What should we do when a question would make a perfect wiki, but the author has a criteria too strict for one? Please forgive me if this question sounds stupid, I'm not quite sure how the community wiki thing works.
2
-
Have you got an example?– 8128Commented May 22, 2011 at 7:33
-
1Sure. Yesterday a user asked the question "What web browsers are there?" which to me sounded like another great community wiki. But the author had a criteria that not every web browser would meet.– AlanCommented May 22, 2011 at 21:20
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
I think it's OK to edit the question to make it more general so long as it's within the (reasonable) spirit of the question.
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/
It is OK to edit a question to make it more general. With the power of editing comes the power to take someone’s selfish, very specific question, and edit it a little bit until they’re asking the more general question that hundreds of people encounter. For example, if someone asks, “I set up a web server at home but I can’t access it from work,” it’s OK to rewrite the question as, “What things should I check when a web server running at home is not visible on the Internet?” In fact, sometimes selfish, stupid questions of the “do my homework” variety can be easily edited into a form where the answer will provide an extremely valuable resource for the internet at large.
-
Making it a general question is fine. but what if the owner himself didn't get the answer he was looking for? In your quote generalization maybe fine, but there are possible instances where it can be generalized.– OxwiviCommented May 26, 2011 at 13:25
-
@Oxwivi In that case, the cabal should meet in someone's basement chatroom, and determine and vote on a winner.– belacquaCommented Oct 26, 2011 at 18:00