And They Closed a Valid Question on StackOverflow Again | /en/2018/02/closed-so-question/

Guest *Colin Gillespie* @ 2018-03-01 14:34:33 originally posted:

I'll take the unfashionable view these days and jump to the defense of the Stackoverflow community ;)

First, I agree that questions should only be closed by people who know what they are talking about. I recently had an old question of mine closed by 5 non-r users (it was reopened), but it was really annoying.

However, there is a large difference between questions tagged as #rstats (>250K) and questions tagged with #blogdown #hugo (< 250). The number of experts in blogdown & hugo must be tiny. The number of experts in blogdown and hugo who close questions on stackoverflow is probably less than 5.

The benefit of closing questions on Stackoverflow is that they are eventually deleted (if there are no answers) or if they are duplicated, point to the correct answer. This helps searching. I've just glanced at the page of new questions under #rstats. In the last hour, there has been 15 questions. Of which are a couple have been asked already and at least four are just terrible ~ 40% need closed.

I've noticed on #rstats twitter that lots of people complain about the unfriendly nature of stackoverflow. How many help new people edit their questions? It appears that many people are perfectly happy to consume the knowledge in SO, but do very little to contribute.

Ps I don't think the question should have been closed :)
Pps Your 4th bullet point would be disallowed as a SO comment as being unfriendly ;)