Timeline for Lots of "unclear what you're asking" close votes
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 1, 2014 at 15:51 | comment | added | Braiam | BTW, bold to "When we really don't know, we should click Skip." Reviewers should love that bottom, I use it several times. | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 15:45 | comment | added | Braiam | Darn, your last comment should be in the answer. | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 2:04 | comment | added | Alaa Ali | Do you have the ability to tell how many "unclear" votes are in the queue right now? | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 2:03 | comment | added | Alaa Ali | I completely agree with all that. What I'm arguing is that users have been using "unclear" votes far too many times, when only a comment is necessary. | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:58 | comment | added | Eliah Kagan | @AlaaAli We should usually comment to explain how the question should be improved. Such comments should address specifics of the question, and usually cannot be precanned. Most of the time, commenting on unclear questions to request clarification is quite necessary. (In extreme cases where the OP is clearly putting forth no effort, I'd consider it optional.) But commenting and VTCing as unclear are not mutually exclusive--we can do both, when both are appropriate. Keeping truly unclear questions open may also fool askers into thinking they might get help when really no one can help them yet. | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:52 | comment | added | Alaa Ali | ... they'll be thinking um, my problem is specific. I can't install Ubuntu. Highlight exactly what I need? I need to install Ubuntu. It's hard to tell exactly what I'm asking? I'm asking how to fix my Ubuntu installation problem. Right? This also applies to the example question in my post. I know this might be...too "extreme", but it's the truth =). A new user would be confused. If everyone agrees with what you're saying, then I would say the "unclear" explanation text should be reworded because it does not explicitly say "give us more details on the problem". | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:51 | comment | added | Alaa Ali | I'm thinking about it from the asker's perspective. There was some error at some point while installing Ubuntu. It was shown in an error message. I don't remember the details. How do I fix it? If you tell them Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking, ... | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:44 | comment | added | Eliah Kagan | @AlaaAli If a question doesn't have enough information about the problem to be answered, then at least most of the time--including in your example about wifi--it's not a clear description of the problem. In a certain sense it's clear: we know what the words mean. We also know what "There was some error at some point while installing Ubuntu. It was shown in an error message. I don't remember the details" means. That'd be closed as unclear, without controversy. (Regarding "technical knowledge," I just mean that sometimes to know if something is clear or not, one has to know about the subject.) | |
| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:40 | comment | added | Alaa Ali |
...then closing it as "unclear what you're asking" is the right thing to do. I would disagree on that. If a person asks "I just installed Ubuntu and there is no icon to connect to WiFi!" (of which a lot of variations we see), the most logical thing to do is ask the user for some output. This is a question that is "very unlikely to be answerable by anyone, because it's missing details", but it should definitely not be closed. Yeah, you could say that it "involves technical knowledge on the part of the reviewer", but we don't even know what WiFi adaptor he has.
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| Sep 1, 2014 at 1:29 | history | answered | Eliah Kagan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |