While it happens every once in a while that a (IMHO) borderline question is used as an audit, I just encountered one that I firmly believe deserved a close vote, and I got "credit" for a failed audit when I did exactly that:


The question is this:

Exception when opening Parse push notification

All it shows is an exception backtrace for a crash, with a very vague description of what the app did when it happened:

app crashed when opening the push notification

There isn't a single line of code, or anything else that would help somebody reproduce or diagnose the problem. To me, this looked like a clear case for Off Topic, with sub-reason (emphasis added by me):


The question does have 7 upvotes, and 2 answers. Based on these numbers, I understand why the system chose it as an audit case. But I still disagree that "There are no major problems with this question", as it says in the failed audit message.

Does my assessment seem completely off in this case?

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  • Yes, I was tempted to immediately go and cast a close vote on it anyway. But I thought I'd leave it as is at least until I got some feedback here. – Reto Koradi Oct 9 '14 at 8:01
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    @RetoKoradi - Closing it is the right option. There is no code in his question. The answer which was accepted and up-voted makes sense only to the OP (and the answerer and people who up-voted, hopefully). – TheLostMind Oct 9 '14 at 8:57
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    Well, it looks like I win the popular vote here, but together with another failed audit (similar to meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/261032/…), I got myself a review ban anyway. – Reto Koradi Oct 10 '14 at 3:04
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    @RetoKoradi and the question is closed in the meanwhile. That's very bad that you got a ban for the right answer to the review. – Uwe Plonus Oct 10 '14 at 10:22

Seems that two contributors actually figured out what the question was about and spent (hours of) time on solving the problem. They should be massively upvoted. But I support the decision to close, as questions of this caliber should definitely be discouraged, and now that the answer is out there, there is no need for anyone to touch that question ever again.

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    I would never upvote someone who answers such poor questions. If it's a very good answer I won't dowvote it but I don't want to encourage answers to bad questions (or we will have even more bad questions from help vampires that don't even put some effort to describe their problem). – Adriano Repetti Oct 10 '14 at 10:50
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    @AdrianoRepetti That may or may not be effective at getting rid of bad questioners. It's definitely effective at getting rid of good answerers, though. – Sneftel Oct 11 '14 at 11:08
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    @AdrianoRepetti The new badges suggest that the SE team want people to answer poor questions on the condition that they improve the quality of the question when the intended meaning is found and (hopefully) solved. I think now that this is encouraged, we may need to adjust the way that we audit or at least assign failed audits. – Nate Diamond Oct 11 '14 at 23:19
  • @Sneftel I'm not sure it may be effective or not for new users but for sure it'll stop someone to come here every time he has to solve a problem and he's lazy to do it. That's why accounts are automatically temporary banned if they ask too many bad questions. Sorry to disagree but from a bad question seldom you can have a good answer (that's why there is a badge for that, it's uncommon). – Adriano Repetti Oct 13 '14 at 7:24
  • @NateDiamond a bad question cannot be saved with editing. A bad question is completely unclear (then not eligible for a decent editing unless OP does it). A bad question is a list of his/her requirements. A bad question is merely a dump of error messages. Nothing you can improve with editing. Audits can fail because they're automatic but that doesn't change what definition of bad question is. No matters how much effort you put on editing: question is and will be off-topic. – Adriano Repetti Oct 13 '14 at 7:27
  • About "...and spent (hours of) time on solving the problem..." I wouldn't see that. It's OP's duty, it's OP's job, it's what OP is paid for (or what OP should do to learn, in case of homeworks). To answer such questions won't help OP to become a better programmer/to learn programming. To answer such questions won't be useful to anyone else in the future (because seldom requirements are duplicated and seldom someone else will find useful your error dump). It's exactly against what StackOverflow is for. It can be OK on another site, just it's not what SO is for. – Adriano Repetti Oct 13 '14 at 7:31
  • If you look at the initial version of the question, it's basically just a dump of error messages. You can, however, deduce what the person is trying to say: "I have done this and received this error message. How do I do the thing described, but without receiving this error message." This is much less of a bad question, as it gives context and describes what has been attempted. If a user can understand what is desired in the first post (as happened here), then I don't see an issue with formatting it as a proper question and then giving an answer. It can have value to someone in the future. – Nate Diamond Oct 13 '14 at 18:21
  • Further, it's obvious that the asker of this question does not speak English as eirs first language. This made it much difficult to understand what was being asked and made it look much more like a dump of error messages. Giving assistance in this case also assists the user in finding out what kind of answers (and English) are needed to get a response. It may teach them that they can just vomit a question out, but that will not always work. When it does work I see no issue in it, so long as the resulting post is of a decent quality. People can downvote the original user if they like. – Nate Diamond Oct 13 '14 at 18:25

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