This question already has an answer here:

Some random question in my review queue. It strikes me that the author says:

In my code...

which implies there is effort, it simply hasn't been shown.

In this instance am I right to vote to leave open? I've potentially voted to keep a bad question (as it stands), one that could (in theory) be saved with a little coaxing; especially given they're a new user.

[edit] I'm not asking for a reason to close, as implied by the duplicate suggestion. I'm asking whether I should look for an excuse to keep it open. In other words, if the question has the potential to be better, and there is reason to believe so, should it be kept open. That question has now been well answered here.

marked as duplicate by gnat, Michał Perłakowski, Tunaki, Luke, Zakaria Acharki Feb 19 '16 at 23:52


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    Related: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/286757/… (if you need code, you need code - not assurance that code exists). I don't actually know if this question needs code, but it definitely needs something - "unclear" would also suffice. – Shog9 Feb 19 '16 at 19:48
  • Looking around, people don't like the idea of adding a system where new users questions are closed/hidden initially, and require being opened/shown after review; or not at all. The arguments against say its "adding barriers that will put people off". At the same time, people here say "close and down-vote bad questions from new users without regard for the possibility they could have been helped to improve it"... the later mechanism seems far more detrimental, to newcomers, than the former mechanism. – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 22:27
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    @MeirionHughes - The latter method may seem harsh, but that is because there is an expectation that the asker should put research and effort into the post before sending it off. Once sent, that should be the final form, not a rough draft or an estimation, final. If it is not in that form, then it ends up costing a lot of other people a lot of time. So really, is it detrimental to waste everyone's time, or is it detrimental to prevent that type of behavior? I vote for the former. – Travis J Feb 19 '16 at 22:37
  • @TravisJ That last sentence is wonderfully ambiguous... – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 22:39
  • @TravisJ I'll admit, I've actually deleted questions/answers in order to allow myself time to fix them. Sometimes that has meant several minutes of code corrections to make new content. IT would be nice to have a "Save for later" option rather than "Post Now"... indeed, you could even add tags like: "Translation Help Required", etc... so people can help with the post (if they wish) before its made public. – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 22:40
  • @MeirionHughes Your last draft is saved locally... but there's no saving it server-side, nor a "half-posted"-status. – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 22:44
  • To be honest, I wouldn't mind a "half-posted" status that I could share with others to preview. – Travis J Feb 19 '16 at 22:44

You should vote to close this question, as it doesn't contain an MCVE. Don't worry about discouraging a new user; once the OP edits the question, it will be automatically put into the Reopen review queue, and reopened if necessary.

  • I've not actually had a question reopened; does it wipe the votes? – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 19:45
  • Reopening a question doesn't wipe the up/downvotes, and a single user can vote-to-close and vote-to-reopen a question only once. – Glorfindel Feb 19 '16 at 19:46
  • off-topic: that doesn't seem to give much incentive to correct it, but to ask again (to avoid the taint). – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 19:49
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    @MeirionHughes Asking again rather than correcting is a risky strategy. If the new question does not hit the quality level necessary to avoid downvotes then that's a 2nd question with downvotes for the OP, and this brings them closer to being rate-limited and eventually banned from asking questions. Twice the taint. – Louis Feb 19 '16 at 19:53
  • And at least one of them is completely and forever irredeemable. – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 22:24
  • Has anyone floated the idea of resetting votes on reopened (no answer) questions? Say if there are >50% difference in content (for example)? – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 22:37
  • @MeirionHughes Yes. If you cannot find it on this meta, try Meta Stack Exchange. – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 22:40
  • @Deduplicator yeah I see on mse its not a popular idea either. :D – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 22:46
  • it will be automatically put into the Reopen review queue Cool, I did not realize that. Is the user told his question will automatically be considered for re-opening once improved? – Eric J. Feb 19 '16 at 23:22
  • @EricJ. That mechanic is explained in the help-page linked. Just look at any closed question. – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 23:41
  • @Deduplicator: The text doesn't say it will be reviewed and/or possibly reopened. That may sound obvious, but it won't be for some fraction of new users. – Eric J. Feb 19 '16 at 23:50
  • @EricJ. "it will automatically be placed in a review queue to be considered for reopening" that seems explicit enough for me... – Deduplicator Feb 20 '16 at 0:28
  • @Deduplicator: Maybe I'm missing something. First one I clicked on from your link says closed as unclear what you're asking by rene, Martijn Pieters?, Cupcake, JasonMArcher, p??ta ?e? Jul 25 '14 at 21:03 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. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question. – Eric J. Feb 20 '16 at 0:58
  • @EricJ. And if you follow the link there because you want the details, as I said? – Deduplicator Feb 20 '16 at 1:17

No, that's an explicit reason to vote to close.


  • To be clear, you're saying it needs to be correct the first time? Even if it is a new user, with hints of research/code effort that was originally omitted? I'm curious to know if this is the consensus (close/hold ASAP), because it seems like there are a lot of close votes on poor questions from new users. – Meirion Hughes Feb 19 '16 at 20:02
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    @MeirionHughes Yes. There's no sense in leaving a question open in a state where it cannot be answered. Get it closed as quickly as possible so the OP can see the close reason and add the needed information. If you want to add a comment on top of your close vote, that's fine too. – Bill the Lizard Feb 19 '16 at 20:05

"Implicit evidence" is not enough. It should be closed.

Not all questions need code, but if the question does need code then alluding to it helps no one. At that point it is essentially charades. Each potential person seeking to answer is going to have to guess what the code was, and also infer from their guess what the desired outcome of the code was.

This process potentially (often) wastes the time of each answerer. As a result it also very often leads to answers which are incorrect due to lack of information and by no fault of the person answering. Were this to happen without a closure, it would leave too many posts where no problem was actually solved and a lot of time and effort was expended.

So please, if anyone reading this is considering asking a question which does require code, at the very least include something that can reproduce the issue you are facing or that resembles the issue you are facing.

  • Actually, it is the answerers fault if his answer is useless because the question he answered obviously was incomplete. Not saying it makes it less the askers fault that he posted one... – Deduplicator Feb 19 '16 at 22:26
  • @Deduplicator - You are welcome to place that with some expansion in a question and post it here on meta to discuss. As it stands, that is merely your opinion and I see no community consensus on that. Most answers posted require at least some level of inference, and posting an answer in the form of "based on this situation x, y needs to be done like this" shouldn't be condemned. – Travis J Feb 19 '16 at 22:30
  • @Deduplicator - The first point you make does seem rather self explanatory though, with regards to it being the "answerers fault if his answer is useless". More often than not, that answer probably is useless, and that is why the next sentence goes on to say that without closure there is a problem - which is essentially saying these need to be closed. – Travis J Feb 19 '16 at 22:33

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