What is meta? ×

I asked a question on Area51 and it got sniped when it went to Beta. Not really a big deal but..

  1. The question was copied and pasted. The sniper added nothing to the question
  2. The sniper did not participate at all in the questions after it was posed (Currently the sniper has a 0% acceptance rate, no edits on the question, no comments)
  3. The sniper did it a lot over 20 questions. Which exacerbates #2.

This now creates a disincentive to ask questions on Area51 that one actually cares about and to simply wait for the Beta instead. Furthermore because of the low acceptance rate quality answers may be harder to come by for all of the sniped questions.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

Is there a way to curb sniping?

Am I just whining because I got sniped?

To Clarify

I understand that Auto Copying a question is bad. It systematically creates the problems stated above where the OP is likely to be uninvolved with the question. What I'm looking for is there a way for the community to curb the behavior someway.

Here are some things I thought of but they're probably not very good for one reason or another.

Private Beta committed users may flag a post as a snipe and it behaves the same was as a wiki.

Flag a user as a sniper (to be fair this is when the question = title and no activity from the OP and doing it lots of times) and then something happens.

During the commit phase give committed area51 users a way to ask a single question with the full Title, Question, Tag before the beta that will be asked immediately when it goes beta.

share|improve this question
Meh. Happened to me on Programmers.SE. Joke's on him though. Because the question was a joke. –  Shogging through the snow Sep 14 '10 at 4:19
So you're saying its 3 (I'm just whining) –  Some Helpful Commenter Sep 14 '10 at 17:26

1 Answer 1

Perhaps when an Area51 site goes live those questions should automatically be populated on the new site, from the user who originally posted it? At least that way the proper attribution would be given.

Only the 'on topic' questions?

share|improve this answer
This has been discussed; the main problems are people tend to format question titles differently on Area51 versus an actual site, and the questions are only titles on Area51 -- people need to go back through and turn them into actual questions –  Michael Mrozek Sep 14 '10 at 7:13
@Michael: Not to mention that I might ask a question on Area 51 that I don't personally need answered, just because I thought it a good example of an on-topic, off-topic, or borderline question. Different questions for different purposes. –  David Thornley Sep 14 '10 at 20:56
@David Well, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be asked; I've asked questions before that I don't personally need answered, if it seems like somebody probably will –  Michael Mrozek Sep 15 '10 at 4:04
@Michael On the actual site, I don't agree with doing that kind of thing. If you don't want or need an answer to the question, how can you properly judge the answers that the question gets? This may be more relevant on Gaming, where asking a good question about a game you don't own is very ineffective, but I imagine that the same still applies to other sites. You should at least be interested in knowing the answer yourself, if you plan to ask a question. Otherwise, let someone who actually needs the answer ask it. During the definition phase, though, it may make more sense. –  Grace Note Sep 15 '10 at 17:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .