EDIT: This question is as suspected a duplicate, so please check out the former post. Sonic's answer explains in detail how people end asking questions on Meta. Journeyman Geek . A better quantitative answer from Shog9 how people end here .  There are sometimes questions inside Meta where obvious new and inexperienced users are asking questions belonging to a site.  How do those users come to Meta? My experience is that you don't enter Meta accidentally. Do we have an non-obvious UI problem? If we track how they enter the site, is there an obvious route which can cause that an inexperienced user ends here?  Or do we have so many questions that those users are simply unpreventable outliers who do not care where they land and dump their question into Meta? :/
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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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Just noticed the "meta user" link under the picture and reputation on the Stack Exchange user's page. It doesn't seem to work for all users. Error is "Page Not Found".   Not working:  /  Working:  /    My guess is this is because they've never logged into the meta site.
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Is there a Stack Exchange site where users post their questions not to get answers or to get up voted or down voted for quality, but to decide on which site to post their questions? If not, does anybody else think that a site like this should be created? Up votes and down votes could be allotted for how obvious the correct site to post to is. For example, a question that obviously asks about why their code is broken would be sent to SO possibly with down votes. However, a question that spans both programming and academia where it is unclear which subject is dominant, could get up votes for its complexity and deserving to be asked.   Is helping to decide where questions go a function of Meta Stack Exchange or should another site be created?  Are there any negatives to creating a site like this?
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Community FAQ For sites in the Stack Exchange 2.0 network To see a list of commonly used words and phrases, see the . For official guidance from Stack Exchange, visit the . Asking questions                            Answering questions                 Accepting answers        Working with posts  What does it mean when a question or answer is...  ?  ?  ?  ?                                       Comments             Etiquette                         Promotion         Editing and Formatting                                    Tagging                      Reputation, badges, and voting                                         Moderation                                                 Searching and RSS feeds        Accounts, registration and logging in                                     Other                                 ()                                 Site-specific entries Stack Overflow             Meta Stack Exchange       Other     External links           Is your question not part of the FAQ? First look at questions tagged  to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question. How can a question be added to this FAQ?  Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.  Link back to this index. Paste this at the end of the question:  [Return to FAQ index](/q/7931)   Tag as  and .  When a post seems to have hit a mature state, it will have  added by a moderator.  Flag for a moderator to mark community wiki.  Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.  After the post has the  tag added to it, add a link in the above .
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Meta is different. Negatively scored questions are not always bad questions, and sometimes they have merit and draw good answers, especially discussions.  When an account (in the main site) is deleted, either by self deletion or by a moderator, all questions with score of -1 or less are being deleted regardless of their answers, both in the main and meta site.  Can you please change this behavior so that the questions on the per-site meta will survive and won't be auto-deleted?
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As a newcomer to StackOverflow, I recently asked my first . I wanted to start with a fairly safe general question, to get the feel for how the site worked. My question was intended to be programming-related, but my original wording was not clear enough, so another user decided to close it.  I've re-phrased my question, and had received one useful answer before the question was closed, but I'm not sure what the procedure is after your question is closed to allow people to post answers again...  I've checked the FAQ and About pages, searched the SO questions, but have had no luck. Could someone point me in the right direction as to how I get my question re-opened, or if it is possible to do at all?
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has several discussion comments going back and forth about whether the question belongs on SO or Meta.  The question is asking about how a specific feature of the site is implemented from a coding perspective (so that the OP might duplicate it in their own implementation), which can make it a legitimate programming question.  According to the Meta FAQ: "If your "question is about ... Stack Overflow / The core Stack Exchange engine", it should be asked here.  Here are some similar example questions on Meta:         Where do these questions belong?
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Lot of people have posted these kind of questions, but mine deals with another perspective of the same problem, so before you cry out duplicate! just hear me out.  I'm a pretty new user on Stack Overflow, and a rookie in the world of Javascript and Jquery.  So I wanted to make something clear...  So I asked some questions based on my knowledge, and what I do not understand, while other more experienced users kept pounding me down and down-voting me.  Well, in my understanding, Stack Overflow was made with the aim that anyone can ask, and anyone can answer.  Old users constantly say This is a duplicate! or Why didn't you check the FAQ!. Now let me ask you something, Will a new user go through all of the Stack Overflow just to see whether it is acceptable to you or not?  OR does he even know that we have a FAQ?  Seriously guys, if you think that a person's question are a waste of time, why do you take the time to down-vote him??  Old users should understand that we are just wanting to get an answer, and not try intimidate us. Give us some space!   I mean seriously, after getting bullied again and again , you think anyone would want to stay on longer?  I agree some new users are just there for spamming, but hey, not all of us are like that!   Just give us some breathing room, and come on, it isn't that hard to be nice to someone.
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I just had that rare case of a newbie who barges in with off-topic content, it gets closed, and instead of starting to spew invective, politely asks &quot;what are the rules&quot;. Currently, his or her  is on Cooking meta. The question text mentioned a curious thing:  Admittedly I only use the app so maybe that is where I am going wrong but I can't seem to find any rules about what can be asked, what sort of answers are allowed and what format it all has to be in.  The whole network already has a problem with getting new users to accept our high-moderation and strict-rules culture, especially when their expectations are set by general discussion forums which don't restrict themselves to objective non-poll questions. I think that the rules might be even harder for the users of sites outside of the trilogy, because the interested population is not made up of geeks who automatically value the information-content-aspect of information  above the other aspects. Even for users who have easy access to the help center, there is lots of friction to get accustomed to our rules (and many leave in anger instead). So, for the people who are willing to RTFM, I think that we should make the access easy. I admit that I hadn't expected somebody who hasn't used the site to start using the app, but now we have observed it happening. So, I think that it is important to include a link to the help center in an easily accessible place in the app. Even if at the beginning, it cannot be brought into the app format and has to be a link which opens in the mobile browser, it will be useful for the poor confused new users.
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Important: This question is being asked here, and not on the Programmers Meta,  because I believe that several SE sites suffer from this same, specific problem.    On Programmers, I see a pattern emerging.   New User sees the "Programmers" site title, and asks their incomplete, "fix my broken code" question. Community members comment that their question is off-topic, and recommend Stack Overflow.  New User says "thanks" and leaves, leaving their undeleted question for the community to clean up.    What seems clear to me is that:   New User has never seen the "What kinds of questions can I ask about here" page, or if they have, they've clicked through it without reading it. New User doesn't know how to move their question to the right place properly  (i.e. post on new site, delete from old site). Community cleanup of such questions is onerous.  The moderators on Programmers, following the principle that the community should moderate itself for the most part, are not proactive about removing such questions unless they're especially egregious. Migration is even more onerous.   OK, so we have the .  Here's what it says about topicality, about halfway down the page:    Note to those who are confused about Programmers' site scope: it's all right there, in black and white.  However, I do notice a problem.  It's circled in red.  That's our fault, the fault of the Programmers community.  What we really meant to say was "Don't ask your code troubleshooting questions here; those belong on Stack Overflow."  Coding tools deserves its own bullet.  We should fix that.  However, what are the chances that the user is actually seeing this, and evaluating whether or not they should ask their question based on this?  So here's my question, in two acts:  ACT I:  Is there a way to highlight the pain points of a particular site to new users specifically, so that we can be very clear that we don't want those questions that are clearly and unambiguously off-topic on our site, before they ask their question?  ACT II: Failing that, is there a way that we can fast-track the removal of such questions so that they no longer pollute our front page?
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How do per-site metas, such as Meta Writers Stack Exchange or Meta Stack Overflow differ from the general Meta Stack Exchange?  Where should I go to ask my question?
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A user walks into Stack&nbsp;Overflow and . The answer for his question is in the first result of a Google search. Well, it is the fourth result, to be precise, but the first link in the discussion under the first link leads there anyway.  Long story short: the question is very simple and the answer is two clicks away in Google. What should I do? Should I give user the link to answer or should I point him to the Google Search results? What is Stack&nbsp;Overflow, a place to learn something (even if it is googling) or a black box "insert question, receive answer" machine?  (Meta&nbsp;Stack&nbsp;Overflow's policies prevent me from posting a link to Google? WTF.)
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Questions are the lifeblood of any Stack Exchange site. But asking good questions can be difficult, and while most people start off doing it poorly, some never get better. For years now, when sites reached traffic levels that made manual review and filtering of questions burdensome for the good folks answering them, we've enabled systems to :  We believe asking questions on our site is a privilege, not a right. If, after a few fair attempts, you haven’t been able to prove that your contributions to Stack Overflow make it at least … not-worse … then we reserve the right to refuse your questions. If we don’t do our part to cull the bad questions, then we risk alienating the true experts who provide what really matters: the answers!  Prior to today, these &quot;comprehensive&quot; checks have been enabled on only 8 sites. After much discussion and soul-searching, we've decided to enable them everywhere. Users who encounter this block are directed to , which explains what that person must do to lift the block. Moderators have access to information on whether or not a given user would be blocked if they try to ask, as well as whether or not they've previously encountered the block, for those cases where it is desirable to provide one-on-one support. What you can do to help Quality blocks are based on each community's rating of questions and answers, therefore the most useful things you can do are:   if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art! if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down. anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it!   Don't worry about the exact details of the algorithm used for blocking - in general, it's fairly conservative as far as who or what gets blocked. On the majority of sites, this will affect few if any users in the near future. Most users will encounter  and  long before they encounter this block. As always, vote your conscience and encourage new members to participate constructively. Feel free to post questions or concerns here. If you encounter problems specific to a given site, please post on that site's meta. If you encounter this block and want it lifted, read the instructions linked to in the block message.
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I  sometimes wonder where to ask a particular question (on Ubuntu? Unix and Linux? Superuser?) because all of the sites will have great people to help. This is not a common case for me but I already had it happening.   It may be, though, that a question goes unanswered for a while and would be ,  all in all, a better fit for another site.   Is it acceptable, then, to migrate it ? Or move (delete and repost)? Or copy?
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I have enough reputation to open a meta question in one community, but I don't have enough reputation to open a meta question in a different community.   I thought the point of requiring some reputation was to filter out spammers, wouldn't some reputation in any community show that a user isn't a spammer?
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In principle, asking a question on multiple sites is fine, since each site has a different community that will probably answer the question in a different way. If the user is consciously choosing to cross-post for that reason, as evidenced by them taking the time to phrase the question differently on each site, then it's fine. .  But then there are about the lazy, spammy kind of cross-posts where a user is clearly copy and pasting their entire question from one SE to another simply because they think more posts equals more attention. Often, these cross-posts are on-topic on both sites, and poorly written but probably salvageable, so none of the usual close/migration reasons apply (which is why this isn't a duplicate of all the existing meta questions about cross-posting). All we can do is downvote if the question itself is bad and add a comment that cross-posts are frowned upon.  What is the right way to handle these posts?   Are both communities obliged to help? Since it is exactly the same question that would mean a lot of duplication of effort. Should the site that's "slightly less on-topic" close or ignore it and let the "more on-topic" site deal with it? I fear this might be our de facto behavior on PSE right now. Or should we have some auto-detection that simply looks at what the user has already posted today and warns him that we dislike cross-posting? From what I've seen these cross-posts are from the kind of newbie that might actually listen to a warning.
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I understand the desire to keep a closed question around for Google or SO Search purposes, or when a question is a dupe, or has been moved to "(sister site)" and therefore I don't want the to be deleted.  However as a user of the site, logged in, looking to help someone out (or just gain some rep) answering questions, the [Closed] questions just become noise.     Would you consider an option (for logged in users) to not show Closed questions,   unless running a search?   e.g. if I search for "IE getElementById error" then please show the closed questions as they may be helpful.  However when just going to the Questions page... p2, p3, p4, p5 etc. I'd rather not see those questions as typically they are the "Spam, Not a real question, or Belongs on Sister site" questions... all of which I'm not interested in.  Alternatively any chance they could be styled similar to "ignored tag" questions where they are almost faded out?