hey @terdon

two questions:

1. why did this happen so long after the question was asked (and answered)? just curious

2. that link 404s for me, any idea what happened?

@strugee Because the conversation took place at that time. There were two users hashing it out.

@strugee Yeah, the room was deleted due to lack of activity. Not sure if that should happen when things have been moved to chat. I'd assumed that protects the room. It should work now though, mods have access and I think I unfroze it by entering it.

@terdon ah. makes sense

@terdon hmm. OK. seems to me like rooms should just be frozen, not deleted

I've seen that happen a couple times - if I see it again I might ask on Meta Stack Exchange

since you don't know about any special circumstances, seems like it might be a bug

/design flaw

Sounds like it, yes.

neato

sigh. asked a question, it gets migrated, and then lots of "hey this is a duplicate", which I do not agree with, because had I known enough to know what 'keyword parameters' are I would not have had to ask the question.

But, also - I am trying to 'find' a home here, and if questions are going to be migrated away this easy, seems less a home sweet home. Maybe after I have been here long enough - I'll want to go into the neighborhood more. But for now I would prefer to be a "homey" kind of guy.

c'est la vie.

And I have no desire to join a discussion in meta - that is three to five years old, re: migrated questions. I guess what I am hoping for is "a place here - the U&L planet" and not (yet) in the SE universe/galaxy.

@MichaelFelt That's not a problem. That's why duplicates are good. They help people get to the right answer. If the dupe target answers your question, then it is indeed a dupe and the next person who thought of the same formulation you did will now find your question and be redirected to the dupe.

FYI: this is the question - after migration: stackoverflow.com/questions/41062897/… - I am grateful for the answer I got - so asking does have value. But I really wonder why I should bother to give such details if it is going to be migrated away. Puts me in the position of needing to learn and reaseach all SE sites before I ask a question - because probably, somewhere - someone has asked something similiar before.

In other words, I am less likely to use SE to ask. Probably silly of me - but I spent a lot of time working on making an accurate question for 'here'.

But yeah, in this case, the migration was correct. That wasn't on topic here.

If I felt it was a duplicate, I would delete it. Just because the solution is similiar does not make it a duplicate question.

@MichaelFelt Huh? Why? You just need to know the scope of the site you are asking on. Pure programming questions are off topic here, so the question was migrated away.

@MichaelFelt No! Please don't. Dupes are useful as I said above.

That question was asking what is the difference between a & b. I did not even a difference was possible.

@MichaelFelt OK, but does the answer also answer your question? If so, then closing it is the right thing to do. No point in duplicating information.

I understand, but am still saddened by "purity" in this case.

Personally, I think this is one of the best things about SE. The dupe closure helps keep information organized.

Maybe, but only because I know what to look for in the answer.

@MichaelFelt There you go then.

So, I did not find the answer before, because I did not understand the question.

the other question.

Yes. And now that you have asked yours, it has been closed as a dupe so the next person to have the same problem formulating the question will find yours and then find the answer. Everybody wins!

If I had not asked my question, I would have read over it.

Yes, exactly. That's why this is a good thing.

well, it is going to take some getting used to (migration).

Migration is something different. Your question wasn't about *nix, so it didn't belong here. Each site has a pretty well defined scope and questions that fall outside that scope are either closed outright or migrated.

i.e., I do not see it as a duplicate "question".

I don't see why. If you accept that the answer to the other one also answers yours, the only other choice would have been to repeat the same information and post it as an answer to your question. Who would benefit from that?

Again, I have to go and look at the answer, and then I shall comment. moment

Oh, if it doesn't answer your question, that's different.

Hang on. Your question isn't even closed!

Actually, they do not answer my question. I can understand what they are trying to say only because someone answered my question so clearly.

It currently has 2 close votes. That means it may, or may not end up being closed.

@MichaelFelt OK, then edit your question to highlight the differences. Or, which is probably the best solution, take your answer and walk away. :)

the walk-away part - I can take. I just feel like I have to defend my question - as a good question - because it is being 'judged' by an expert, rather than from the perspective of someone who is learning.

The question they are pointing at is even poised as an 'informed' programmer, rather than as (I am) an uninformed sys admin trying to understand how a program functions.

@MichaelFelt Oh wow. No, don't do that. That will only lead to grief on SO. Remember that this is a community of millions. There are always going to be assholes and if you engage with each of them you'll never finish.

again - c'est la vie.

IN any case, having a question closed as a dupe is really no big deal. The original question will not be deleted. It will stay there for ever for the edification of yourself and whichever other person stumbles upon it. It is just also linked to another one, that's all.

The reason I 'comment' here, is because it is less likely to become a permanent hit. I knew, befire I posted that I could also try and do a search of which SE site is best, etc. etc., but if asking a question becomes work - I wont bother.

Well, asking a question should come after work, yes. But yours wasn't a lazy "can't be bothered to look for this so someone do it for me" question. You put effort into it. Which is why it was answered and upvoted. Closing it as a dupe is no comment upon the quality of the question.

Sorry, mean "after" work, as in you've at least tried to sort it out yourself.

I shall just say "Thanks" for now. But as for purity - even admins need to ask questions about how something works. "awk" is a programming language, as is perl, as is python. I did not need to know about 'keyed arguments'. I did not know how to read a single line of code - that was my question. And the answer was how to read it - not how to distinguish between keyword and positional arguments.

I understood the answer given - without even needing to knw the term 'keyword argument' - and he may have even included it in his answer (which I read over).

So, yes, from this expanded discussion I have learned something additional. Just not the way I had envisioned the process.

All good!!!

Yes, awk, perl and python are programming languages. As is bash even. And if you're using them for syadminy tasks, they're on topic here. If, however, you are asking about a general feature of the language, it's usually a sign that it is not a *nix question and, instead, should be on Stack Overflow.

But don't worry, everyone is confused when they first come to Stack Exchange. It gets simpler as you spend more time here, promise!

well, I was deep into the inner workings of cloud-init and was stuck.

I am not trying to become a python programmer. I just need to understand it enough so I can port some functions to AIX.

Lucky you. I am trying to become a Python programmer.

It's not a bad language, actually, once you get over the initial shock at significant whitespace.

I "was" a programmer (among other things) 25 years ago. And that is what makes python "hard to read" as I want to read it by "what I knew". It has a not of neat features (p.s., when I was programming I used C as high-level assembly: cc -E xxx.c, edit xxx.asm)

anyway, I was initially by the "8" - this is a duplicate value - and that in "15 seconds" it seems after it was migrated. This is my basis for the difference in the understanding of the "programmers" with my "question" as an admin.

And my "official" response is that the - which I shall go add - the other question does not answer my question. I would still "not know how to read the code" after reading the answers - in any case, not with the euraka understanding I had with the answere my question 'harvested'

@terdon Yes, that's definitely a misfeature. Cutting and pasting code should not destroy syntax.