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I've had a couple of questions "closed as not a real question" by people who didn't seem to understand the question.

Who is able to closed questions, and is anything going to change about this? It seems really silly and I don't know how to appeal against my question having been closed.

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Which questions? Have you thought that it could be that they were bad questions? –  ChrisF Jan 26 '13 at 13:27
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It's called closing, not blamming. Blamming is when a Newgrounds submission gets removed from judgment for being too poor in quality. –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 26 '13 at 13:27
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@BoltClock'saUnicorn BLAAAAAAAAAAAAM THIS PIECE OF CRAP –  badp Jan 26 '13 at 13:29
    
Haha, yes I was using a newgrounds term. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 13:29
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If people don't seem to understand your question, have you thought about improving it? –  slhck Jan 26 '13 at 13:29
    
@Elliot I wasn't even aware "blamming" was a thing in Newsground. –  badp Jan 26 '13 at 13:30
    
@badp: That's where the video you link to comes from (which itself is a parody of a review on Newgrounds). –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 26 '13 at 13:33
    
@casperOne: Why. –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 26 '13 at 13:37
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@BoltClock'saUnicorn So I don't have to watch a YouTube video to understand what's going on (granted, it was funny, and the extra fifteen second ad that I had to watch (with no skip) for "Devil May Cry" was pretty good, but still). And on first blush, I thought it was a misspelling for "blame". –  casperOne Jan 26 '13 at 13:40
    
@casperOne: I did link to a short article that explains it far better than the video does, but yeah I can see how it would be confused for "blame" ;) –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 26 '13 at 13:43
    
Arg, question got unjustifiably edited...arg, another reason why stack is starting to suck. Such a shame. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 13:45
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Anyway, back to the topic at hand... looking at your most recent questions, I see that many of them don't include nearly enough information for us to go on. That's why they were closed, because they'd just invite guesswork, which we don't want. –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 26 '13 at 13:45
    
Which questions are you talking about now Boltclock, that don't include nearly enough information? –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 14:06
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@Elliot "Unjustifiably edited"? You've never read the FAQ? Editing for clarity is a commonly accepted reason for edits. –  casperOne Jan 26 '13 at 17:05
    
I don't know casper. That was the word that I used because it best descibes what was in my mind. I find it a bit weird to have my title changed like that. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 17:50

3 Answers 3

up vote 9 down vote accepted

A "real question" should ideally answer a number of sub-questions we have.

  1. What are you trying to do?
  2. What have you tried so far?
  3. Where are you stuck?/What have you narrowed the problem down to?

Point 3 is basically going to be your "real question".

So let's have a look at your question and how it reads to me.

  • What are you trying to do?

    Is there anyway to generate a class in global.asax and then use it in global.asax.cs? I actually want to generate an enum from a data in a file.

That sort of gets there. But seemingly it is unclear. One of the users in the comments asked you for clarification, at which point you should usually provide it to them. Going "Um, just what it says in the title", isn't helping there.

You as the OP know perfectly well what you're talking about. But we are not running along with your train of thought. If some clarification is asked for, take a step back, objectively look at your information and see if something is missing. Even if there isn't to the best of your knowledge, perhaps try rephrasing the problem.

This is a user willing to help. To be dismissive of them is not going to do you any favours.

  • What have you tried so far?

    I was hoping that there would be some markup that I could use in global.asax to generate the class, probably using code render blocks.

That is only the most subtle of hints at you trying something. You have most likely researched, but have not found something. That's a shame. But tell us what you've done. What have you seen? What did you dismiss? That is information that's going to help us in answering your question. Or it might help us in avoiding answering your question with something you've already tried and dismissed.

  • Where are you stuck?

    No luck so far though.

So it seems you're still stuck at step 2. The "homework" phase so to say. If that is the case, then I have bad news: you might not have a question fit for Stack Overflow just yet. And that would explain why your question is closed.

Now if through all this you think "But I can answer all those questions just fine. This Bart guy does't know what he's talking about", fine. But then go back to your question and provide us with all the information we need.

If you make it a good question, it can most certainly be reopened. If you however think, yeah, I might need to do a bit more research, then do it. Update your question when you're done and if it doesn't get reopened by the community, have a moderator evaluate it by flagging it for attention. Explain clearly what you want and you might have a second chance.

Good luck.

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1  
Thanks for the effort bart; I think that it shows good will. However I think stack overflow is off the rails a bit with letting users delete and edit eachothers posts willy-nilly. If "Is there anyway to generate a class in global.asax and then use it in global.asax.cs? " is not a valid question, then this is not an effective place for me to find help with the programming that I am working on. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 18:01
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Whether or not this is the place for you is of course up to you to decide. I find the system in place actually quite helpful in ensuring the site's quality. But perhaps your experience differs. –  Bart Jan 26 '13 at 18:04
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@slhck That guy quit stackoverflow didn't he? I don't think that being a jerk to the users and trying to make them into good little unpayed content providers is a good long term strategy; but then he didn't need one. –  Elliot Jan 27 '13 at 13:20
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@Elliot That "guy" founded Stack Exchange. Also, if the long term strategy is to get good content instead of vague posts showing no effort, then I'm all for that. But maybe you didn't get it yet: Being a jerk about insisting on research effort is not only helping those who spend their free time helping you out, it's also helping yourself analyze your own problems more clearly, learning how to precisely formulate questions, et cetera. If you're not up for that, so be it, but then Stack Exchange might not be the place for you. –  slhck Jan 27 '13 at 13:25
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@Elliot "That guy" might have officially left, but he is still quite active. And to be dismissive of him just because he left does not do his contributions justice, nor does him leaving make his earlier contributions irrelevant. –  Bart Jan 27 '13 at 13:25
    
I used to really find this site effective. Maybe I should wish that Jeff had stayed. However, when a site starts being a jerk to its users, be it stackoverflow, facebook, instagram or however big a site, then I think it indicates the beginning of a decline. For me that's time to quit using the site; there are plenty of alternatives( yes, yes there are). –  Elliot Jan 27 '13 at 13:37
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I don't follow how the site is being "a jerk to its users" when it asks for some research efforts and whips posts into shape through collaborative editing. But if it's not the site for you, that's fair enough I assume. If you can find something to your liking elsewhere, good for you. –  Bart Jan 27 '13 at 13:40

You can flag your question for moderator attention and politely ask them to review it.

You asked a question like the below one:

This question shows no research effort and is fine to be closed as NARQ due to that.

For more, I'm quoting Tim Post:

Not A Real Question:

Why does this wall of code not work? (and / or) Please download this giant archive, compile it and tell me what's wrong.

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It was a simple question. Really it's completely stated in the title. I do not understand why it's not a real question. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 13:34
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@Elliot: when people ask you for clarifications in comments, saying "it's all in the title" doesn't help at all. You might have all the information in your head that makes your question "a simple question", others might not. Give context/use cases/code samples when requested to clarify. –  Mat Jan 26 '13 at 13:47
    
Sry mat, the question was clear and complete. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 13:53
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@Elliot Obviously, people think otherwise. You'll need to think outside the box for a moment and assume that others don't know what was going on in your head when you were writing the question. Even if giving more information or context feels redundant to you, it helps shape the question into a better format, most of the time. –  slhck Jan 26 '13 at 13:55
    
@nullpointer "This question shows no research effort and is fine to be closed as NARQ due to that." I mentioned code render blocks in the question. That should be evidence of research effort. It took me quite some time to get to that, and I referred to it in the question as a possible lead. –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 14:16
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@Eliot You may have done the research, but you do not show us what you have tried. Via your research, what have you discovered does not work? –  Josh Mein Jan 26 '13 at 14:27
    
@josh sigh..... –  Elliot Jan 26 '13 at 14:32
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@Elliot Josh is trying to hint at what you might want to address. If you do so (which should really take you only minutes) you might end up with a good question. Your "sigh..." however doesn't give me high hopes. –  Bart Jan 26 '13 at 16:03

Who is able to closed questions, and is anything going to change about this?

One thing worth keeping in mind is that Stack Overflow philosophy values answerer's satisfaction with question quality the most.

For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand:

...we’re determined to keep question quality high, even at the cost of refusing a little sand. It’s true that you can’t have Q&A without questions, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...

We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to answer questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?

My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker yield 1 and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.

If you ask question that is difficult to tell what is being asked... ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form, don't get surprised if someone who already put their effort into answering meaningful questions gets upset, downvotes and / or flags or votes to close your question.


It seems really silly

Once again, keep in mind that it's the answerer's satisfaction that matters more. If it would be otherwise, many of those who answer questions would get bored and leave the site, letting really good questions hang without an answer at all. Now that would be silly don't you think?

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