@EliahKagan There is this meta question by Zanna which reasons why we shouldn't close a question where the problem is due to using an EoL release as a duplicate of the "How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release?" one.

That meta question says:

> Useful as this post will hopefully be to people who are using an unsupported release, I don't think we should be closing these questions as duplicates of this one unless they are actually asking something like "How can I install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release?"

I think it is pretty unreasonable to characterize that as just saying "we shouldn't..."

I think the example Zanna gave in that question was not the best example, because it was about installing software on an EoL release. There may have been specific technical reasons to doubt that just enabling the old-releases repositories would have worked in that particular case. Although I could be misremembering, I seem to recall Zanna having been motivated to post that on meta based on numerous close votes, many of which we far more clearly wrong than the one used in the example there.

But perhaps the example is well chosen and Zanna and I do actually disagree a lot about when questions should be duped to the EoL install/upgrade question. It would probably best to get her input (if she chooses to give it), in case you and she actually do agree with one another. (cc @Zanna)

Well, looking again, I think I may have misunderstood the position @Zanna expressed in that post. It looks like she was advocating against closing any EOL software installation questions as duplicates of the EOL software installation and upgrading question. What threw me was the part I quoted above, and also the part at the end about "closing stuff as duplicates of things they are blatantly not duplicates of."

I do very much disagree with that, though it remains to be seen if my disagreement is somehow also related to my (admitted!) considerable confusion surrounding this issue.

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1022075/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; Low Rep; Self Answer; -1.0;

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1021296/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; One Line only; Low Rep; 3.0;

Currently unclear.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL-only title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +6 more: tophealthydiet.com/male-booster-xl/ by rjct on askubuntu.com

@EliahKagan yes you're right, it's definitely not a good example and it would have been reasonable to close that one as a dupe. I realised that later :/

I wonder if I can fix it to avoid giving the impression that I think we should never close those posts as duplicates

I noticed it also got roombaed. How much less prone are duplicates to being deleted automatically by the Community bot, these days? I seem to recall that this used to not happen at all--or, perhaps, I used to think it did not happen at all?--but I see roombaed dupes with quite some frequency now.

I don't think easier deletion was at the core of what you were saying there, though you did mention it as an advantage in a comment.

Still, I suspect it's part of why some users prefer to reserve duplication as the close reason of last resort. I am curious what the current roombaing behavior actually is. I recall saying on meta some time ago that it was the same as with other deleted posts... but I think I was, uh, just wrong about that.

Roomba doesn't treat duplicates differently from open questions

Ah, so it does remain much less likely for a duplicate to be automatically deleted?

How much more readily does it delete questions closed for other reasons?

It occurs to me that my recent arguments here would be more compelling, and possibly also more pleasant to read, if I had not written them upside down. That is, if I had figured out what you were actually saying first, and then made my glorious pronouncement about how it was (un)reasonable to interpret it.

So a dupe will be roomba'd if it has no answers and < 1 score and < 2 comments and < 1.5*age-in-days views, after 365 days, or if its score is < 0, in 30 days. In both cases, editing will prevent it from being roomba'd for ~8 days...

If it has any answers, it will never be deleted, unless people vote to delete it

Even if the answers are negatively scored?

Yes

Ok.

A question closed for any other reason will be roomba'd if it has < 1 score and it has no answers with a > 0 score

So, I do prefer not to close questions as duplicates if another reason applies (ie if they do not belong on the site) because they will hang around

Is that bad, though? In the comments on that meta question, I saw some claims (not by you) that struck me as unsupported and unlikely... like the idea that it's bad to have many questions duped to the same question, and the idea that EoL questions about software installation don't make useful signposts to direct users to the EoL installation and upgrade question. I have no idea why either would be the case, and the latter seems very unlikely to be the case.

I mean, it seems unlikely such questions would be any less useful in that regard than other duped questions.

It's bad if the closed-as-dupe questions are bad. If they are good, it's good :)

I guess that's true. Hopefully score at least correlates with that.

Not off-topic

@EliahKagan hopefully. People should vote more!

@Zanna Reviewed. ...Is there something wrong with that question? I feel inclined to upvote it, but perhaps I am missing some deficiencies?

(I guess I should've asked that before completing the Leave Open review. :)

Looks fine to me too, but I'm on mobile, haven't clicked through to the question yet

Ah.

I'll read it over again and likely upvote it.

I've upvoted it now. Thanks for encouraging me not to be a hypocrite

But I am wondering what I can do about that meta post now... hmm

Lol.

(This doesn't really address your question about what to do with the meta post, since whatever you do with it should reflect your views on this, which I think differ from mine in some significant respects, but...)

The main problem I have with closing EOL software installation questions as OT instead of as duplicates, in cases where it seems like enabling the old-releases repos would actually help, is that although the closure banner for OT EOL does include the title of the EOL software installation and upgrade question, it explicitly just frames the question as being relevant for upgrading.

It's not clear to me that people realize it can help them install software. Once their question is closed, they're likely to assume their attempt to get help here has not succeeded. There's a lot of technical information flying around, and assuming that one's problem has not been solved when it is declared off-topic is far from the most unreasonable oversight a new user could make.

I don't think this is by any means a definitive consideration, but I think that the number of people who actually upgrade is probably far more increased by them going to that canonical question for any purpose than it is decreased by them feeling that it is feasible for them to continue using an EOL release because they got information about how to install software on it.

@EliahKagan well if that's the case it's definitely a good thing

What to do here?

I feel humbled.

Hmm they need to resize Windows' partitions to make space I think? Does the installer usually do that for you if you select install alongside...? I'm an erase the disk... kind of person XD but I think they should resize Windows partitions from Windows?

It's like the question I answered a while ago about what to do when the alongside option isn't shown. But I'm not sure the solutions I gave are sufficient for this.

I don't think the suggested dupe is sufficient. If I knew the answer I'd just answer it...

@EliahKagan wow!

But you have >12k flags which is quite possibly the most on AU

I'm too lazy to go through the profiles of everyone with 500 or more helpful flags and check. That's another thing about that meta post that humbles me! They did that on SO!

Maybe they wrote a bot to help? Either way, it's still much more effort than I have considered putting in to find out who our top flaggers are.

It's unfortunate that it's apparently not possible to use SEDE to see how many helpful flags a user has

@EliahKagan bah, why did they stop at 20k and not come down to 15k :P

Only 150 people have the marshal badge here on AU

@BhargavRao Do you think that, for a bounty, they would expand the list? :)

Pinged them in the comments, let's see :p

This very good answer continues to have a pitifully low score relative to its merits.

muru was a mod on some site, I remember seeing them in TL.

Mod pro tempore on Vi and Vim, perhaps?

Ah, yeah.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer: Unknown SSL protocol error by Sobhia on askubuntu.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: How can i usemy Pen drive as the RAM ? by Jacshon on askubuntu.com

I'm pretty sure this question is link spam, too. (By which I mean, in addition to the answer... which is apparently still not deleted.)

Yeah, definitely spam.

Meh, close and delv the que. Better to invoke Hanlon's razor here.

Wait, I am wrong

If they called the router's tech support company, they would not likely have posted a link to a third-party site that (claims it) provides companies tech support numbers.

Yeah, it's spam.

→ 4 messages moved to Island of castaway thoughts

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad NS for domain in body, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching website in body: cream money getting a extensive by koplwthakt on askubuntu.com

[ Natty | Sentinel ] system-settings Prevent users from accessing "System Settings" By: mark 5.5;

wait what am I doing?

anyway that looks like it might be copypasta but it doesn't seem to be from any of the other answers to that question

We should close this.

ok

I edited my meta post, but I'm not sure that actually helped :/

What are you concerned about?

It seems like a reasonable addition to me.

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@Natty tp

gone

that was quick

@EliahKagan that's good :)

@EliahKagan well, mainly about having written a confusing meta post in the first place

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@Natty tp

@Natty tp

What is this answering?

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@Natty tp

Would you guys consider answers like these, okay? askubuntu.com/a/1022232

That seems okay to me, yes. I would definitely not flag that.

I wanted to add the answer as a comment to help that user troubleshoot their problem, but the comment ended up being too big

As I understand that answer, it admits it may not work and is somewhat speculative, but it does a specific plausible course of action intended to solve the problem.

(unrelated to the above) Spam.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: Loading online videos even with flash / pepper [Ubuntu 16\] by shandireza on askubuntu.com

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1022115/22949

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@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1022145/22949

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@Dan If "you guys" includes me (and if it doesn't, but in that case I shouldn't be mentioning it so sorry about that), I agree with Eliah Kagan that the answer you mentioned is fine and not NAA

@Natty tp

This comment misinterprets the question as having something to do with learning C# (it is not about that, and the OP already knows C#). It also, it its stupendous awesomeness, confidently declares what the OP really does and does not want to learn. God forbid someone happen to be interested in a specific technology and learn about it. Yes, I am being sarcastic.

I've seen a number of links posted across SE to Peter Norvig's website, and they have all been useful and appropriate except this one! If we had the "too chatty" flag reason for comments, it would have been easy to flag it. I flagged it no longer needed.

[ Natty | FMS ] format how to format a partition containing Master boot record in Linux 12.10? By: Samer 4.5;

@Natty tp

@EliahKagan The post was edited to remove the abusive part, but nonetheless I have cast the last delete vote on it now.

That seems reasonable to me.

:)

@EliahKagan O.o wow

@EliahKagan voted, but OP says that didn't work for them...

@Zanna Yeah, sorry. I soon realized I was mistaken about reopening that.

(There's no way for you to have easily seen that though. It was a ways down. Sorry!)

Has the situation changes such that it actually should be reopened?

I just arrived at that message

I did read over all the messages earlier but without following all the links haha

I guess I'm going to retract my vote, because OP seems to have ignored my comment and made a completely useless edit to their question for no apparent reason

oh no wait they tried to answer in a comment

which is understandable

NAA (Natty reported it in SEBotics without a Sentinel link; I don't think we're supposed to re-report those. But it should definitely be flagged and VTD'd.)

Should we close this question as unclear?

I can't understand what they want

I feel like there's little to no way to interpret how suitable any answer is. I'm VTCing.

also voted

@EliahKagan now I am really not sure. They specified what they had done and made clearer what happened.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL-only title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +4 more: www.nutritionsofhealth.com/turmeric-forskolin/ by Dalelodell on askubuntu.com

@Zanna yes of course it does. Thanks for the input!

:)

Finally got to vote to leave this question open

I think I am sometimes thinking that way too (BTW, feel free to reply to anything any time) but I guess whether OP knows or not only matters for how confusing it is for the OP to get one kind of vote to close compared to another

I hadn't really given thought to the fact that the canonical post is about installing software on old releases, possibly more so than upgrading from them

Questions about EoL versions are off topic UNLESS they are about upgrading

In which case they are very likely dupes of that one

Questions about installing software on an EoL version are off topic, but they are also possibly duplicates

Except in cases where enabling the old-releases repository is not even reasonable to consider as part of a solution, I suspect that OPs are not actually more confused by having their questions closed as off-topic than by having then duped. Being told that one is not being helped here, but also try that thing that we do support, and if you have questions... well maybe we'll help and maybe we won't, has got to be confusing.

But I don't advocate setting the line there for how to close. We should really only close questions as duplicates if we think there's a strong chance that the target question will solve their problem. I do think this encompasses many questions, though.

Yes, I think the points you made earlier about what effect closing as a dupe could have might even be an answer to my question... I definitely had not thought about some of those points

More or less afk for the whole UTC day now

:(

What about this meta question? Is my answer non-constructive?

I meant the second paragraph of my answer.

@pomsky it looks like a useful answer to me

I upvoted it

I meant the second paragraph, i.e. calling the edit-suggestion superfluous.

That is also helpful - hopefully it will encourage them to make better edits

But I would have improved that edit if it weren't in the suggester's interest to have it rejected

They did repair some significant grammar problems

Now I've rejected it so they can suggest it again

So I guess I disagree with the second paragraph because the edit suggestion was worthwhile I think

Hmm... I shall not reject the edit-suggestion (if they make another).

Maybe they will do a better job :)

Thanks to the feedback I mean

Always annoys me that we can't give proper feedback on suggested edits.

How so?

Erm... how not?

Even if you write something in the strictly character limited "causes harm" box, there's nothing prompting the suggester to read it apart from the non-appearance of 2 reputation points, if they haven't already earned 1000 points from edit suggestions, and even if they notice, they have to go to their suggestions page and open the rejected one to see why (and it won't even be rejected if others approve)...

@EliahKagan I mean, sometimes someone is persistently adding backticks for emphasis, and you want to say stop doing this....

(Previous ramble was not answering your comment, which I hadn't seen when I wrote it)

Sometimes you are improving edits, but still you want to say, stop blockquoting code, stop random-bolding Ubuntu, stop Putting Things In Title Case That Aren't Even Titles.

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Isn't that question too broad?

@Natty fp

@Natty tp

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Some Error Occured on this post

Others seem to know what this question is asking about but I don't get it... maybe an edit could make it clearer?

@Natty tp

This one doesn't look like a proper answer even though OP expanded their initial link-only answer (which was kinda spam-ish too). The suggestion of switching back to Xorg is already there in my old answer.

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