Add option to close vote because it is an XY problem?

Question

I recently saw a question where the user asked where to buy "Samsung Magician software" for GNU/Linux. A quick google search shows that it is a software for health checkup and performance optimization of Samsung SSDs.

Clearly this is not directly fall into "not an official Ubuntu flavor" (because this is actually about drive optimazation in Ubuntu) or "bug reports about Ubuntu" or something like that.

However, it seems that the user wants to fix a problem (drive optimization == X) using Ubuntu, but they want to use a non-existing solution (samsung magician software == Y), and asked a question about Y. This is another example of the XY Problem.

We regularly get many similar questions, which don't directly fall into existing categories for closure.

Shall we create a separate closure category for XY problems?

Answer 1

Even if we weren't at our limit as Thomas said, I don't think that XY questions that need to be closed occur frequently enough that they would need a new closure reason.

The best option would be, in my opinion, to close such questions with a custom closure reason. To do that:

1. Click Close below a question.

2. Select A community-specific reason:

   

3. Select Other - add a comment:

   

4. There you can add your custom reason for closing the question. For example:

   I'm voting to close this question because it is an XY problem.

5. Click the Vote to close button.

Answer 2

We're currently at our limit of "custom close reasons". Compared to the other close reasons we have, I don't see XY problem posts as frequently happening enough to warrant removing one of our existing close reasons to replace it with XY as a closure reason.