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I don't have enough rep to vote to close. Should I...

  1. vote it down?
  2. ignore it?
  3. tag it notprogrammingrelated?
  4. or something else?
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5 Answers 5

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Don't tag not-programming-related or similar. That's a useless tag. Either

  • vote down
  • ignore and let users that can, close it
  • flag for moderator attention
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I disagree that the tag is useless: It makes it easy for people to ignore not-programming-related posts. –  sth Apr 1 '10 at 9:55
@sth: That's a moot point. Not programming related posts are not allowed on SO by definition. –  R. Martinho Fernandes Apr 1 '10 at 11:17

I don't know how this question got bumped, but it's due for a new answer. The flag system has been extended to let you flag as 'off-topic' as a way of attracting the attention of people with enough rep to vote to close. So that's preferable.

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A nicely worded message pointing to the FAQ about what is considered to be an on-topic question usually doesn't hurt. Don't encourage a user to repost to the another site.

A nice comment will both inform the user, may discourage other people from needless down-voting, miss-tagging, and possibly help other 3k+ people decide to click close or not if they are on the fence about the question.

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yes, polite comments pointing out specifics are always welcome, I think –  Jeff Atwood Apr 1 '10 at 7:04
that's a good idea. thanks. –  progrmr Apr 2 '10 at 15:44

The right thing to do is to vote for closing, but I realize you do not have the necessary 3000 rep to do so. I would not even flag for moderator attention, as usually a question is viewed and voted on for closing pretty fast. Flag it if it is blatantly offensive.

As Martinho points out, please do not add a useless tag. Nobody searches for it.

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Call the stack overflow police!

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