Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
1,056 questions
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How should we celebrate 10 years of Ask Ubuntu?
It seems that Ask Ubuntu was launched on or around 10th October 2010. This means that our 10th birthday is coming up in about three months :)
This post is here to invite your ideas on how we can ...
ZannaMod
- 71.6k
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votes
29
answers
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Community Promotion Ads - 1H 2012 [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Community Promotion Ads - 2013
We... may have left 1H 2011 running a whole half-year long extra. Whoops. Well, now we begin-anew the next round of Community Promotion Ads!
...
29
votes
8
answers
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Is it smart to use threats or insulting language when asking for help?
I've seen many questions where the person asking for help, uses insults as part of their question. As examples, look at these:
How can I get your (bad word here) software to do what I (bad word here)...
- 29.6k
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What's wrong, Ask Ubuntu?: Low Voter Count
Let me preface this with a run-down of the reputation system:
Users on the site can cast up- and downvotes and accept answers on their questions, each giving or taking reputation to or from other ...
- 1,613
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Clean-Up Week - Event planning
We (your moderators) have been mulling over an idea for a good way to deal with old, unanswered and unanswerable posts. We've been in discussion with the StackExchange team and while we're a long way ...
OliMod
- 297k
29
votes
3
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Best way to end a question post
When I ask a question on Ask Ubuntu, I usually end it with some kind of request for knowledge, like "does anybody know the actual meaning of this message?". A lot of newer people end the question with ...
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3
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Need help! What problems would be best solved by a wizard?
I've talked about a wizard to help people find existing questions and improve the quality of the ones they post if they can't find one. I've talked about this for so long without doing anything so ...
OliMod
- 297k
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6
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Questions that refer to using or installing ripped/pirated software
I note in the comments to this Question, that the user is using ripped software.
umm, I just copied the folder of the game to my home folder.. thats
it.. should I download the installation and ...
fossfreedomMod
- 174k
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28
answers
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Community Promotion Ads - 2015 [duplicate]
The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community ...
23
votes
2
answers
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Migration Paths?
Migration paths allow for questions to be moved from Ask Ubuntu to other sites in the Stack Exchange network. The idea is that rather than simply closing questions as being "off-topic", then the ...
- 28.9k
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16
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Community Promotion Ads - 2016
It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!
Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to ...
- 101
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1
answer
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Lost 235 rep due to user removal
Is there any tidy way to let me know which user was removed? That's a pretty big hit to take from one user's removal. Just curious.
- 72.6k
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9
answers
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Are we better off with a general "Unix & Linux" stackexchange site?
Recently launched: Unix & Linux - Stack Exchange (Proposal )
Is Ubuntu perhaps a too narrow topic?
21
votes
1
answer
355
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Discouraging "Ubuntu" tags
Figured I might as well be the first to bring this up...
Some relation to but not the same issue as: What ubuntu versions are covered?
At time of writing, there are currently nine instances of the "...
- 2,466
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4
answers
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How do Mint users end up here?
It's clear to see how Ubuntu users arrive at the site. It's hard to Google for specific problem with "Ubuntu" in the query and not end up here. We're part of the documentation and we're featured (Ask!)...
OliMod
- 297k
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StackExchange Data Dump Viewer - A Desktop Tool for Viewing the StackExchange Data Dumps
About:
StackExchange Data Dump Viewer is a small Qt-based application that allows you to view the contents of the data dumps. This includes the Ask Ubuntu data dump.
Code:
The application is ...
- 32.4k
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votes
1
answer
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Changes to how we close abandoned questions
This is a heads up for people who regularly flag things as abandoned:
The mods are stepping back
We're not actually going anywhere and we'll still be dealing with most of the flags that come in but we ...
OliMod
- 297k
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votes
1
answer
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Flag answers that should be comments?
As new users can't comment, they sometimes posts answers that would have been comments if they could. Should we flag them so they can be cleaned up properly, or leave them alone because that's how the ...
- 14.4k
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votes
3
answers
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What to do about good suggested edits with very bad summaries?
In review, I've seen a number of edits that were good ...except for the edit summaries.
Bad summaries are most often something like, "Improved question." This is a bad summary because any editor ...
- 119k
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5
answers
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What should we do with an invalid accepted answer?
Specifically with regards to these JAVA questions:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/5567/how-to-install-the-sun-java-jdk
https://askubuntu.com/questions/52154/how-do-i-install-the-latest-version-of-...
fossfreedomMod
- 174k
17
votes
5
answers
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Shouldn't we stop closing questions instantly as Off-Topic if we see the words "mint", "debian", etc.?
I'm not suggesting that Mint is on-topic, but recently I've noticed questions getting closed as Off Topic, just because a question contains the word "Mint" or "Debian".
If you need to close them, I ...
- 13.5k
17
votes
3
answers
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What should I do with answers about other Linux distros?
See this chat conversation for intense discussion.
When I see an answer "here's how to do this in Windows", I flag it and leave a comment explaining that this is off-topic. All such flags have been ...
ZannaMod
- 71.6k
16
votes
2
answers
475
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Get rid of Windows answers?
Isn't it time to get rid of this answer and enforce the policy of closing Windows questions, here, here, ... as off-topic?
I'd rather leave a comment "We're sorry, but this site is all about Ubuntu ...
- 34.5k
16
votes
3
answers
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How to handle users that ask a question, and never come back?
Is there any set way to handle users, that answer a question. See the answer, and not do anything about it? Never come back?
Example 1:
User joins. Asks a question at 8pm. The answer is given at 8....
- 1,092
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votes
2
answers
504
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Is translating posts using Google Translate acceptable?
I've seen several questions in non-English, where a user (typically high-rep) puts it into Google Translate. Here's an example (Wayback Machine if it gets deleted). I do realize that post had other ...
- 3,692
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2
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Can we make some low quality tags synonyms, and outright remove some others? [duplicate]
Credit goes to jokerdino for making me aware of almost all of these tags. He sent me a list of tags he considered low quality, and asked me to post on meta about the ones I think we should take action ...
- 119k
15
votes
4
answers
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How to handle duplicate answers that add nothing?
I'm not talking about exact copying, failure to give credit, or one person passing off another person's answer as their own.
Rather, I'd like to know what the best practice is when one user answers a ...
- 119k
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votes
3
answers
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When do comments disappear?
I was browsing the main AU site, when I chanced upon the following comment in the question Why can't I turn on recommendations in software center?:
Please provide additional information only by ...
- 4,060
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2
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What do we do with homework-like questions?
Title's pretty clear on what i'm asking. But what should we do with questions like these:
A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux
Ubuntu Linux install xeyes command
... which rely on getting an answer to ...
Thomas WardMod
- 77.1k
14
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3
answers
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What to do if the good answer is in another question?
Problem
More often than not I run into a question that had already been answered here. But the asker could not know it, because he lacks info on what to look for. Recent example: User asks if it is ...
- 6,621
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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
4
answers
260
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Can we have a community blog?
Can we also have an AskUbuntu community blog like superuser.com?
- 25.6k
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Should one answer one's own question? [duplicate]
And if one does, is it bad form to then select one's own answer as the preferred one?
Here's the particular case I have in mind:
How do I add a program that must be run from within its own directory ...
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0
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Out of context comments from the community bot
This question is quite clearly written, and has not been edited so far.
There was a comment from the Community Bot (which I flagged):
Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional ...
- 36.1k
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How to get Vox Populi badge
If I know right i can use maximum 30 votes in day. How can i get Vox Populi badge when it needs 40 votes:
Vox Populi Used the maximum 40 votes in a day.
- 6,644
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Should we blacklist the freeze tag?
The wiki of freeze says:
Do not use. This tag is in process of removal. If your software is
freezing then you likely need to file a bug, as freeze problems are
usually off topic here and will ...
- 204k
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Please don't abuse of the custom close reasons (nor just agree with the previous close voters)
I've seen this for a while now. We are (miss)using the custom close reason:
Has anyone spoted the problem here? As you can see, both say the same with different wording. Why should we close it with a ...
- 68.5k
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3
answers
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What to do with plagiarized tag-wikis?
As I was going through the tag-wikis today to try to add excerpts to those that are lacking, I found many plagiarized tag-wikis and excerpts.
Examples:
libvirt
octave
google-drive
pango
anacron
...
jokerdinoMod
- 41.6k
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EOL Notice: Raring (13.04) is now past End of Life
This is a notice regarding releases of Ubuntu that have reached end of life.
The following versions of Ubuntu and derivatives are officially end of life as of January 27, 2014:
Raring 13.04
New ...
Thomas WardMod
- 77.1k
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votes
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How to know which questions should be closed, a reprise
Recently Luis went SPACESHIP and brought the 1000-or-so items in the review close queue down to zero. A truly epic effort that I'm sincerely grateful for.
Shortly after, he posted on Meta about his ...
OliMod
- 297k
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The 'Raiders of the Lost Downboat' chat room
Who created the 'Raiders of the Lost Downboat' chat room?
What is the room currently used for?
What was the room used for?
Who came up with the name 'Raiders of the Lost Downboat'?
Who were the room ...
- 1,532
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Under what specific conditions should a question be flagged as "very low quality"? [duplicate]
I was going along doing some editing and whatnot on the main site when I hit a question that just looked so ugly quality-wise that I could not think of how one might be able to edit it back into ...
- 14.9k
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Should we target Social Media?
Update
This project as been added to GitHub the current planning board is on PivotalTracker
With the recent addition of this question: Gwibber and OAuthcalypse I began realizing an opportunity to ...
- 48.6k
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404 Image Nominations
All the other sites seem to be doing this...
We need an image that will be displayed when users try to bring up a page that does not exist.
Please quote the source so the team can negotiate rights ...
- 32.4k
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1
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Would a off-topic tag warning be a good-idea? [duplicate]
Here on Ask Ubuntu we have quite a lot of tags for various Linux distributions/Operating Systems/things that could be off-topic if specific about them:
debian, mint, fedora, crunchbang, windows, ...
- 30.6k
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Is it okay to both answer and mark a question as duplicate?
When I find that a question is duplicate, I just caste a vote to close it.
But sometimes I've got another answer to that question, in that case first I vote to close then I post my answer on the ...
RavexinaMod
- 56.5k
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Request: Burnination and Blacklisting of [error] tag
One of the most overly used tags in the site is error. In almost every case, there are many other tags which are far more descriptive.
All 303 questions using that tag aside, I believe the tag ...
Thomas WardMod
- 77.1k
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should people who answer a question actively prevent duplicates?
If I see a question I can answer, I answer. If I know it has been answered recently. I point to the existing post in a comment. However if you have to search actively before giving (every) answer if ...
- 84.9k
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Adding a comment = audit failed?
I just failed my first audit on this question.
I got the question in first post review where it was displayed without any comment, I began writing a comment suggesting to add a screenshot to clearify ...
- 40.6k
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Giving feedback on the design
Thanks to Mat and Jin the new design is live. Here's how to report bugs. If you find a problem with the design that is CSS related, for example something doesn't line up right or look wrong, then Jin ...
- 72.9k