For several months now, we've had a close reason (actually an off-topic reason, but no matter) for poorly-asked debugging questions:


This is a subset of "unclear what you're asking" that focuses on specific requirements for folks seeking help with debugging their code. I gotta be honest: I don't use this much, purely because it's faster to click "unclear what you're asking". But a recent discussion here indicated that a good many folks simply don't realize that this reason (or "unclear...") apply to these questions at all! That's not great.

One of the answers in that thread suggested adding an explicit debugging close reason. The suggestion was long, but perhaps that's what's needed to achieve clarity here; I've re-worked it a bit:


To be clear: debugging questions can be useful to others - but they need to identify a specific problem clearly enough for others to find them (and for duplicates to be identified when applicable). Without that, they're just a waste of time and space. My hope is that this reason is more acceptable to folks who disagreed with my rather broad interpretation of "unclear"...

This reason has now been activated, replacing the previous "lacks sufficient information" off-topic reason. Thoughts?

Personally I'd like to see more emphasis on the reproducible in the question part - useful for link only questions and the important bit of what makes a "debug for me" question worth keeping around. –  Flexo Jun 6 at 20:40
This will be an extra close reason or will it replace lacks sufficient information? –  rene Jun 6 at 21:06
It would replace lacks sufficient information, @rene. It could be considered a superset of that reason, or... we can just keep using "Unclear" for those. As mentioned, I like the expediency of "Unclear" –  Shog9 Jun 6 at 21:07
Oh god yes please! Also, I was just about to ask this (only, I suck at phrasing a lot more than you) –  Benjamin Gruenbaum Jun 6 at 21:13
Then it's just a duplicate of "unclear", @indivisible. Which already exists and is one less click to use. –  Shog9 Jun 6 at 21:16
@Shog9, "Unclear" to me means that you cannot work out what the OP is asking specifically and is its own case. In my mind this would be for questions that do have a clear request but either do not supply enough information to find the cause or too much so that wading through it all would be unlikely for most readers. Perhaps I need to re-read the proposal here again... –  indivisible Jun 6 at 21:19
Don't see why this doesn't apply there, @rene: you're still asking for the same three things, problem, desired behavior, and test case. –  Shog9 Jun 6 at 21:20
@Shog9 I guess rene's point is that while some issues can be reproduced just from seeing the code, for others you need both information about the code and the environment (e.g. config, table structures, operating system, interpreter being used) in which that code is executed. The wording here (which specifically refers to code necessary to reproduce) makes this close reason feel inappropriate for cases where what's missing is actually information about the environment instead of the code. A question asker may reasonably protest "but I DID include all the code necessary!" –  Mark Amery Jun 6 at 21:54
Yeah, I think we have to make a trade-off there, @Mark; we made that MCVE page (which includes advice on including configs and so on) as short as possible, but it's still 8x longer than this close reason can be. Missing / excessive / incorrect code is the common case; there's always the opportunity to just leave a comment if the actual omission is something else. –  Shog9 Jun 6 at 21:59
It is "Too localized". Wonder how many more you are going to add. Today I used a custom close reason: "This question appears to be off topic because it is already covered by twenty million Google hits". Produced by googling the question title. Your "we trust you to add good content but not remove bad content" attitude is pretty tiresome. –  Hans Passant Jun 6 at 22:43
I suppose these kind of comments are effective, people don't talk back to their Chinese fortune cookie. –  Hans Passant Jun 6 at 23:17
Not enough. The very important "include the debugging steps you have taken" is missing. The point would be to help people learn debugging themselves, not by teaching them, but at least letting them know this is what they need. I would still close a question having "desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce" if the OP clearly have not even tried basic debugging. I could do that with the previous close reason, can I do that with this one? –  kapa Jun 7 at 8:22
There's a great blog post linked to from MCVE regarding that, @kapa... "StackOverflow is a question-and-answer site for specific questions about actual code; “I wrote some buggy code that I can’t fix” is not a question, it’s a story, and not even an interesting story" Much as I'd like to, I don't think we're gonna teach folks to debug in 400 characters; either they've already done it, got stuck, and have a specific problem in hand, or... They need to go do it. –  Shog9 Jun 7 at 14:52
If you do this, please allow gold badge holders to wield it alone! –  Lightness Races in Orbit Jun 7 at 17:03
We had a good close reason that identified the need for a SSCCE. It was explicit in what was needed. You eliminated it. It should never have been eliminated. –  Robert Crovella Jun 8 at 15:12

5 Answers 5



Yes, I definitely think this is a good idea.

  • "Unclear" is ambiguous - The fact over 500 people have upvoted Can we please have the "Lacks Minimal Understanding" close reason back? clearly shows that a lot of people, me included do not use "Unclear" as a close reason for those questions as you've intended.
  • The specific use case you describe is very common - having clearer guidelines on it can be very helpful. It can make the choice of closing or keeping open obvious.
  • This close reason is clear - I think we have established that close reasons should be as clear as possible with all the discussion and abuse of "lacks minimal understanding". This is definitely a step in the right direction.
  • It's polite - it does not imply anything about the author but rather focuses on the question which is huge in my opinion. We shouldn't criticize the author themselves, but the question.
  • It's helpful - it points the OP to the resources comments would point them to otherwise, and it describes the steps to mitigate the problem precisely. "Unclear" is nothing like this.
"Very" = 80% of front-page questions. –  bjb568 Jun 6 at 21:17
Funny you should mention that, @bjb568... –  Shog9 Jun 6 at 21:23
I also support this; not that the community has much weight in decisions. If it comes from Shog, it is "featured", if it is just upvoted by the community a lot, that is sadly a different story. –  lpapp Jun 7 at 6:21
@Final I don't know what you are trying to say, but it sounds like you're saying that the community doesn't have a lot of weight in decisions. That isn't true at all. I do more than my fair share of complaining, but Shog is an awesome dude who definitely does listen to community feedback. The evidence is right here in this question—do read it again more carefully. He links to this recent Meta discussion, where there was an outpouring of community support for bringing a close reason like the one he's proposing back. Clearly he listened. –  Cody Gray Jun 7 at 7:33
@CodyGray: one case does not clarify many. I am afraid it is you who should read meta more often. There are plenty of upvoted proposals (majority eventually) that go nowhere. No, many of them are not even development related, just mindset which can be already achieved with existing tools. I am grateful when some progress is occasionally made, but on the contrary, I am sad for the majority. –  lpapp Jun 7 at 7:54
@FinalContest: if Stack Overflow were a democracy where the majority ruled, we'd allow awful subjective questions, demands to write askers' entire programs for them, and there'd be no downvotes or closing questions. –  Wooble Jun 7 at 11:24
@Wooble: there is a difference between majority (which can be 51%, too) and pretty much everyone, but at least the most valuable contributors. I am talking about situations as the latter. Also, I must personally admit that I do not think the majority of the contributors here on meta agree about "no downvotes" and "no closures". I am convinced about the opposite. –  lpapp Jun 7 at 11:31
This question is "featured" because the last time I changed close reasons on SO a lot of folks felt blindsided by the change, @Final - so I'm gonna leave this up for comment over the weekend, respond to feedback, make any needed corrections, and if there are no credible objections make the change on Monday once everyone's had a chance to think about it. This isn't just about the folks on meta; even small changes like this have a big effect on the entire site. –  Shog9 Jun 7 at 15:31
I think this change is really great. Now I have valid close reasons for all questions that I think should be closed. This is a good thing. –  Michael Jun 9 at 22:06

Hell yes. Please, please give us this.

It's like the old



the shortest code necessary

... which means that we can legitimately use it on wall-of-code debugging questions that are theoretically answerable but where the question asker has provided 100 lines of code to show us an issue that could have been demonstrated in one or two lines.

One thing that puts me off doing more close vote reviewing is that I can't close answerable-but-crap wall-of-code debugging questions without either crafting custom close reasons or abusing the unclear what you're asking reason in a way that will leave the question asker confused. You're solving that problem, and that's awesome.

On a tangential note, I also seriously like the idea of

not useful to other readers

appearing in the publicly facing close reasons. It helps to make clear that Stack Overflow does not primarily exist to serve the original question asker - that we're happy if you get help here, but that you need to make sure that your questions are providing value to the internet and not just to you.

+1 for the final paragraph alone –  Lightness Races in Orbit Jun 7 at 17:03
+ 1 for the idea of a "not useful to other readers" close reason,sounds good. –  Alicia Jun 10 at 9:06
@Alicia just to clarify, "not useful to other readers" is a quote from Shog's new close reason - I was commenting approvingly upon the existing proposal, not offering a new one. –  Mark Amery Jun 10 at 18:09

(I think that maybe I misinterpreted the question being asked, but I'm going to post my thought anyways because I'm wondering if other newer members to the community might share a similar thought.)

Honestly, when I see the whole:


business, I'm confused.

Seeing 'off-topic' in big bold letters when the question is clearly ON topic (or rather, a question relevant to the Stack community it got posted in) makes me think that the question doesn't belong.

I don't think about 'because it lacks sufficient information' or it needs more information (however anyone wants to specify this), I think about the word 'off-topic' and what it means and it took me a while to catch on that off-topic is kind of a catch-all for marking topics that ARE off-topic or topics that need more information etc.

That said, when I read this question (because I was searching for why 'insufficient information' gets labeled as 'off-topic'), I totally read it from the 'does off-topic make sense when using it to describe a topic that needs more information' angle.

(And no, it doesn't make sense at all.)

You're not the first person to be confused about this. We started discussing it as soon as the changes were made to the close reasons that lumped all these under "off topic". See: Shouldn't "off-topic" be only about... off-topic?, Some custom off-topic close reasons don't really describe off-topic questions, Can we rename the off-topic close reason label?, How about a slight change to the wording around off topic?, etc. –  Cody Gray Jun 7 at 12:26
Thank you for the links - I really appreciate it; somehow when I was searching (on second thought, I think I was searching in the wrong SE region), it wasn't wanting to pull up those topics. It's also relieving to know that I'm not the only one who has gotten confused. –  Aith Jun 8 at 0:14
The discussion occurred before the split between Meta Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Exchange. So yes, there are lots of gems that you'll need to search Meta Stack Exchange for now. And it isn't always as easy as searching, unless you remember having read them to start with. :-) –  Cody Gray Jun 9 at 0:57
Definitely agree with this. The new close reason seems great but still having it use that strange terminology is needlessly confusing –  Ben Aaronson Jun 10 at 10:30

Update: Thank you for not taking community feedback seriously. This is now live but expectedly useless. As long as majority misinterprets the purpose of the site, to get 5 votes is still a problem, almost unsolvable.

No, thanks.

Alone this reason could help nothing.

We should have either a hammer for this, or allow these questions freely.

There are way too many people around, who gladly will spoil the whole idea, either plain rep-whores or just ones who mistake both the purpose of the site and the meaning of the word "help".

You are again addressing the wrong problem.

It is not lack of the proper reason. It is the speed at which lazy questions are being answered and accepted. And the awful inefficiency of traditional quorum-based closure mechanism on the other hand. The latter one is utterly inadequate compared to the former. Which is the real problem.

These questions asking for a "second pair of eyes" is a most delicious prey for the rep-whores - no knowledge nor research nor time to write required - but just fast on-site examination. To fight hasty answers, one need a closure tool of comparable speed.

On the other hand, there are indeed cases when one gets stuck and needs but a pair of fresh eyes. The authorities should definitely think of the service for this kind of help.

I largely agree with this; in fact, I don't think we should be wasting anyone's time on most of these, as they can be detected and blocked (with appropriate guidance) before being posted. But given that logic is still in the design stages, this'll have to suffice until it can be implemented. –  Shog9 Jun 7 at 2:22
@Shog9 He does have a point though. I've been advocating for giving trusted users more weight to their close votes. I'm not sure how you would quantify trusted, but this would help get crap closed quicker & provide help to the user on how to improve faster. –  hichris123 Jun 7 at 3:30
@hichris123: trusted users already have more close vote weight. All we need is 1 catch all question that says "Halp my codez don't works" with no detail and then we can dupe-hammer all the underspecified questions as duplicates of it. –  Wooble Jun 7 at 11:28
I think the last paragraph deserves some special consideration. I've been fighting with a very hard to debug OS problem for almost a week, but I'm hesitant to ask for help, even though I'm sure someone on StackOverflow knows the solution. –  Collin Dauphinee Jun 8 at 8:09
@dauphic If you've really been working to debug the problem yourself, it is probably fine to ask about it on Stack Overflow. You are not the intended target of this close message. You will have a self-contained minimal example to show, you'll be able to describe the problem clearly, etc. –  Cody Gray Jun 9 at 0:56

100% agreed with this new close reason.

I was "brought up" here under the impression that this site is for people who have at the minimum, a vague knowledge of what they are doing. Without a minimal understanding, we have a flood of poorly asked, unclear questions.

People who wish to learn are ALWAYS TO BE ACCEPTED anywhere, which is in my opinion, why the chats are here. My questions were bad starting up on Stack, but I had a desire to learn and better myself. So I went to the JavaScript chat, and now I'm a room owner teaching others (within a year!!).

So this new close method may hopefully drive more eager learners (it's easy to filter out help vamps there) to the chats where the learning is dynamic, and the Main is cleaner and clearer than ever.


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