I have deep issues with the 'Hot Network Questions' containing questions from the religion sub-sites. This is not because I dislike questions about religion, nor because I think these sites have no place on the network in theory - they do. The reason I am annoyed by these Q&amp;A's is that the quality of highly upvoted questions is often extremely low, and questions that are out of scope (since they are about reality) are not deleted.  Obligatory examples: All answers have been upvoted and are popular, I did not rotten-cherry pick:   Q    A +0 accepted   Q    A +10   Q    A +36     Q    A +4   Q    A +8   Q    A +9     I imagine questions, and answers such as these would be deleted on any other StackExchange site. Would I not be told 'reality' was not in scope if I asked a question on scifi.stackexchange.com like .   The level of answers at the sub-sites specifically for religion is very low, especially the answers that turn up in the 'Hot Network Questions' list. I propose removal of these sites from the network, as they do not fit the quality standards for SE. Alternatively, I would like to filter out these sites from the 'Hot Network Questions' list.  Addendum There is a related question under , a denied feature request for personalizing a filter for hot network questions. While that would have solved my issue, the fact that it wasn't implemented means my issue is unsolved, and my wish for a resolution to jarring questions on the Hot Network Question list remains (and in this case it's not just the low-quality floating up as usual, but actually especially jarring for the non-'experts' of religion.SE).
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I was going to make a filter for the &quot;&quot; by excluding some sites from it.  I noticed  which talks about &quot;negative filtering&quot; but does not explain how one can do it or if it is possible.  There does not seem to be a way to do this, though.  On the filter page, my only options are:  So how can I do &quot;All sites except [list]&quot;? It would also be nice if this could include similar functionality with the meta checkbox.  Something like &quot;All main &amp; meta sites except...&quot;
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Part of my daily routine is to go to stackexchange.com and see the hot questions. Today this hot question was up:    The question itself seemed like it might be a problem but my curiosity got the better of me, and I was not expecting to see quite so much graphic detail about the nature of the abuse -- to the extent that it ended up giving me a panic attack.  I feel like this question (especially in detail) is likely to cause a lot of emotional grief for a lot of people, and it would be beneficial if it could be flagged with a content warning and, ideally, if questions like those would not show up on the "hot questions" list.  The question itself is legitimate and I am glad the user asked the question -- and the answers they received are, also, quite beneficial. But it certainly isn't the sort of thing I was hoping to be confronted with, especially as a "hot question."  Thus, what I am proposing:   Have the ability for the community to flag such comments with a content warning Prevent such posts from appearing on the "hot network questions" display and sidebars.   Edit: It appears that the question has since been deleted. I have mixed feelings about this (the answers which were given would have been very educational for the person asking). Regardless, I still feel like a content-warning mechanism would be helpful; sometimes there are questions that are important and valid but which are also troublesome for some people to see.  The use of CW-based partial-hiding is well-established in communities such as Mastodon, where people can put things behind a structured spoiler/CW tag that indicates what lies behind it.
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I just found  , and I must say I found it very useful; however, it was closed as "Off topic". Now, it hasn't generated all that many page views, but I would have loved it if it was open, in case something new came up in the past year it was closed.   The "Off topic" specification doesn't exactly explain what the problem is with the question; I see the point for Stack Overflow, given there is no actual coding problem discussed - but a user in that post points out:     (That aside, prepare for your question to be closed, it's a bit too close to "please provide me a list of", which isn't muchly appreciated)   Now, the thing is, a lot of times I actually would appreciate greatly a "provide me a list of" question, like in this case - however, I can see the point in this posting in particular not being on-topic for Stack Overflow.   My question then is - is there a place where such "listing" questions about computer software in general can be asked? I don't think it would fit in programmers.SE, and one may think superuser.com would be appropriate - but then again, its purpose could be understood as specific questions about how to do more advanced stuff with existing software, thereby excluding again listing questions.   If that is so, then where do such question belong? If Super User on the other hand is appropriate, wouldn't the referred post be better off moved to Super User, and opened for contributions there - instead of sitting on Stack Overflow closed?
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I saw that question on my StackExchange "hot questions" feed yesterday:    I share it here as is since the community explained that it was not a spoiler because the book was published too long ago and Internet is the place where we should expect to see such spoilers anywhere. They could be right about how old that was but still what if a question "not that old to me" comes into the feed?  That made me uncomfortable. I don't want to leave my exposure to spoilers to someone else's discretion and I think the best option is to opt-out from receiving hot questions on SciFi.StackExchange. How can I do that? Would it work if I delete my account on SciFi?
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So, I noticed last week that . Well, it turns out that the wording is actually completely incorrect.  noticed that all of the users on the front page are the OPs of the questions listed there. This area is the issue:  It reads  Top Network Users These users asked or provided top answers for the posts on this page  I found that confusing, so I proposed this wording (provided by ):  Top Network Users These users provided the top questions and answers on this page  But, again, the users listed there are the ones who asked the questions; none answered them:  (click for larger image) Since all of the &quot;Top Network Users&quot; are the askers, it should be something like this:  Top Network Users These users asked the questions listed on this page  Either that, or answerers of those questions should be included along with the askers.
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For quite some time, newer users seem to ask a lot of blatantly off-topic questions here on Meta. They are mostly programming questions that should have been closed asked on Stack Overflow, along with some other questions that would fit into Super User or Server Fault, as well as a few others that have totally nothing to do with the Stack Exchange network. I'm curious as this issue seems to be specific to Meta Stack Exchange (and MSO to some extent), and the frequency varies every day. What could be the cause?
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This is my usual experience:  "I want to post a question but I don't know what kind of questions are within the rules on this site. And since I don't want a question that took me 10 minutes to write to be instantly flagged as off-topic, deleted or down-voted into oblivion I won't post until I know the rules."   But the rules are nowhere to be found. The short site description is often not enough and doesn't include any extra information, for example Server Fault says "Q&amp;A for server administrators" and nowhere does it say "Don't post questions about home servers on Server Fault" etc.  With the increasing amounts of new users wouldn't it be a good idea to have the rules defined on the front page of each site like on reddit for example?
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To start with, I am aware that hot questions from larger sites are somehow "penalized" and :     This is designed to ensure that a single site doesn't dominate the list, and that users see a good sampling of questions that are likely to interest them throughout the network...   I would like to understand how is hotness score really calculated at these sites. The reason why I ask is that per my observations, this seems to be quite different than is documented in the . Specifically, I would like to understand the difference in the impact of answer(s) score and aging factor.  Regarding impact of answers score, my observations of hot questions from smaller sites appear to be in agreement with known formula: (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore. For example, a question with low score (+1, +2) can get into hot list if it has got answer(s) with sufficiently high score.  At larger sites, this doesn't seem to be the case. Say, it looks like Stack Overflow questions just don't enter hot list until they reach certain score (+6,+7), no matter how many answers are there and how high is their score.  Does system simply totally ignore answers until question reaches certain score?  Another thing I noticed is that questions seem to age away from the hot list 2-3 times faster than ones from smaller sites (having comparable question and answers scores). Granted, this is harder to track and I am not yet sure if I figured that correctly. Do larger sites questions age away faster than those from smaller sites?    For those interested, here is a (partial) list of example questions I studied before asking this: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .  Although above examples are only from Stack Overflow, my question isn't (I only used it as an example of a large site in my studies). I would like to understand if hot questions from other larger sites are handled in a similar way.
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The Problem - The Stack Exchange network has so many sites with more being added all the time, a user probably doesn't know that a Stack Exchange site exists to answer a question they might have. In addition, when asking a question, the user might not know the best place to put the question. Asking the question on the wrong site could be downvoted, and it might not be in the user's best interest to ask the question if he/she doesn't know exactly where it belongs.  The Idea - A Stack Exchange site where you can ask any question, and it's up to reviewers of the question to decide which site would be best suited to answer the question.   I don't know much about the process for migrating questions to other sites as they stand today, but I think a voting system would be good, to allow reviewers to vote where the question belongs best, or someone with enough rep is allowed to move it directly.   The conditions that determine when a question is migrated could vary. Some ideas:   After a certain period of inactivity When the vote gap between the #1 and #2 result is large enough   The voting system should also have some way to denote that this question doesn't (yet) have a Stack Exchange site suited to answer the question.   When asking the question, the page could provide a list of similar questions as it does now, and "suggested site" box. This way, if they're writing the question they could see some suggestions as to where the question might belong. They could then select one of those sites and have it submitted on that site. The primary data source for this would probably be the tags. For instance, if the user enters tags that have a lot of followers on StackOverflow, the page would suggest that the question might belong on StackOverflow.  This feature would allow users to ask questions without being as concerned about where it belongs among the vast Stack Exchange network. In addition, this could be a valuable resource in determining what Stack Exchange sites people would like to see. If there are a lot of questions that are filed as "Site Doesn't Yet Exist To Answer This Question™", that would be an indicator that there is a need that Stack Exchange isn't currently fulfilling.  Please comment with any suggestions or criticisms.   PS: I hope that this is the correct place to post this suggestion.  Edit  Maybe a dumbed-down version of this might be useful. Instead of having the review process, just have a page for a user to enter their question, get suggestions to where it might belong, and choose at the end where the question belongs. Right now, choosing where to ask the question is the first step. I think moving it to a later point in the conception of the question would allow the asker to better categorize the question.
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I've been asking quite a few questions on several Stack Exchange sites, and I'm finding it harder and harder to keep track of them all.    Is there any way/place to see a listing of all my questions with no answer accepted on all of the Stack Exchange (2.0) sites? Or even just per site? If not, are there any plans to implement such a feature?  Although Jeff offered an answer, I don't feel it's the answer to my question; as far I'm aware there still is no way to list only my unanswered questions.
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There are some types of questions I don’t want to see, and so I . However, I've found that questions with these tags can still show up in Hot Network Questions.   For example, I've ignored the tag for the latest Star Wars movie on Scifi/Fantasy Stack Exchange, but questions for that movie from that site show up in Hot Network Questions.  Would it be possible to make it so that Hot Network Questions does not show questions that contain tags I am ignoring on the site that the question originates from?
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Isaac Moses, the patriarch of Mi Yodeya, :  [...] the general Stack Exchange directive, expressed in the uneditable part of that section of the About page, to &quot;Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.&quot; In fact, while this directive is perfect for the behemoth programming site that Stack Exchange grew out of, it doesn't fit very well for any of the more intellectually-oriented, rather than practically-oriented sites. [...]  This is something that's bugged me for a while, and ended up prompting a discussion between Anna, Aarthi and me. The gist of it: is there any simple test that can be used to identify answerable questions asked in good faith when the &quot;problem to be solved&quot; is... simple curiosity? Obviously, this is something that sites like  and  have had to contend with for some time, but now and then such questions pop up even on sites where folks are generally trying to solve real problems. While a potentially interesting thought experiment, . Strictly-speaking, problems like that fail the  test. And yet, I would keep that question simply because I learned something useful from the answers − not necessarily something I would ever apply to socks mind you, but certainly something I might apply to similar problems. I don't believe the question was asked in bad faith or for mindless social fun; yet, I have a bit of trouble stretching the definition of &quot;based on actual problems&quot; to contain it. Obviously, the fact that we're hosting a growing number of sites dedicated mostly or entirely to intellectual curiosity makes this something of a rhetorical question. The &quot;actual problems&quot; part of the FAQ was added specifically to draw a line between good and bad  − heading off  and their ilk. But it's a pretty damn good litmus test, and if it's ok to ignore it for some questions − or particularly for  − then what should stand in its place?
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We on  are in beta and we're always watching the hot questions list to see if one of our questions has made it into the hot questions list. Now we observed that it seems that only new questions are listed there.  So is it possible at all for old questions if they earn enough attention (votes and views) to get to the hot questions list? I'm talking about the hot list of all SE sites and not just the hot questions list of a particular SE site.
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I see a lot of good, well-writen and constructive questions (that are probably not only good for me) closed, by various reasons which I fail to digest, so I propose the idea that questions with n upvotes should not be closable.  This would be in my opinion very much in the spirit of "", and unless I'm wrong, it would be beneficial for the users to choose by themselves whether the site should have or not x question. The ones which are low quality never get many upvotes anyway.  The only cons I can think of are... DB space? And at a minimum there's the pro of more popular pages with more ads (for the admins), and questions people like (for the users).  I'm also counting for , in the lines of Google's "", but questions  are more like what I'm aiming at (probably that question has not many upvotes for this though).
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On many occasions, I've found questions that should be moved to AskUbuntu, or Unix/Linux, but when I click the "flag" link, I don't have those as options. I hate to leave something flagged as off-topic with no suggestion of where to put it, so I just cancel.   What determines the sites that show up on that list? Is it best to flag them off topic even if the ideal site doesn't appear?
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There seems to be more than a few computer science/programming Stack Exchange networks (is that the correct term?). Stack Overflow, being the first, has by far the most users, questions, and answers.  What is the reasoning for creating the others, and are there clear guidelines for which kinds of questions should be posted? I can see a large amount of potential overflow, many cases of people not getting a good answer to their question, because the person who has the answer isn't browsing that particular network at the moment.  I understand that they were probably created for organizational purposes, but wouldn't it almost make more sense to just have them as categories under Stack Overflow, keep them separated but still connected, instead of making people have to create multiple 'account's, one for each network?  I am sure there was a very good reason to break them up, but as someone that is new to SE, it can be somewhat intimidating to decide which one to post in to ensure you get a good answer. For example, if I am a computer science student, my first instinct might to be to post in the computer science network, until I see that it literally has 1% of the users as the Stack Overflow network, which still seems to be for programming/computer science related questions.  So my second instinct would then to be to post it into the Stack&nbsp;Overflow site on the basis that I have a significantly higher chance of my question being seen and getting a good answer. Then I notice that there is also a 'programmers' network, and I don't even begin to know where that fits in. I, and I am assuming most people, will probably just post on Stack&nbsp;Overflow to be safe.  My question is, other than the short little description blurb of each one, is there a clear cut set of guidelines which what each network is intended for, what kinds of questions should go to each one, and is anything being done to encourage people to post in these newer, smaller (more specialized?) networks as opposed to just posting in big daddy Stack Overflow?  Now again, this is for computer science/programming/"why isn't this code doing what I want?" related questions, I am not saying that if I had a question about Linux or WordPress or something I would have the same confusion.
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Allow me to add my own "top questions" too! I know, I know, the site should be more heavily weighted to answering, but sometimes, how and what people ask is important too! For example I recently asked  which I think is a fairly good question. Clearly I'm going to avoid questions where I've asked something very simple, but I know of a user or two who are implementing their own C standard libraries and the depth of those questions is important/ought to be on show.  Of course, the argument I can just look at their profile holds, but that awesome q/a might have been from a year or so ago in which case finding it is difficult.