which says that:
It is okay to ask about ...
- 22.5k
32
votes
Accepted
Should we reduce the vote threshold for closing questions?
I'm all in favor of option 3: ask SE to lower the threshold for closing questions from 5 to 3 votes. (Importantly, the same should apply to the threshold for reopening a question. This is also the ...
- 115k
31
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
Questions which contain a large number of undefined abbreviations or acronyms
One of our close reasons is "Unclear what you are asking."
I'm comparing an XYZ model to a YYZ model using the ABC and ...
- 35k
29
votes
Dealing with "do my professional work for me" questions?
I downvoted your question because the part about job-related questions doesn't make sense, and it's unrelated to the site policy:
this is a Statistics Q&A - nowhere in the list of questions one ...
- 17.3k
27
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
Not carefully developing a question to ask of your data
As Scortchi put it (his ellipsis):
[…] How can I analyze these data?
This quip exemplifies questions that describe a dataset and then ask ...
- 19.6k
27
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
I personally like the "questions":
I have a dataset consisting of vectors of numbers and I want to predict
values from other vector of numbers. Any help will be appreciated. Thx
Why it gets ...
TimMod
- 134k
26
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
"I am working on my dissertation..."
Why is this a negative point? It may seem entirely natural as a lead-in, but it's a bad start.
We think statistically (what else did you expect?). A large ...
- 53.1k
26
votes
"Help I have some data and need to analyse it what do I dooo?"
I'm sorry, but I don't think this is a useful approach.
The questions you are referring to are essentially "please teach me data science". There are just far too many possible flavors. If you set up ...
- 115k
26
votes
Accepted
Do you flag absolute nonsense questions?
In order of priority:
Flag the post for moderator attention.
Downvote the post. (As Glen_b helpfully notes in a comment, if you plan to do this, do it first, because if yours is the deciding vote to ...
whuberMod
- 313k
25
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
What was the chance of this strange personal coincidence?
I am perplexed; I just ended a relationship with a guy and 1 month later I meet another guy who has the same first name and the same first ...
whuberMod
- 313k
24
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
QUESTIONS THAT ARE TYPED IN ALL CAPS
Why these questions are closed
Western languages differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters. There are commonly agreed rules on when to use which. These ...
- 115k
24
votes
Accepted
What's the point of putting unclear questions on hold?
This is misleading in so far as it implies that closing is always and only done by a moderator. On the contrary, closing as unclear is often done by non-moderators without any moderator intervening. ...
- 53.1k
23
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
It begins "How do I use SPSS to..."
I was advised to do [procedure X] in SPSS. Here's a dump of the output. How do I interpret it?
Yes, I am singling out SPSS because it is prominently ...
whuberMod
- 313k
22
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
A post that shows no concern for its readers does not deserve answers.
Teh speling en gramar r 2 terse and so ful of misstakes that we can scarsely reed the queston. Its ovbious teh poster hasnt ...
whuberMod
- 313k
21
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
[We often don't close these - but I increasingly tend to think we should put them on hold until clarified]
The title is:
What test should I run?
but which contain no indication of any question of ...
- 275k
21
votes
3-vote close - how's it going?
I've long thought we ought to close questions faster and grumbled that the burden on the small number of active, high-rep users with close-vote privileges was too high. I'd also support some other ...
- 17.2k
20
votes
Accepted
How can we discourage downvoting when inappropriate?
I have only a little to add to @NickCox's answer.
Down-votes do tend to be sticky, which is a pity when the down-voted poster makes the effort to improve their post. I don't see any reason to suppose ...
- 28.7k
20
votes
What's the point of putting unclear questions on hold?
A small point not covered in the excellent answers so far: a premature (though well intentioned) answer to a currently unclear question can do more harm than good. When a question bears more than one ...
- 28.7k
20
votes
Why does the “programming” closure message not mention Stack Overflow?
This is a good & reasonable question to ask because the observed behavior is counter-intuitive, and it gives occasion to lay out some of the subtle practices around closure and migration which, by ...
SycoraxMod
- 87.5k
19
votes
How can we discourage downvoting when inappropriate?
EDIT: Here is a summary added also in reaction to various comments (some now deleted).
Downvoting is not constructive (and not intended to be). It should, mostly, express a view that a post is not ...
- 53.1k
19
votes
"Help I have some data and need to analyse it what do I dooo?"
The endless variations on "How do I analyze these data?" are not answerable questions. Full stop.
When I first started my career, I worked as a consultant specializing in data science. I didn't know ...
SycoraxMod
- 87.5k
18
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
Duplicates or near duplicates
This site aims to collect questions and high-quality answers that are useful not only for the OP, but also for other readers who face the same question. This site exists ...
- 30.8k
18
votes
Accepted
Community moderating vs systemic attacks
To clarify: programming questions are not automatically off-topic here.
Instead, they are off-topic if they don't need "statistical expertise to understand or answer"; as we see under Programming in ...
- 275k
17
votes
Are we closing questions too fast?
Some excellent and thoughtful comments in existing answers from long-standing members still leave a little scope for additional remarks, from the Dark Side if you will.
Some respected colleagues ...
- 53.1k
17
votes
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 ...
TimMod
- 134k
16
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
How do I interpret this output?
This kind of question consists of copying and pasting some output from your software and then asking us how to interpret the output. (In really bad cases, the output ...
- 53.1k
16
votes
Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately
Posting a question as an introductory foray into conversation
Hey guys!
Well it seems to me like like your doing a lot of test anxiety around here. LOL Idont really understand this stuff, but ...
- 28.9k
16
votes
Accepted
Dealing with "do my professional work for me" questions?
If a question asks about doing someone's homework and does not meet the requirements of self-study questions described in here, then what you should do is cast a close vote:
...
TimMod
- 134k
16
votes
When we vote to close a question as "unclear" should we state why in a comment?
I agree -- where feasible we should try to help the poster understand how to fix their post, including trying to explain what's unclear whenever we're able to do so.
However, if someone else's ...
- 275k
16
votes
Accepted
Question closed, user asks it again
@Tim is right: users will be automatically banned by the SE system from asking (answering) questions if they have too many posts that are negatively scored, closed, or deleted. The exact parameters ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible