Questions tagged [best-practice]
The best-practice tag has no usage guidance.
22 questions
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How to ask and answer Software Recommendation Questions
We get quite a few software-recommendation questions. I'd like to bang out an expected format for these questions to prevent them from melting into too localized or subjective trite.
What are tips ...
- 48.6k
14
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4
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How should users share long log files?
For underdeveloped troubleshooting questions like this one I want to look at whole log files such as /var/log/syslog.1 or /var/log/kern.log.1, which can be several thousands of lines long.
How should ...
- 77.8k
39
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5
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$ (prompt) in command line instructions
I noticed a minor 'edit war' in an answer (NB: broken link, I'm guessing the answer was deleted) regarding whether or not we should promote $ at the front of command line instructions.
Is one of ...
- 28.9k
27
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Are animated GIFs of screencasts welcome at Ask Ubuntu?
Should we include a animated GIF of a screencast in our answers? Or should we post a series of screenshots instead? Or is a link to a video hosted externally preferable?
Here's an example of a ...
- 42.5k
5
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How should answers which basically equate to "give up and use x instead" be handled?
Let's say we have a question of the form "How can I make X do Y?" and it is a perfectly valid, on-topic question. Now suppose someone then posts an answer which basically says "Forget X and just ...
- 14.9k
14
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2
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Is it possible to "over edit"?
Hi!
Since it's beta I want to make sure we have high quality questions and answers. As a result I've been doing some editing, but a bunch of it things like capitalization, spelling, formatting, etc. ...
- 72.9k
14
votes
2
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Ability to close a question as a bug report.
We're getting an influx of questions of people having problems that are best served by them reporting bugs. We should use the information for this question to allow us to close questions as bug ...
- 72.9k
16
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2
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What is the meaning of OP?
I regularly see the abbreviation OP used in comments and in questions on the meta site. What does it mean?
Should a glossary be included in the FAQ? Or should OP be included in an existing glossary I ...
- 29.1k
12
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2
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How do I demote my own answer and encourage people to see the more detailed one?
In this question Bertrand's answer is better because he linked to a blog post from an upstream developer with much better information.
I think my answer got top voted because I happened to post first ...
- 72.9k
3
votes
1
answer
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Should I ask the same question again?
A long time ago I wrote a question on ask ubuntu ( How can I install another version of Ubuntu on my computer and then uninstall it without messing up my bootup process? ) and I never got a great ...
- 6,230
2
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Does it make sense to kill this question?
I noticed this old software-recommendation question is closed (rightfully so, imo) as "too broad":
Video editing software options?
I also noticed it has attracted some delete votes too.
Does it ...
- 69.8k
19
votes
3
answers
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What do you do about unexplained downvotes?
Too often do I see a question that is downvoted, without any explanation for why it was downvoted, and I cannot find anything downvote-worthy about the question.
Often times I consider (and sometimes ...
- 4,060
18
votes
6
answers
512
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What to do with "half-hearted" edit suggestions?
I noticed there are many edit suggestions which fix a handful of issues with the post, e.g. some typos & capitalisations, spelling & grammar issues, line breaks etc., but leaves out many more. ...
- 69.8k
13
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1
answer
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Is it OK to post a link to my question in the general chat room, to publicize it?
If I ask a question and want to draw attention to it, is it OK to post links to it in the general chat room? Or is this considered bad, since there is already a questions feed and if lots of people ...
- 119k
10
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1
answer
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Does paste.ubuntu.com remove all old snippets?
I was reading this answer comments: ambiguous package name 'libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0' with more than one installed
There are few links to logs uploaded to paste.ubuntu.com back to June 2012. All of them ...
- 48.7k
10
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1
answer
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Is it good practice to recommend users install software from third-party app stores?
There is a good amount of Ubuntu software that is not currently in the Software Center, but that users still want to install. When this happens, we usually tell them to do something like:
tar xf ...
- 13.9k
7
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3
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How should I decide which duplicate to close?
Should I vote to close strictly the newest one, or the one that has the most constructive content?
What if both have constructive content, as is the case with these two questions?
bind software to ...
- 77.8k
4
votes
2
answers
231
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Need to edit the content of a constantly changing canonical question
After I flagged this canonical question: Is a clean install better than upgrading? to be locked to prevent it from being deleted after it had already received 3 delete votes, my flag was reviewed as ...
- 119k
4
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1
answer
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What to do when an answer is just a (very good) request for information?
What should I do when I come upon a question that's missing some information, which has been requested...but only in an answer that does not actually attempt to answer the question, nor even to ...
- 119k
3
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2
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Are questions about design decisions considered constructive?
This question was closed as nonconstructive, which seems wrong to me. (The creator of the question also did not think it was right for it to be closed.) It's a question about a design decision (or ...
- 119k
2
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1
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What's good practice when given too many good answers?
I'm often presented with a list of answers where one just barely is the best answer, so I give it a checkmark. Is there anything to do with the two other good and useful answers besides voting them ...
- 2,423
-3
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5
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EOL Policy Revisited: a case for letting Ubuntu questions be on-topic
I wonder whether it is time to re-address the question about the (currently enforced) policy of treating EOL releases as off-topic. It strikes me as not only highly unintuitive but ultimately ...
- 1,057