@SabreTooth - This is one way to address non-answers

FWIW, I think your question suffered a bit because you didn't provide enough detail.

And I would have considered posting an answer but the possibilities were a bit broad. It wasn't clear if you needed a mechanical or electrical solution, for example.

@SabreTooth Saw that in the transcript.

Was hoping to encourage you to re-activate your account and trying again.

There is definitely an art to writing good questions

But the community should also rally around and remove non-answers like the 3rd one that was provided. To be fair, I think they were trying to be lighthearted and it didn't come across well.

@SabreTooth This is my 2nd site that I'll be active on, and 4th or 5th that I've provided contributions to. I'm more of an engineering mindset than a physicist, so I haven't participated in physics.

The snarky engineer in me would point out that many things have been found / invented by engineers that were missed or mocked by physicists because they were busy looking at something else.

And based upon your research profile, I could imagine a couple of approaches to narrowing the scope of the sunspotter question without necessarily giving up your rights to publication

@jhabbott did my comment make sense?

@SabreTooth Have a good one

@jhabbott - so once you've caught up on the chat transcript (worth reading), I'd be happy to explain my comment. I think you were trying to be light-hearted which is always a plus in answers. But I don't think it was going to lead sabre tooth to an answer which isn't good.

NP. And yes, other SE sites will tolerate off-site resource requests but there is a de facto ban across all of SE as far as I know.

The ones that can support them tend to be the smaller & beta sites with strong communities that can shut the bad ones down quickly. And also deal with the associated whinging of "but why was this one allowed?"

@HDE226868 They could have been deleted since you last saw them.

10k+ on regular sites and I think 1k+ on beta sites can see deleted questions, but you can't search for them. You have to have a direct link.

mods on the site can search for them

Most sites aren't that aggressive about deleting off low quality content and leave it up to the Community user to take care of things.

Programmers is an exception to that rule. IIRC, it's the most aggressive community in purging off low quality content.

Those are the rules for when Community will delete something off.

There's a really good M.SE post by Shog, I think, showing delete vote rates by community, mods, and 10k users.

Except I can't find it.... :-(

We're okay. We've got a good ratio of answers to questions, I think.

And it was inevitable that we'd lose some users, but that's good in a way as it gives the community a catalyst to help shape itself.

Agreed; We've had some broad ones, but most seem agreeable to scoping things down

no doubt

And we're starting to get reviewers, so that's good. Most meta questions are getting answers too. And we're getting meta questions, which is positive

Not bad for a first week

And we're actually picking up a conversation thread in here too... Not bad at all. :-)

And you're perfectly fine in saying you may not have the experience to fully understand the analogy. :-)

@MahendraGunawardena I've noticed that trend with your questions too. The trick is to carefully think through what is applicable to anyone in your field so you're not giving away proprietary information. Another thing I'll see on Programmers is a copy / paste of code for example purposes but then sanitizing the code by changing to generic variable names (foo, bar, bas) and removing any identifying framework elements.

The trick is to present a solvable problem, which sometimes means narrowing things down.

Just because I can't solve the general problem applicable to everyone doesn't mean I can't provide value by answering a narrow slice of the problem.

@HDE226868 Honestly, there's no rush to go down that route either. Just extra calories you have to burn off.

@HDE226868 Friend of mine from high school days was in the same condition. He stopped running when he got into college and introduced himself to beer. The natural consequences played themselves out. He is not in running shape now

So if / when you choose to drink, don't give up running!

@HDE226868 One of my neighbors / friends gave up drinking and is now into extreme long distance runs

He loves it. But I think he's crazy for knocking out 50 - 100 miles in a race

@MahendraGunawardena - Using this question as an example. Could you narrow it by taking a specific chunk of those specifications and trying to focus your question on that?

Narrowing a question that way doesn't prohibit someone from answering the broader question if they want to

@HDE226868 When I'm training for karate, that's what I do during my katas.

@HDE226868 Seriously, he went from 40 - 50 lbs overweight to crazy lean now. And he logs some insane miles.

He's got this ultra-efficient lope type motion that minimizes the energy he puts into each step.

@HDE226868 I never liked them, but I never had anything as picturesque to distract me.

@HDE226868 It almost completely dies off on the weekends for Programmers. You can map pretty well when the world is waking up based upon activity levels and types of questions there.

Someone started a question over on the Whiteboard but then deleted. Not sure if I should surprise them by answering since they probably don't know room owners can see deleted chat messages....

I liked it and was curious to know the answer. It ought to be fine.

And that said, the rest of the day calls me. Have a good weekend.

@jhabbott I think it's distracting from the site, especially since we're at our beginning steps. Later on, I'd probably just shrug my shoulders and ignore it. The other concern is the strong reaction from the OP with respect to the answer. Granted, that response was biased by another site that's completely outside of our control.