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We currently have a custom close reason of:

Questions seeking help to debug/write/improve code must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Providing a clear problem statement and evidence of a code attempt will help others to help you. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.

Since that custom close reason was last tweaked we have had a Meta Q&A available to more or less translate the Stack Overflow language in How to create a Minimal, Reproducible Example into something more understandable to aspiring GIS developers at Writing code snippets to get quicker answers?

Should we replace the above custom close reason with:

Questions seeking help to debug/write/improve code must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Providing a clear problem statement and evidence of a code attempt will help others to help you. See: Writing code snippets to get quicker answers?

Regrettably, Writing code snippets to get quicker answers? currently has only one answer, and that relates to ArcPy, but hopefully having the custom close reason point to it may stimulate the addition of answers tailored to PyQGIS, ArcObjects, Leaflet, ArcGIS API for JavaScript, PostGIS, etc

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    Your "regrettably" comment I think is a vital point at this stage - something I was thinking when I was reading that Q&A earlier today. Perhaps this Q&A may prompt some other users more experienced in other languages to offer an answer there tailored to other solutions. It may even be able to be copied and just the code examples updated?
    – Midavalo Mod
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 23:42
  • @Midavalo Our community should probably think about how this Meta SE Q&A applies to us too: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/290991
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 23:46
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    @Midavalo As an incentive to anyone writing an answer to Writing code snippets, I'll be happy to move the Accept checkmark across to their answer to try and get them some early upvotes.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 23:48
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    I don't think it is a good idea, because that post has guidance only about arcpy while the other post is generally written and it is a result from years comming from a community which main experience is coding/programing. I also think that tweaking a close reason message which has worked well so far aiming to improve a GIS Meta post would be a misuse of close reason feature.
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Feb 16, 2017 at 1:40
  • If we can get some momentum behind GIS library specific examples for a community whose main experience is GIS and aspiring to gain development skills then I'll change the Q&A to Community Wiki and look at assigning it an faq meta-tag.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Feb 16, 2017 at 2:20
  • The main reason for proposing this is that almost every time I use this close reason I have to also go and copy a link to Code Snippets to add in as a comment.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 7:44

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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No.

I'm admittedly pessimistic, but I think assuming that a user would even click on the link in the close reason, much less read through a question and then find the answer that pertains to them, is too much to begin with.

I believe that the targets of this message are those users who were obviously not taking time to explain their problem properly in the first place. Writing code snippets, which I think is useful, is really geared towards those users that are doing the proper research and trying to write a good question.

With the hope that they do click on the link, I think we want something that's short and concise, possibly just a single page long or less. I feel like the current MCVE is a good option for this.

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    I think you are right. The question part of the Code Snippet Q&A needs to be more comparable in message conciseness to MCVE before it is ready to be a replacement. I'll think about how it can be re-worked with a view to revisiting this at some time in the future.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 7:41

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