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Over the last little while, I've seen a number of posts like this one. Most likely, that will be removed shortly so here's a screenshot:

Screenshot of example question

Basically, a user encounters a question without a answer (or without an answer that's useful to them), so they make a Discussions post in an "appropriate" collective (actually, it's usually one that's so not appropriate it's a bit of a joke).

I've flagged these posts with a custom moderator message, something along the lines of:

"user needed an answer to a question, found a post on SO that didn't solve the problem but had the same/similar question, re-posted on Discussions in hope of a answer tailored to their exact needs".

If this seems a bit exaggerated to you, I've asked a few posters, "why does the linked question not work for you? Doesn't it cover the same error as you're encountering here?". Most posters responded along the lines of "I couldn't get the answer's code to work, please help, I'm newbie, I have no idea what to do".

Ok, so maybe they need to do a quick bit of learning about the programming language they're working in, etc., so they actually do know "what they're doing". But most just post here in the hope that they'll get an answer quickly and easily.

I propose a new flag, maybe something like "Re-posted question in an effort to get answer tailored to them", or something like that.

Robert Longson proposed flagging them as "this should be a question". I was opposed to this simply because it would cause more work for the moderators, and is quite roundabout, as stated by VLAZ here, but I can do this if necessary.

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    Have you tried flagging them as "this should be a question"? Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 21:38
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    Seems fine to me. Do you think that is an unreasonable outcome? If so maybe edit this question to explain why. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 21:43
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    @VLAZ Well once it's a question it can be closed as needs details or clarity, although I agree that discussions should also be closable as needs details or clarity directly. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:00
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    If it's directly closeable, it sounds like it shouldn't be a question then. Flagging, so the post gets transferred to a Q (that's what I assume happens with a discussion), to be close voted sounds very roundabout and as if it's not the correct way to do something about the discussion. As if there is some sort of, say, feature request needed to improve the situation. On the main site we don't tend to reopen a question when it's known it falls under a different close reason. I don't see how discussions are so special they should get to go through almost an equivalent process to the one we avoid. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:02
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    Isn’t stuff like that kind of the point of discussions? At the very least this doesn’t seem to break any rules. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:18
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    At least for moderators, there's no method of moving a Discussions post to a question. As far as I'm aware, flagging a Discussions post as "this should be a question" is just providing a reason for why the discussion should be deleted (and maybe implicitly asking the moderator or CM to message the user, or leave a comment, letting the user know that discussions aren't the place to ask questions which would be appropriate on SO). Given that CMs are the ones that are supposed to be handling flags on Discussions, I'm actually not sure what they are doing in response to that type of flag. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:22
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    @MisterMiyagi I also don't see how the linked discussion falls under any of the Encouraged. Similar to how it doesn't have a question in it, doesn't even have any discussion point in it. What am I missing, what is to be discussed there? Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:23
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    Welcome to Discussions. Commented Jan 6, 2024 at 22:49
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    It seems the crypto currency scammers have found it (WITH ALL CAPS TITLES). Commented Jan 7, 2024 at 1:44
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    I can only assume that discussions are working as intended now; they are for AI/bot Generated content to advertise scams. Stack Overflow has had more than enough time to address the problem, and cut staff levels instead of dealing with the problem(s). I can only assume that all this mess is intentional... Commented Jan 7, 2024 at 18:12
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    Literally the first page and a half (when set to 50 posts a page) of discussions is spam... Some of them posted by the same user at the sme time. There's not even rate limited on the feature... If I wanted to see crap like that, I'd just into the junk folder of the email address I've had for around 25~ years and as been exposed in data breaches... Commented Jan 7, 2024 at 21:07
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    @ThomA Now it's entirely covering the first 4 pages. :D Commented Jan 8, 2024 at 0:03
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    This is just discussions working as intended by Stack Exchange Inc: a cesspool of fecal matter with more and more AI- and spammer-generated fecal matter constantly being added. It's almost like the community predicted this and was completely ignored, as usual. Commented Jan 8, 2024 at 10:14
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    First time I've ever looked at Discussions before, and I didn't see anything that was not actually spam. Commented Jan 8, 2024 at 10:50
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    I suddenly realized why SO remained "mostly sane" for me throughout the years. It's because I never bothered giving Collectives and Discussions a look. Commented Jan 9, 2024 at 14:53

1 Answer 1

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Since this question was asked, some changes were made to Discussions and its flagging dialogue.

Please flag these posts as "Not suitable for Discussions".

If you want to, you can also use this canned message to notify OP about the guidelines:

Discussions should not be used to draw more attention to existing Questions on Stack Overflow. This Discussions space is intended for more general conversations about technical concepts, including subjective opinions (see the Discussions guidelines).

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