Questions tagged [closing-questions]

This tag is for general questions about questions that have been closed because they are off-topic or otherwise do not meet the criteria defined in the FAQ.

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45
votes
19answers
2k views

Top $k$ List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately

This is intended to be a "humorous and friendly thread on how to ask a horrible question" (amoeba) which can help new users understand how to write good questions. We hope you will ...
21
votes
1answer
152 views

Should we reduce the vote threshold for closing questions?

Currently, it takes 5 close votes from users with the vote-to-close privilege ($\ge3000$ reputation), or 1 vote from a moderator, to close a question. If the question is being closed as a duplicate ...
11
votes
1answer
80 views

Question closed, user asks it again

I made an interesting observation today. A user asked a question which was closed some time later, because the question needed more focus. As I scroll up, I see the same question being asked again ...
8
votes
2answers
251 views

I object to the closing of the following question

I see no other forum to raise this, so I'm raising it here. Question: Is there any consensus or literature on the proportion of font parameters within plots? I feel that this is a reasonable thing to ...
2
votes
1answer
42 views

Why was my flag declined while the question was closed for the flag reason?

I flagged this post as "needs details or clarity"; my flag was declined, while the question was closed as such. Am I missing something?
3
votes
1answer
92 views

Should we have a close reason like 'low value/level or trivial question'

It is nice that people can ask questions and get answers to whatever question they have. However, we tend to close and deleted questions when they are out of the bounds of the website (not interesting ...
2
votes
0answers
74 views

My question was closed, why? [closed]

I'd like to know why my question (Quadratic terms in glmer) was closed here. I think my question is not off-topic because it's about statistics and not about the programming itself. My question is ...
2
votes
1answer
128 views

Why was the question closed?

The post, General expression for $\hat \beta_1$ in multiple linear expression is asking for a closed form expression of part of the coefficient vector in a linear regression model. Nevertheless it has ...
13
votes
1answer
187 views

Quant.SE is no longer in Beta. Can we add it as a migration target?

Occasionally we get questions with no statistical content, such as Return on bonds and stocks So our choices are to either close as off-topic or migrate. But right now, only a mod could migrate ...
8
votes
0answers
289 views

Homework question put on hold for “demanding an answer” even though, I did show what my own thinking/approach to the problem was?

This post about a question that came up in a test was put on hold, presumably because I am "demanding an answer". But I'm not, I clearly explained what my thinking was and how it differed from the ...
19
votes
1answer
219 views

Community moderating vs systemic attacks

I see a lot of programming questions here. I remind people that programming questions are off-topic here, that they could be useful for Stack Overflow, and that the requirements are a minimal working ...
1
vote
6answers
423 views

Favorite “data analysis” cartoon question should be closed

This question What is your favorite "data analysis" cartoon? Should really be closed, as it's sending a negative signal about what is allowed on the site, per the comment: According to ...
10
votes
2answers
215 views

Should we remove the “datasets” close reason from the list?

Our recent proposal for adding one more close reason was declined. The reason was that we could re-use the "datasets" reason Questions about obtaining specific datasets are off-topic on Cross ...
4
votes
5answers
177 views

Computing questions: ggplot2

Pursuant to the recent apparent consensus (How much programming here?) that this site should accept some questions on programming statistical computations, I would like to inquire whether the site ...
10
votes
2answers
218 views

Extract software-specific default close reason

Almost four years ago there was a discussion on Meta that lead to formulating the "not about statistics" default close reason description as following: This question appears to be off-topic because ...
2
votes
2answers
100 views

Question titles cannot be similar to those of a closed question

I wish to ask a question with a similar (or identical) title to a question that is closed. But I'm not able to do this. It seems to me that this is a mistake. If the previous question is closed ...
-5
votes
2answers
164 views

Is my closed question without merit?

As per the moderator my question isn't appropriate: Variance formula amplify outlier instead ignoring it! I am learning stats and I tried many resources over internet and books but I could not get ...
1
vote
2answers
67 views

Can we fix up the “Should we trust statistics?” question

I was just writing up an answer to this question when it was decided that it should be closed. I understand why it is closed; the title alone makes it seem both a bit inflammatory and opinion based, ...
2
votes
1answer
74 views

Why do we close programming questions instead of migrating them to SO?

I have the (possibility wrong) impression that most programming questions are closed with the motivation "this is not about stats, but about programming, or etc.", rather than being migrated to SO. ...
18
votes
1answer
307 views

Do you flag absolute nonsense questions?

Here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/381309/cobbler-needed-right-now Is a "question" from a bot or a troll. Do we ever bypass "vote to close" and use the flag function if a Q is complete ...
4
votes
8answers
2k views

How can we discourage downvoting when inappropriate?

Note the approximately equal opinions +16/-13 on this question. Clearly, this question divides our site members into approximately equal groups of opinions for downvoting. To those who would prefer a ...
12
votes
1answer
212 views

Do we have an authoritative answer on why validation accuracy can oscillate or even increase, when validation loss keeps increasing?

I know that accuracy is an improper scoring rule, thus it shouldn't be used to choose among classifiers. In particular, it should not be used to choose the best hyperparameters for a NN. However, ...
5
votes
2answers
101 views

Are moderators notified by votes to close a question?

Question: Do moderators receive any sort of notification when a vote to close is submitted by a user with 3000+ reputation? It appears that if a user with 3000+ chooses to flag and picks "doesn't ...
9
votes
2answers
144 views

What to do with a question which is a duplicate of a question on Math SE

This question What is a distribution over functions? is a duplicate of https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2297424/extending-a-distribution-over-samples-to-a-distribution-over-functions but I ...
19
votes
2answers
845 views

What's wrong with this question about datasets?

This question seeking example datasets was recently closed as off-topic. Per the FAQ, Questions about obtaining particular datasets are off-topic (they are too specialized). As I interpret ...
11
votes
0answers
49 views

Improve closure-to-migrate voting

We often get questions that focus on how to do something using R (or Python, rarely SAS, MS Excel or others), with little to no statistical content. Such questions are off-topic and should be closed. ...
5
votes
1answer
102 views

What to do with a question which asks about R packages and how to fit RBF networks

This question How to fit a RBF network in R? asks an off-topic question (which R package to use to fit RBF networks) and a question which, while on-topic, is very likely a duplicate. Should I close ...
14
votes
0answers
194 views

What should we do with HW questions where the person says “I have no idea how to start”?

Our guidelines for homework question say to use the self-study tag and tell what you've tried. But what about when a person says, "I have no idea where to start?" Should such questions be closed? ...
14
votes
2answers
466 views

Is there a generic question to which we can redirect questions of the type “why does my neural network not generalize well?”

Thanks to Sycorax, we have an excellent question which can be used to close as duplicate (most of) those questions about neural networks which can't overfit the training set: What should I do when my ...
7
votes
1answer
152 views

Should we have a canonical question about coincidences?

Right now, this question is marked for closing as a duplicate of this one. Yet the titles and subjects are totally different at first glance - and someone searching for something similar will have ...
6
votes
1answer
133 views

When closing old unanswered but upvoted questions, consider downvoting down to zero (right?)

Some of us are actively scavenging old questions and voting to close some of them as off-topic or unclear. This is great. If such a question has zero score, then it will be automatically deleted ...
6
votes
1answer
51 views

Is this question in the reopen queue and if not, why not?

This question was edited while being on hold by me. This should have pushed it to the reopen queue. However, this does not seem to be the case: A reopen review task does not appear in its timeline – ...
26
votes
3answers
502 views

“Help I have some data and need to analyse it what do I dooo?”

I have been on this stackexchange long enough now to see there is quite a lot of questions along the lines of: Help, I'm a data science intern/amateur statistician and I've been given a load of ...
-6
votes
1answer
170 views

Why is “kjetil b halvorsen” bumping up old and closed questions?

Our active statistican kjetil b halvorsen is consistently modifying old questions by adding/removing tags. This closed question is an example. The bumped questions ...
6
votes
0answers
86 views

Issue with locked question

This locked question "exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar ...
8
votes
1answer
105 views

Why are some questions locked by the Community user?

This is in a way a followup on We have a very large & widening gap between questions and answers. How do we fix it?. As a response to that, I am trying to downvote/close some old post we probably ...
8
votes
0answers
147 views

How often do you “skip” on closing a question and why do you do so?

When deciding whether to close a question, one option is to skip - which is like abstaining. How often do you do this? Why do you do so? And, as another question, what happens when people skip?
14
votes
2answers
235 views

When we vote to close a question as “unclear” should we state why in a comment?

Some questions are completely unclear and it's fairly obvious that they need to be closed. But I've seen some votes to close as unclear that could really use an explanation - and sometimes the person ...
12
votes
8answers
556 views

Dealing with “do my professional work for me” questions?

There has been some discussion on CV Meta of how to deal with homework questions and also job-related questions. Either can be unreasonable in certain cases, but the latter really annoy me, since they ...
0
votes
1answer
98 views

Which close option to choose for this question

I believe this question should be closed: Test accuracy much higher than training accuracy It's impossible to answer it without looking at the code, so the only reasonable suggestion I can give to ...
12
votes
3answers
292 views

Is this an opinion question?

This question is put on hold as opinion based. The tldr version of the question is "Why are some people saying Frequentist statistics is no good?". I have partial sympathy with putting it on hold. ...
11
votes
2answers
155 views

On the “too broad” reason for closing

Regarding "too broad". I think there are two sorts of ways a question could be too broad. One is the sort of question that amounts to summarizing an entire course or text book: "Please tell me all ...
12
votes
1answer
81 views

What to do when a question with an open bounty is a duplicate?

Question Basic question about standard error in predictive model is clearly a duplicate of either How to compute prediction bands for non-linear regression? or Shape of confidence and prediction ...
8
votes
1answer
147 views

What to do if we see cross-posting

This question fitting a distribution to survival curve in R has been posted as an exact duplicate on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48137772/fitting-a-distribution-to-survival-...
10
votes
3answers
117 views

How do people find old posts to review, edit, or close them?

I've noticed that some people seem to find posts from years ago and moderate them, closing them as off-topic, duplicate or whatever. This seems valuable, since people can search the whole database of ...
5
votes
1answer
153 views

Is this question off-topic?

I have asked about the disadvantage of hyperplanes for the linear congruent random number generator, and the post has received 4 votes as off-topic, one away from being closed. So I wonder if the ...
18
votes
10answers
599 views

What is on topic on Cross Validated?

There have been many threads on CV-meta about whether questions are on-topic, off-topic, are too-localized, etc. For example: Are "find the distribution" questions on topic? Is a ...
11
votes
3answers
372 views

What's the point of putting unclear questions on hold?

I understand the need to make questions clear when asking them and agree telling the OP to make the question clearer, if it is not, is a good thing. But can't this be done without locking the ability ...
9
votes
1answer
126 views

When dealing with old off-topic questions, should we close or lock them, and why?

Some topics that are now considered off-topic used to be tolerated in the early days of this site. Consequently, there exist old threads with lots of votes/views/answers that are off-topic under ...
9
votes
0answers
98 views

Does it take too long for questions “on hold” to be re-opened and are enough questions re-opened?

I find it a bit puzzling, regarding site moderation, that questions are put on hold quickly (that's good) but in my experience it takes forever for them to be re-opened. In a recent example from this ...
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