Please help close off-topic questions

Question

Please help close off-topic questions. Off-topic questions don't get closed enough here in my opinion. Here's one recent example: ¿Cuál es el significado real de la palabra "Poporote"?

In this case, the reason to close would be "unclear what you're asking."

(I'm not voting to close that particular question now because OP was lucky and someone was able to answer, despite the insufficient context provided in the question.)

Let's try to be a bit more disciplined in closing off-topic questions, folks.

Answer 1

My only problem with that question is that I believe, as I remarked in my comment, that in this case it may have been easier for the OP to ask their colleague for clarification and answer their own question. All of us who have learnt a second language have been in that situation where you need to ask for clarification, especially for slang.

I'm actually quite happy that someone was able to contribute and explain the meaning, so the questions doesn't either stay unanswered forever or just receives a brief "that is not a word in Spanish" sort of answer.

Thus said, I agree with what the comments to your question say: the lack of support closing this question probably shows that the community decided it should stay open, as opposed to a lack of interest in participating in the review tasks (or this review task in particular). I actually wanted to vote to keep it open and refrained myself to do so (because as moderator my vote is binding) until enough time had passed.

I think that we have plenty of examples in palabras-raras and letras-de-canciones about words that apparently don't exist or are not Spanish words and yet someone is able to explain/research that they are some sort of slang or used in spite of not being in the dictionary. That is my rationale for considering this question on-topic.

I also disagree on your statement that the question is unclear. The only problem is that the title asks for the meaning of a word meaning while the body of the question expands and asks for its origin, but that doesn't make the question off-topic.

Answer 2

Destaco alguna de tus palabras por aquí:

Off-topic questions don't get closed enough here in my opinion.

Let's try to be a bit more disciplined in closing off-topic questions, folks.

But in general, I'd like to see us work a little more on training participants to ask well-posed questions.

I will put a note below that question now to point here. I probably should have done that before. (Note, you can always do that too.... That is something I often see moderators do on other SE sites....)

Suggestion: when @Diego writes his comment, perhaps he could also encourage others to vote to close, e.g. "I would vote to close if I could do so without unilaterally closing (this is a downside of having diamond powers)" or something like that.

I'm inviting everyone to look at questions with a slightly more critical eye. If the comments are consistently saying "we need more context," then the question wasn't well posed and we should vote to close -- along with politely asking OP for context, which would then presumably result in some changing of votes. That is how I understand the SE model.

(I'm not voting to close that particular question now because OP was lucky and someone was able to answer, despite the insufficient context provided in the question.)

Para mí, la gestión de la clausura o no de una pregunta tiene distintos niveles:

1. en la pregunta en sí
2. en una publicación en Meta
3. de una forma más genérica en Meta
4. como último y desesperado grito, en Meta Stack Exchange (la meta Meta)

A mi entender también, uno pasa al siguiente nivel cuando ha agotado las posibilidades del anterior.

En este caso particular me parece que has hecho un salto directamente al punto "3" sin haber intentado antes nada de lo otro. No creo que sea correcto, pues para hacer una crítica general a cómo cerramos (o no) las preguntas tendríamos que sustentarnos en datos. Además, y como ya dije en los comentarios, el trabajo empieza por uno mismo.

Resumiendo:

• si quieres que una pregunta se cierre, coméntalo allí. Si se agota el debate, salta a Meta. Pero no crees un meta debate cuando no has utilizado las herramientas disponibles para el debate inicial en la propia pregunta.
• si quieres debatir en general sobre cómo gestionamos los cierres, hazlo con datos. Seguro que hay mucho por mejorar, pero es mejor hacerlo en base a evidencias.
• no necesitamos que nos digas cómo debemos gestionar los comentarios, interacciones, etc. Valoramos tu experiencia y nos ayuda en muchas ocasiones, pero ten en cuenta que nosotros también tenemos cierta experiencia en este y otros sitios, por lo que puede que prefiramos hacer las cosas de una manera diferente a la que tú has visto.