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While I've just recently acquired the privilege for voting to close questions, I find it hard to find the right close reasons for the following very common scenario. Someone asks a question, but does not provide enough information to be able to answer it. A comment is made fairly quick (within hours) with clear instructions how and what to provide. Then the question is either abandoned, only a part of the information is given or a useless comment like "I don't know, please help me, I'm a noob" is the response to it.

I really would like to have the option to close a question because the OP simply doesn't provide enough information or simply has abandoned it. It would be much clearer for them and others to see why his/her question was closed. Currently, I see questions being closed with either:

  • Too localized

    What? This will happen in Europe too!

  • Not a real question

    It is a real and valid question, but just one or more vital piece(s) of information isn't provided, such as a specific hardware specification.

It is quite unsatisfactory for those who have put time and effort in the question in researching and commenting, but it's even more to see the question closed with a reason not making any sense (in my opinion). It would make so much more sense to me to just add a close reason for this, e.g.:

  • Requested input not provided

    It is your obligation to maintain your question and to respond to requests made by other users in the comments in a reasonable way. Your question could be answered if you would have provided more information as requested by some users. Without taking the time to do this, your question will remain unanswered. This may discourage users to answer other questions.


I'm aware of the following questions:

But the options in the answers don't satisfy me.

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    *. Too localised may nobe geographically localised, If op abandoned the question it is too localised *. If the question does contain necessory information, It is not a Real question
    – Tachyons
    Commented Dec 29, 2012 at 1:42

1 Answer 1

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  • Not a real question

It is a real and valid question, but just one or more vital piece(s) of information isn't provided, such as a specific hardware specification.

The definition for NARQ is:

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

Usually if I run into a question and someone's left a comment but it's been abandoned then this is what I usually go for.

It is quite unsatisfactory for those who have put time and effort in the question in researching and commenting, but it's even more to see the question closed with a reason not making any sense (in my opinion).

Don't invest time and effort on incomplete questions; we can't force people to fix their questions, they've asked it, we've asked for clarification, if they bail then there's not much we can do, other than voting-to-close to prevent the next contributor from wasting their time on an unanswerable question.

I use the proforma comments to make it real easy to read a question, add the comment, and move onto the next one.

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    I don't agree with NARQ as the close reason. For example, imagine this question before the information about the GPU+driver was provided. (okay, not the best example, as the information is provided now) It is not ambiguous, it's not vague (screenshot is very clear), the question itself is not incomplete and it is specific, and no, it's not overly broad. It's just lacking vital information requested by more advanced users to look into it.
    – gertvdijk
    Commented Dec 29, 2012 at 12:41

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