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There have been many instances* where I see off-topic close votes on questions that are about upgrading EOL releases to a supported one.

According to help center:

Questions that you should avoid:

  • Support for versions for Ubuntu releases past their Support or "End of Life" (EOL) — unless the question is asking how to upgrade to a supported release.

If we adhere to the policies and follow the help center, I don't think questions about upgrading an EOL release should be considered as off-topic. It may be a duplicate of How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release? but not necessarily, for example, How to upgrade from 18.10 to 19.10, using the command line? is a specific question and has an excellent answer.

At the end of the day we're a community and are here to help needy and answer supported Ubuntu specific questions.

Suggestions are welcome as comments or answers.

*Some Instances I'm aware of:

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  • 1
    Does this answer your question? Errors while upgrading from a EOL release -- should the question be closed? or meta.askubuntu.com/questions/11550/… or meta.askubuntu.com/questions/13837/… I am sure there are more, this comes up quite often.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 21:41
  • @Mark I'm not sure if this question is really a duplicate. I'd leave the fate of this question to the community. But here's my opinion, I think I posted a generalized appeal. The first question you linked was specific IMHO. The second one's answer suggested to use a common dupe which I think isn't a very good idea. The third one wasn't about the questions about upgrading.
    – Kulfy
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 21:47
  • The third link is asking that people don't close EOL questions indiscriminately, the same as you ask here, just in a more general way but my point is mostly that this comes up quite a lot.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 22:02
  • You could provide links to previous meta questions in which very, very similar issues have been discussed.
    – DK Bose
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 2:48
  • Here is my POV because I commented on that post: I completely agree that these questions should not be closed, but depending on how outdated the EOL release, sometimes it is worth pointing out to OP that it is probably less of a headache to reinstall, instead of seek an answer on how to upgrade an EOL release
    – Nmath
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 4:04
  • @Nmath Yes that actually makes sense. But still that won't be off-topic.
    – Kulfy
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 12:20

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Flag things being incorrectly closed.

Let us sort them out. That's the short answer.

The longer extension to that is to [please] just be careful what you're looking at.

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  • First one has a comment, "Yes i did it, and was able to upgraded to 19.04, but the error keeps showing up.". So, I guess they were already on 19.04 which was supported then. Since installing pending updates is the very first step to upgrade a release, I interpreted second question that way. I may be missing things in the second one. It's unclear if not off-topic. On a lighter note, I'd like to keep this discussion open.
    – Kulfy
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 8:27
  • You're right, the first one is okay. I've edited. But it's not an example of a question about "upgrading EOL releases to a supported one". I have no problem with the idea that those sorts of questions are on-topic, just reminding you that not all old-release questions with the words "update" or "upgrade" in them are about upgrading to a later version of Ubuntu.
    – Oli Mod
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 12:07
  • I do agree but that question is, I think, about the aftermath of upgrading. Must be a bad example though. And yes I do agree that all old-release questions having update/upgrade aren't about upgrading to a supported release. I admit that I should have provided better examples.
    – Kulfy
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 12:17

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