We currently do not have any community-specific close reasons. Broadly speaking, I don’t think this is necessarily a problem—community-specific close reasons should be created intentionally and thoughtfully to address a specific need. That said, I think we can identify one such need, namely bringing more focus to language design questions.
With this in mind, I have updated our help center to note that
- Requests for possible language designs that do not provide sufficient criteria to objectively evaluate potential answers
are explicitly off-topic. Arguably, questions that are off-topic in this way could be closed using any of several existing close reasons:
One might say they need details or clarity because they do not provide sufficient details about what constitutes an acceptable answer.
One might say they need more focus because they should narrow their question to ask about a particular design aspect rather than some vague notion of “language design” in general.
One might say they are primarily opinion-based because they do not define what constitutes a “good design”, which makes them quite subjective.
However, while I don’t think closing questions in this way would be wrong, I think it’s often not particularly helpful. For one, applying the generic close reasons in this way leaves it very ambiguous where we draw the line between an on-topic and off-topic question, which makes them difficult to apply consistently. Furthermore, from the perspective of a question asker whose question has just been closed, none of the generic close reasons provide much guidance about how they could improve their question to make it on-topic.
In my anecdotal experience thus far, these sorts of unfocused language design questions are the single most common class of good-faith questions we receive that end up closed, and they have also produced the most confusion and debate. I therefore propose that we improve this situation by creating a targeted close reason. My proposed wording is presented below; please leave an answer or comment with any tweaks or suggestions you may have.
Proposed reason text
The current close reason system on Stack Exchange sites allows tailoring the text of each close reason based on who will see it. This section lists all the proposed variations.
Close reason as seen by close voters
This is the wording that close voters will see in the vote-to-close menu.
Lacks objective design criteria
This question solicits language designs or design tradeoffs but does not provide sufficient criteria to objectively determine what constitutes a good answer. It should be updated to include a specific design or implementation problem to be solved and should provide additional context to help focus potential answers.
General post notice
This text is shown at the top of a closed question to everyone.
This question was closed because it lacks objective design criteria. It is not currently accepting answers.
Post-owner guidance
This text is shown under the general post notice to the author of a question.
Answers to your question are likely to invite open-ended ideation, personal opinions, or bikeshedding. Please edit your question to include a specific design or implementation problem to be solved and provide additional context to help focus potential answers.
Public guidance
This text is shown under the general post notice to everyone except the author of a question.
Answers to this question are likely to invite open-ended ideation, personal opinions, or bikeshedding. If possible, consider editing this question to highlight a specific design or implementation problem to be solved and emphasize context that could help focus potential answers.
