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My question is closed due to being “subjective” and “rant” , what are my options?

This question:


is closed because:


I think I have actually found the solution and somehow the cause. The relation between the question and my findings are pretty easy to explain. They can be judged, measured and asserted to a good measure objectively and there is very little ambiguity in them.

I think the question should be reopened as I can surely provide a (possibly correct) answer to the question in its current form. What are my options?

share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by Brad Mace, Cody Gray, Jeff Atwood Aug 3 '11 at 22:21


Uh, improve the original question? The people voted to close it for one or more of the listed reasons. If you fix that problem, you can then get it re-opened. –  Cody Gray Aug 3 '11 at 15:48
I've cast the first reopen vote, you need 4 more. –  Lance Roberts Aug 3 '11 at 15:48
@Lance Thanks for your support (I suppose ;-) ) –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 15:50
@Cody I think I can improve the original question in the light of my recent findings yet doing so would violate my point. My point being the question can and would be answered in it's original form if hadn't been closed shortly. –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 15:55
Feel free to answer it now! –  jjnguy Aug 3 '11 at 15:55
Question seems to be open again now, go ahead and answer –  MarkJ Aug 3 '11 at 15:56
@Siva Thanks for the vote –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 15:56
+1 to Lance because of telling what is required to reopen a closed question (reopen votes). –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 15:57
@jinguy, MarkJ How do I show my appreciation for your supportive votes? –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 16:11
This sounds familiar... –  Chris Frederick Aug 3 '11 at 17:43
@Chris Yeah, Hi Chris –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 17:49
Wow I read that "Question". Perhaps I can explain the hoopla. It reads like this to me: "I'm talking about PhpStorm's autocompletion. It isn't working well. It sucks. Is this normal?" I don't care if you do take out all the other words, that is a terrible question. Yes, one answer is "Did you delete the cache and re-index everything?" But notice that's a question too. This problem is totally localized to you. Yes it happens to others, but the only useful suggestion for this kind of thing is asking something like "How does one know when the ide's [phpstorm] index is bad and how can one fix it?" –  dlamblin Aug 4 '11 at 14:27

3 Answers 3

That post could have been closed as either "not a real question" or "not constructive".


You asked the question. Of course you understand what's being asked. The problem is that no one else could.


That's an invalid argument, since it apparently "can and would be answered" only by you.

Since the question (and now the answer) are filled with subjective language and no real question is evident, I've closed the question again.

The answer to your meta question is not to reopen a bad question. You should have just improved the original question (first thing Cody suggested in the comments) so that it would be understandable and useful to others.

share|improve this answer
As I have mentioned in my comments to Lance's answer, the question outlines a rare but indeed very real situation and due to that rarity it might be confusing and misleading to many (read most). The question clearly states the problem to the "right" eyes. You are not among right people, exactly because you can't understand it. Symptoms are not familiar to you. you get confused, you call it a rant. The fact that I try to find the solution to my own problem doesn't make the question "vague" and "rant" –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 16:41
@ashy: Were your answers to this post not helpful to you?: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100661/… –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 16:45
@Wesely Indeed helpful but perhaps you would kindly elaborate? –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 16:58
@ashy: You're asking the community what they think, yet you seem to not be taking any of it into consideration - but rather opposing it. To me, it appears you are looking for sympathy, and not truly trying to learn what you can do to improve the community, or your posts. In short, your mouth seems to be open but not your ears. –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 17:08
@ashy_32bit: There are literally hundreds of thousands of questions on Stack Overflow where I'm not a domain expert. That has nothing to do with the closure of your question. When you refer to a piece of software as "dumb", "unintelligent", and "buggy", that's a rant no matter what the domain. –  Bill the Lizard Aug 3 '11 at 17:19
@Wesley I seem not taking any of your suggestions (or the likes) into consideration, not the community. People can disagree with you as they do with me. You say "do this to improve" it, I think it could be seen very good the way it is and I present reasons just like you do. We try to reach somewhere. We may or we may not. –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 17:20
@ashy: I haven't offered any suggestions yet, but I will now: When you ask a question on meta and get responses that all point in the same direction, you should probably listen to them and try to learn something, otherwise - what was the point of asking in the first place? You still have yet to make any effort to improve the question, it is still in the same state as it was when you opened this post. You have been given good advice by the community, and done nothing with it. I think you may just enjoy ranting and blowing off steam, try to turn that energy into something productive. –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 17:27
You actually did make a good number of assertions and suggested thereof implicitly. Perhaps you don't see it like that. I'm feeling productive the way I do, if you feel your time is wasted, simply do what you should as a caring member and leave it to others to deal with the situation. By the way, I see quite few members of the community thinking my question was good the way it was. They showed it by helping me re-opening it. I didn't missed the fact that it got closed again (apparently by one person) yet did you miss it getting re-opened in the middle? –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 17:37
@Bill I understand what you mean yet please look at it this way - My engine sounds like a sewing machine and it runs like a dying old man. Also when I press the clutch, it rocks forwards and backwards. [machinist response] - The oil pump it malfunctioning. It's rare but it happens. [someone else's response] - What? You are ranting about your car. Why don't you * * and instead do * * * . Who is really ranting here :) ? –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 17:42
@ashy_32bit: Great example. There are 100 different things that could be causing that. Just because you spend four days diagnosing which one thing was actually causing it doesn't validate your description in any way. No one else could have told you what was wrong from the description alone. –  Bill the Lizard Aug 3 '11 at 17:48
@ashy: The situation is resolved now (you've posted your answer), and as I said - I personally didn't think your question was that bad. I'm just trying to help you understand why you are getting negative responses, and why your question was closed, to help you avoid it in the future. I sincerely wish you luck and hope this discussion has been valuable to you. –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 17:49
@ashy_32bit: There is a constructive way to ask questions, and a non-constructive "rant"-ish way of asking questions. If you honestly don't know the difference, than you are going to see a lot more of your questions getting closed. I'm not sure how else to explain it. Bill and others have already pointed out specific words you've used that make the question appear more like a rant in our eyes than a serious question. It should be trivial for a programmer to "refactor" the question not to use those words and express the same meaning in a different way, if there is in fact a real question there. –  Cody Gray Aug 3 '11 at 17:49
@Wesley Thanks for seeing the value in my question. It's clear I'm faced with (mainly but not entirely) negative responses. I do not consider it a failure that should be avoided at all costs or an indication that something is wrong. Actually I praise the fact that people can openly discuss their points. To me it's natural, it happens. It should happen. It's a sing of progress. Yet people may feel bored ... if so, just leave it! I would leave it myself the moment I feel I have to. For now, I still want to stay (unless you got a dictator under the hood ;) ) –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 18:01
@Bill Thanks; yet I must disagree. There are not really 100 different things that can cause that. It's your assumption that there are, because you are not familiar with it. There is nothing wrong with that. You didn't know the answer! neither did I! perhaps no-one did at the time! It's a relatively new software after all, only recently being spotted by the major public. So far so good. Yet you interpret it in the context of your assumptions about the problem. Thats where things seem to get bad in your (most) eyes. if(post_conatains($post,nosays)) close_post($post,RANT); –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 18:21
@ashy_32bit: I don't know how I can put it any more plainly than I already have. When you describe the software as "dumb" and "buggy" you're being subjective. You're obviously not really interested in getting the question reopened or you would just remove the subjective language and ask a real question. I'm done arguing with you. –  Bill the Lizard Aug 3 '11 at 18:44

Questions sometimes get closed by those unsympathetic to those who have the problem. They should have left time for an answer, then closed after that as too localized.

I've had questions closed on me because it didn't relate to other's programming problems, though it sure related to mine.

share|improve this answer
Maybe that's why some people cast close votes. But that's not why five people cast close votes. And this question wasn't closed as "too localized", it was closed as "not a real question", which to me implies that the question was not understandable or problematic on some other level. As usual, your extreme pessimism is puzzling to me. –  Cody Gray Aug 3 '11 at 15:52
@cody, it's puzzling to me why you call it pessimism, I call it analysis. I've been around here a few years, and seen many of these type of things happen, including to myself. And as you know, all voting tends to cascade. –  Lance Roberts Aug 3 '11 at 15:53
It's true that seeing close(1) usually attracts the other close votes, sometimes incorrectly and without thinking or reading the question, but this post did have the tone of an unconstructive rant. –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 15:57
@Cody: I agree with Lance here. Some times people vote to close because they personally don't understand the problem and the inability to answer the question. I have come across a question where some one posted the comment What's the question here? but I could understand OP's problem and also provide a solution to OP's issue. As Lance said, voting does tend to cascade. –  user162697 Aug 3 '11 at 15:59
I think it has to do with empathy/sympathy; because I've been in these 'new user' situations before, I can always empathize with them. I've been in their shoes. –  Lance Roberts Aug 3 '11 at 16:02
I just haven't seen this on the main site (Meta is likely different and irrelevant here). When people vote to close questions as NARQ, it's never been because they can't empathize with the user's problem or because they don't know the answer. I certainly don't vote to close questions for that reason, and I just haven't seen any anecdotal evidence of others doing that. Even if 1 person does it, how do we get to 5 votes? This seems a lot like the widespread "fact" of sympathy upvotes. The data just doesn't support that hypothesis, as much as many people seem to be adamant about its truth. –  Cody Gray Aug 3 '11 at 16:08
@Cody, I totally agree that one might make a mistake but not all. But is it really sound to put so much confidence in the judgment of only 5 people in such a large community as SO? I may mention, as a counter-argument, that PO earned the re-open votes in relatively no-time. Following your logic it shows that original moderators was wrong as enough people disagree with them. –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 16:19
@ashy_32bit: Yeah, I think 5 people is still a reasonable number. You can't compare it to the entire base of SO users, but rather to the number of people who actually look at each question. Check the page view counter in the right sidebar. And arguing that it got quickly re-opened is kind of cheating. :-) Posting a question on Meta has a huge magnifying effect. Either the question you bring to our attention will get re-opened, or it'll get massively downvoted and possibly even deleted. It's a gamble, but it does work and that's what we're all here for. –  Cody Gray Aug 3 '11 at 16:22
It got closed again anyway, which kind of dampens the "look how fast it was reopened" argument –  Michael Mrozek Aug 3 '11 at 16:24
@Weseley I don't see the rant and nonconstructive parts. Perhaps the question outlines a relatively rare situation but the symptoms are described quite clearly with enough data for the right people to give answers. Right people would be those who has actually came across the situation and got it resolved. How exactly you would propose the question should have been asked to avoid being perceived as rant by some, considering the PO's right to use his own preferred style of composure? –  ashy_32bit Aug 3 '11 at 16:31
@ashy_32bit: What does "PO" stand for? –  Bill the Lizard Aug 3 '11 at 16:35
@Bill: It means "pissed off" :) –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 16:38
@ashy Well, usually people don't refer to "the OP" when they're talking about themselves –  Michael Mrozek Aug 3 '11 at 17:16
@ashy_32bit: I really didn't get it. You used it twice, plus you are the OP. –  Bill the Lizard Aug 3 '11 at 17:16
Man, this really should be moved to chat. These comments are easily ten times as long as the answer they're attached to. –  Chris Frederick Aug 3 '11 at 17:55

Comments put aside, I think the correct answer would be:

You need a certain number (apparently 5) of re-open votes then you can answer the question.


share|improve this answer
In general, you are more likely to get reopen votes if the question is improved to meet the guidelines. Your question in its current form very closely resembles a complaint about software (From the FAQ it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”), which is close-fodder for those who don't care to read between the lines and see the actual question (if there is one). It's really a matter of semantics in some cases, that's why you've been urged to improve the question by some, and why others already do see it as a legit question. –  Wesley Murch Aug 3 '11 at 18:03

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