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Anyone else have this problem? Over on the regular Ask Ubuntu site, I keep running into people coming along and editing my questions so they're incomprehensible. Or worse, they flag them as duplicates when they're clearly not. Is there any way to dispute peoples dumb edits/flaggings?

i.e. this one irks me the most

and this one: this one is older

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  • Link to examples?
    – No Time
    Aug 29, 2014 at 0:05
  • I edited the question to include an example. There's another good example, but it was an old question which I deleted.
    – Lucas W
    Aug 29, 2014 at 0:12
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    It takes 5 people to close a question as duplicate. When one person flags it, users with (I believe) 2k+ reputation go to a review queue and vote on either closing it or leaving it open. And, in the event of your question being closed as a duplicate but it really isn't, edit the question and mention that you've tried the solutions in the linked question but it didn't help. Once you update your question, it'll go through another "Reopen" queue that users will vote to open. Usually, those queues don't take long.
    – Alaa Ali
    Aug 29, 2014 at 0:17
  • I see. Thank you for clarifying.
    – Lucas W
    Aug 29, 2014 at 0:18

2 Answers 2

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I've checked out your questions:

On the one with your wireless:

It was duped to a question that was misworded to read like "Oh hey, how do I fix my hard blocked wireless?". Since it's not specific, it can read like a general problem that applies to all laptops. Upon closer inspection of the question, it's pretty Asus specific. That question is really about how to unblock wireless on that Asus model. It could be Asus model specific, and I'm not an expert on wireless, but I'm willing to bet that following those instructions on your Acer laptop probably won't work.

I edited your question's title to instead read "Wifi disabled, no hardware switch available, rfkill list reads "Hard Blocked" anyway on an Acer Aspire One".

If you look at the title of both questions as they were before, then yeah, they look like duplicates. I edited them to be more specific. Once I edited both questions to be what they were really about, it is now obvious that they are not duplicates. Questions are all about details! If they don't have details, people will generally put them in general buckets; that's just the way we're wired, remember that the title of your question is an important detail!

You're Deluge question is too confusing. There's your question and then a bunch of comments that I have to piece together what's going on. My recommendation here is instead of commenting in a forum-like manner (which is hard to follow), reedit your question to be what you need to solve.

(But this is a common problem, a PPA maintainer hasn't updated to a new release, there's nothing left to do there but wait).

Anyway, I hope this explains why this happened; the key to getting answers is to be specific up front in the title. Imagine the site as if it was a giant inbox of email that you had to read. Now fill that inbox with "My wireless doesn't work" emails. After a while, it just gets blurry. If I have an inbox of 10,000 mails, and they all start with "My wireless doesn't work", I'm going to space out. If it's "Wifi disabled, no hardware switch available, rfkill list reads “Hard Blocked” anyway on an Acer Aspire One" that will at least get you most of the way there.

Be aggressive editing your question: When I ask a question here I am edit maniac. I am consistently adding the results of my search, adding what questions I've tried, with links. Linking to every stupid thing I have tried. I get my questions answered because I am thorough. If I were to say "I've tried a bunch of things on the site and that doesn't work" that gets me nowhere. Fight for your question like a gladiator. Make it a live blog of your problem and you'll more than likely get an answer.

Now that your wireless question is not a duplicate, I've voted to reopen it, good luck!

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It takes 5 people to close a question as duplicate. When one person flags it, users with 3,000+ reputation go to a review queue and vote on either closing it or leaving it open. And, in the event of your question being closed as a duplicate, but it really isn't, edit the question and mention that you've tried the solutions in the linked question but it didn't help. Once you update your question with that info (within 5 days of it being closed), it'll automatically go into another Reopen queue that users will vote to open. Usually, those queues don't take long.

Also, if you've already tried some solutions that you found (on this site or anywhere else) before you post a question, you should list what you've done in your question instead of saying I've scoured the internet, but none of the solutions I've found so far seem to work.

Also, you say that people "flag them as duplicates when they're clearly not", but after reading your WiFi question and the linked duplicate question, they seem very identical to me: Fn keys not working, no WiFi switch, rfkill says hard blocked. Whatever thoughts make you think they're clearly not duplicate should be stated in your question =).

Also, by the way, chili, the person that initially marked your WiFi question as a duplicate, is pretty good with all wireless issues =). I'm not saying "take his word for granted", or anyone else for that matter, but he knows what he's doing. And if he marked your question as a duplicate incorrectly, then you probably didn't include enough information, for example your wireless card adapter make.

Read more about closing questions here: https://askubuntu.com/help/privileges/close-questions

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