Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

37
  • 39
    Your bare technical truth suggestion here is actually pretty good. Never mind couching it in fancy diction, just say what's happening (or not happening). All the other suggests I see fail in way or the other. Either they encourage action which isn't going to help or they encourage action that could help. Just describing the what and why of what's happening leaves that more at the discretion of the reader. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 23:26
  • 9
    +1, Last one is pretty good. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 2:08
  • 13
    I rather like this no-nonsense approach. That said, Laura's right - we'd need a short version too, and 'unanswerable' is (IMHO) worse than 'closed'. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 4:38
  • 1
    @Jaydles, "It essentially leads with "we won't let people answer this because it isn't good enough."" That's because it isn't. We're programmers, not their mothers. (I still say leave the system as is. We have 5 million questions, we don't need this new crappy one, even if fixed up to qualify to arguably be a duplicate of another question on the same topic that we probably already have.) Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 13:42
  • 4
    @AnthonyPegram, this has to work on all sites, not just SO. And good moms, good programmers, and good communicators in general all know that when your goal is to to influence others' behavior, it's more effective to try not to lead with things that the listener is likely to reject when possible. One other key point is that the problem isn't always "not good enough". It's often plenty "good", just not for here (a very well-considered question that is simply too broad, too opinion-based, etc.) Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 13:45
  • 2
    @Rachel, sure. I tried Calm Mind followed by Future Sight followed by Last Resort. Alas, that did not work. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 18:31
  • 2
    [pending] . . . Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 18:48
  • 3
    Sure. But the moniker on the title isn't really for the OP, it's for the rest of the community, who presumably already knows what it means. The grey box is for the OP. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 18:55
  • 4
    I like @Robert's [Needs Attention]. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 19:10
  • 2
    None of your suggested short examples seem to directly indicate the status of the post. "redeemable" from what? That's not the state itself. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 19:26
  • 2
    @Ben, true. The exact state of the question is [answering disabled]. [locked] is already used for another state, and plain [disabled] is partially wrong and counter-productive (we want to encourage editing the question) IMHO. Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 19:31
  • 2
    @sixlettervariables seems almost like [URGENT], like something someone would append to their post. Every question needs attention, that's not really a state either. It's only really "needs attention" for the OP Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 19:51
  • 3
    I do not like [fixable] or [redeemable]- not all closed questions are either of those things. Cue a flood of "StackOverflow classified my question, GIVE ME CODEZ TO MAKE IPHONE APP, as 'fixable,' so it must be a good question! Why was it deleted??" Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 20:30
  • 2
    @FrédéricHamidi: First, questions deleted by moderators would still lead to such complaints ("why tell me my question is fixable but then not let me fix it?"). Secondly, I think the site would suffer if all questions had to exist either for five days or until a moderator could delete them. Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 20:50
  • 4
    I don't see why we couldn't keep [on hold] for the short text, works fine for me. Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 6:45