26
I agree that we should resist the urge to answer bad questions, but at the same time I think we've done well so far with a policy that resists closing questions early until they get fixed (which is what happens on some of the other sites.) And that's really the only policy that would prevent people from answering such questions.
Also I think there's a ...
23
I was one of the persons who voted to re-open the posting in question, so let me take a minute to explain my reasons.
Basically, I disagree with the claim that the posting in question is "so opinion-based that it can't be answered objectively". The posting obviously expresses some very strongly held opinions, and I will readily note that not every locution ...
21
I can see where you're going with the question and am sympathetic to the general suggestion of avoiding bad questions, however I'm confused by the particular example. The question doesn't seem bad to me (and I'm surprised to see it marked down so much). I'd started to put together an answer to that as well but @egreg's was better so I never completed it.
...
21
As the question indicates, almost all real (La)TeX documents will be created using a text editor. There are three distinct ways that might be done.
Using a standard text editor with no (La)TeX-specific add-ons. This category covers for example using Notepad, TextEdit or 'vanilla' Emacs.
Using a standard text editor with add-ons. This covers both simple ...
19
I've done this before. My guidelines are:
Keep the original possible duplicate. That was, after all, the majority view. If I disagree with this then I'd want to discuss it first (here or in chat).
Make the plurality clear: "Possible duplicate s" and put them in a list.
Other than that, this is a good idea so long as it really is a possible duplicate and ...
18
I just have answered Magazine template? because is not a technical question, but it is clear and specific. He do not ask how to make a magazine. He asks if there's anything out there to not make it from scratch. This might be answered narrowly with a "No, sorry", "Sure, go here and there" or "Well, more or less. Look at this and that, and so you get the ...
16
I'd clearly say no, we should really not. (This is not intended to pick on egreg because he answered the question I mentioned; I've seen others doing it, that question just serves as the most recent example.)
These questions are of very limited use for the community. The title is (and almost has to be) totally generic and not helpful in finding help for a ...
16
The primary goal of all Stackexchange sites is to become repositories of reliable information on whatever topic they cover, in our case, TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt and their relations.
To this end, questions whose answers can't be given definitively are not good questions as regards to the goals of the site, and are therefore closed. Now your question is by ...
16
I voted to close as "opinion based" (and enough people did the same that it was closed).
But since that vote was overturned and people voted to open it, I added an answer.
The answer does of course include subjective opinion, but democracy wins I suppose. It doesn't mean I think it's necessarily a good question (for this site) or necessarily a good answer (...
14
Very basic (La)TeX questions are a tricky area as at least to some extent many of them could be covered by the concept 'read a manual'. There should be a space for asking good basic questions, certainly when they are phrased such that the question is clear, self-contained and likely to help future user. More problematic are basic questions where that's not ...
14
Troubleshooting questions are quite welcome but the issue has always been how to answer them. The usual pattern is that a series of comments, none of which can really be viewed as an answer, are posted and we end up with the user saying 'Ah this solves it'. However, normally this comment thread is tied to the issue for the questionner, and it's unlikely that ...
13
I would have to disagree here with Stefan here.
While I am not what most would consider a newbie, I am by no means an expert on general LaTeX usage as I have mostly focused on only what I need at the moment, or think I will need coming up in the foreseeable future. And hence,
I don't use abstract, or figure names.
Looking at those two posts, they seem ...
12
Here is perhaps a sequence of events that lead to the closure, as well as some motivation behind it:
It has been decided by the TeX.SE community to host "Answer the unanswered" sessions (see Regular “Let's deal with unanswered questions” chat meetings?) in an attempt to reduce the number of unanswered or open questions. These "janitorial sessions" are there ...
12
As I see this question it's a perfect candidate for http://math.stackexchange.com (as already suggested by a comment to that question). They users there aren't bad in TeX either, because they use it with MathJax.
Because there is already a specialized SX site for this I agree that we should consider such questions as off-topic on TeX.SX. However, migration ...
12
I don't see that we are accepting opinion-based questions. You might be alerted because of the
Is LaTeX used for novels?
LaTeX vs Word; improvements of LaTeX over the years
Why is LaTeX so complicated?
Does LaTeX really perform worse than Word?
In any case two of them passed hundred votes and the others are around twenty. Now saying well it can be ...
12
Should questions be to the point or provide context?
I would say, both. I have struggled with this point now and in the past. It is an art (to me, at least) to provide enough background that potential X-Y problems are avoided, but not provide too much information that it confuses the objective or makes the question "too localized" and not of much benefit to ...
11
It is highly unlikely that this question will be deleted, based on the automated deletion criteria set for older posts.
The question was closed as "too localized" since it mostly deals with an installation issue, many of which either fall out of the scope of TeX - LaTeX, or is so specific (localized) that it does not really benefit other members of the ...
11
Off topic subreasons currently are:
Questions on a problem encountered while writing code must include a Minimal Working Example. For help in doing so, see: I've just been asked to write a minimal working example, what is that?
Questions must clearly state a specific problem and include only the code necessary to reproduce it. Large amounts of irrelevant ...
11
I think that another point is missing here: Answers for caption are different than answers for abstract. There is a common thing -- changing setup of \...name, but for captions there are other possibilities, and this makes it hard to "read only the part of the other question that is relevant to me, when this part is not really seperated". So in my opinion, ...
11
The 'accepted' answer to a question is determined purely by the original questioner, while votes should (hopefully) show the best answer as determined by users as a whole. On the other hand, questions are duplicated if they cover the same material as a previous question. As such, it is always possible that the two questioners might feel that a different ...
11
If the answer didn't receive the attention it has, then perhaps it may have been different, but the post won't be deleted, as it doesn't fit the criteria laid out for deletion.
Reference(s):
Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?
How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that ...
11
The question has now been successfully reopened.
10
I don't think that the question needs to be closed as off-topic. It doesn't show any research effort and it doesn't provide a MWE, which makes it "question with no research effort". Such would deserve dozen downvotes on another sites and eventually get deleted. Here, we keep them at 0 or -1.
From the question it is clear that the issue is in the alignment. ...
10
Until you have the privilege to vote-to-close or reopen, you're left to your own devices to persuade the community. Here are some options (in order of preference):
Post a comment in the thread in question to get the attention of some of the users who voted to close.
Visit the chat room (of course, once you have the chitter-chatter privilege) and discuss ...
10
A grey dot appears next to the review queue if there is something to review in that queue. This grey dot turns red if there is a sufficiently large number of reviews within that queue, denoting some urgency in reviewing that specific content. At that time, the actual review queue button also gets a red dot. Here is that view on Stack Overflow:
The Reopen ...
9
Werner has covered a lot of the reasoning in his answer, but as my name is on the 'closed' statement I think I should also chip in.
Some questions are unlikely to gain answers, not because they are general per se but because they are general in a way that seems to require a specific answer. Th standard approach to these questions is first to ask for ...
9
I somehow agree that [1] is good since it includes the error you get. That is a reason why dupe questions are usually not deleted, and certainly not in such cases.
Still, this is not really "different symptoms", and if one finds [1] and gets to [2] from there, the answers there it is clear that: "Oh I can't use pdf figures and dvi mode at once!"
So in my ...
9
We also discuss if we should close or reopen questions on chat. This lead to the fact that as a community we have a general idea of what's, kind of, on topic and what not. This editor business is really tough because we already have a lot of editor questions and most of them end up showing buffer tricks, or screenshots of menu items etc. and if you can just ...
9
Option 1
From the perspective of the community, the Stack Exchange system (or interface) allows for correcting this:
Cast enough re-open votes to remove any closure statements from the post.
Re-cast close-votes using the appropriate duplicate.
I would further suggest that the process could be sped up when collaborating with the folks in chat. There are ...
9
https://tex.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions explains the difference
Questions are marked [on hold] for the first five days after closure to encourage edits and improvements to the question. If a question is edited by the original poster when it is marked [on hold], it will automatically be placed in a review queue to be considered for reopening. ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
