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Today I have spotted this question.

It lists a bunch of completely unrelated problems with a huge variety of programs, and asks how to revert everything to default. Is that a case of 'too-localized'? If not, how can I best help users who ask that way?

3 Answers 3

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Personally, I would leave a comment asking the OP to narrow down the question to something that can be answered.

Depending, how open-ended I would also point them at the FAQ.

I don't see any reason why to issue an immediate "close" or Flag.

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I have a canned comment for that:

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! **;-)** We're sorry but Ask Ubuntu is not a forum but a 
Question&Answer site: It works best if you ask *one question*, so you can receive 
*one answer*.  When you ask multiple questions, you need to find one expert 
versed in multiple areas which becomes more unlikely the more questions you put 
into... well, one question!  **;-)** So please, split up your question into 
multiple questions and leave a comment @Fabby so I can answer one of your 
questions.

and then immediately after leaving that comment, I vote to close as "too broad". If they do improve, the next voter will vote to leave the question open and my close vote will expire. If they don't, they will go trough the standard process.

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  • @Seth: Technically, you're correct: this is not code, so it shouldn't use back-ticks. OTOH, after your edit the answer became a little bit harder to copy-paste into the next guy's canned answers... :P But I'm definitely not going to an edit-war with you over this! :-)
    – Fabby
    Mar 8, 2016 at 0:55
  • Ugh, that's a good point. Backticks are so ugly for multiline stuff but proper code formatting makes it all one super long line.. Bleh.
    – Seth
    Mar 8, 2016 at 0:57
  • @Seth just split into multiple lines. Comments don't care about the odd newline or two.
    – muru
    Mar 8, 2016 at 2:39
  • Good one! Thanks!
    – Fabby
    Mar 8, 2016 at 18:39
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I would ask them to just clarify it a bit more if I were you, it's probably going to help as well as narrowing it down.

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