31
votes
Accepted
"Advice on what to do" close reason is over-broad
How about:
Questions asking for advice on a specific choice, such as what job to take or what skills to learn, are off-topic as the answers are unlikely to be useful for anyone else, and are often ...
31
votes
The Question-Close Police
I don't understand the zealotry people display in telling others that
their question was crap.
I'm sure there are varied reasons why some folks vote to close so aggressively.
Some seem to enjoy ...
12
votes
Accepted
Can we improve the text of the "real questions have answers" close reason?
How about a bit of rephrasing
Questions require a goal that we can address. Rather than explaining the difficulties of your situation, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more ...
11
votes
Custom Off-Topic Close Reasons Change
Questions seeking advice on company-specific regulations, agreements, or policies should be directed to your manager or HR department. Questions that address only a specific company or position are of ...
Community wiki
11
votes
"Advice on what to do" close reason is over-broad
My proposal:
It is not practical for us to answer a question that depends so heavily on your own abilities, preferences or circumstances. Instead, consider asking a factual question that will help ...
11
votes
The Question-Close Police
I think there is a tension between to goals of different people on this site. Some long time contributors see this site as a effort to build a corpus of great questions and answers. They protect the ...
9
votes
Accepted
Good Subjective/Bad Subjective and Agony Aunt Questions
Here is the most up to date revision of the rant question close reason: (taken from jmac's answer and posted here for clarity)
Real questions have answers. Rather than explaining why your ...
9
votes
We should have a flag or close reason of 'Trolling'
Technically not feasible. We have used all of our custom close reasons (cf previous discussions on adding extra reasons) and I'm not even sure it's possible to modify the flag types.
More to the ...

LilienthalMod
- 59.7k
9
votes
What details or clarity does the question about teammate vs volunteer need?
With all due respect, your question in it's current form is meaningless.
It does not specify a region (in certain regions the terms "teammate" and "volunteer" may have important ...
8
votes
What are "opinion-based" questions?
Shog's answer raises some good points, but it misses the mark in some fundamental ways.
We've had, and closed, many "agony aunt" questions. This is not one of them. Especially with the community ...
8
votes
Good Subjective/Bad Subjective and Agony Aunt Questions
I'm not sure I agree with this close reason. It seems to contradict two items that I think are more important.
Workplace dynamics/interactions should be on topic, in fact one might say that's one of ...
8
votes
Custom Off-Topic Close Reasons Change
Questions asking for advice on a specific choice, such as what job to take or what skills to learn, are difficult to answer objectively and are rarely useful for anyone else. Instead of asking which ...
Community wiki
8
votes
Accepted
Should we have a "too trivial" close reason?
If it's something that concerned the OP enough to ask, then it's a non-trivial problem worthy of an answer.
Everything is "trivial" once you know it, but everyone's gotta learn it somewhere; That ...
7
votes
Custom Off-Topic Close Reasons Change
Questions require a goal that we can address. Rather than explaining the difficulties of your situation, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, see this meta post.
Our ...
Community wiki
7
votes
Custom Close Reasons for The Workplace
We can combine the legal and company-specific reasons thus:
Questions seeking advice on company-specific regulations, agreements, or policies should be directed to your manager or HR department. ...
7
votes
Can we have a "specific to one company" close reason?
I usually use
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about regulations or agreements that are company-specific and don't have universally applicable answers.
As a custom close reason ...
7
votes
Comment re the "real questions have answers" close reason
Coming from a programming background, I think this question falls into the XY Problem category.
An XY problem is when someone asks, "How do I do Y?" But often times, Y is considered a bad idea. So ...
7
votes
What is a workplace?
I believe this page explains it pretty clearly.
Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)
Maintaining employment (promotions, ...
7
votes
The Question-Close Police
If people put as much energy into editing questions as they did either lamenting or defending the number of closed questions on The Workplace, we'd have a lot fewer closed questions and a lot more ...
6
votes
Is "advice on what to do" the same as "primarily opinion-based"?
There are two things I pushed to create that close reason for:
People were answering (and not closing) these types of questions
Whenever I closed a question as "primarily opinion-based" people would ...
6
votes
Is "advice on what to do" the same as "primarily opinion-based"?
I think there is a distinction, albeit subtle.
"Advice on what to do" implies something that would be a logical solution that would be commonly accepted. Given we can't answer them as we simply don'...
6
votes
Good Subjective/Bad Subjective and Agony Aunt Questions
I am new to Workplace S/E but have contributed to several other S/E sites, and I am also an employer. What I am noticing in questions here is something I also notice in the workplace, which is that a ...
6
votes
May I ask what the going rate is for a particular position?
From one of the places you linked: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
What questions are off topic here?
Questions seeking advice on company-specific regulations, agreements, ...
6
votes
How is this offtopic?
The problem is the "correct" procedure for reporting in sick is usually specified by the company and should be described in the contract or company handbook. Or at the very least agreed between a ...

motosubatsuMod
- 95.1k
6
votes
Suggestion for new 'hold' reason
I don't think we need a new close reason - the "Unclear" close reason already includes questions that require more information.
Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to ...
6
votes
Separate Legal Advice from Company-Specific in Reasons to close
Back then when these close reasons were merged to meet particular system limitation, they seemed like a sensible mix to me and I expected to get used to it. Time has shown though that I was mistaken.
...
5
votes
Comment re the "real questions have answers" close reason
If a question has answers, is it "real"? This question has several real answers including mine.
I don't understand why this was closed. The question (although seemingly edited into several different ...
5
votes
Job Search/Transition and Workplace Policy and Procedure Only? Confusing Scope
So what is the actual scope of this community?
From the "on-topic" link in the help center:
The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&A site about the workplace and other career-related topics. With ...
5
votes
Why was the question about how to ask for changes about security policy closed?
There's currently a lot of filler in the post. The user is ranting a little bit, and perhaps the reasoning for why the policy is bad could be summed up using less words.
Conciseness helps keep the ...
5
votes
May I ask what the going rate is for a particular position?
There is no "going rate" for a position. Despite popular belief, it's almost entirely dependent on the company and how well your skill set matches their needs.
There may be exceptions for legally ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
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