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https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/71770/2217 picture of question Picture just for historical reference.

That is just the latest example from the plethora of questions BSE gets that may be clear, on topic, but we can never answer. As such we are doing a disservice to the OP, as their unanswerable questions just sit around (and they walk away from this "useless site"). We should at least tell them (with a CV) that we can't help you here, then maybe there will be edits, and a good, answerable, question may come forth.

I understand that we need to be very careful about just slapping a "bad question" label on questions, but I think there are enough question of this type, that do not fit any of the existing close reasons, that the benefits outweigh the risk.

I'm proposing a new custom close reason, I do not have optimal wording. Please post your ideas in the answer section below.


PS if you think that "too localized" would work, not only here but on more of these questions, then just forget all this. :)

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  • $\begingroup$ I have to agree with you, honestly. Also, it'd clear up things like the unanswered section a little, maybe. $\endgroup$
    – Luka ash
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 2:03
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    $\begingroup$ Out of curiosity: Why Off-topic > Bug Tracker is not ok in this case? $\endgroup$
    – p2or
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 13:37
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    $\begingroup$ @poor because I have seen way to many question that have nothing to do with a bug in blender closed as "bug report." With this little information, why should we be suspecting the blender devs are at fault and not some user error? $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 18:09
  • $\begingroup$ Ahh, yeah makes sense, thanks @David. $\endgroup$
    – p2or
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 19:55
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    $\begingroup$ Would this not fit into the "Unclear what you are asking" category? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 0:11
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    $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos personally I dont like that CV reason for this type of question. The question is perfectly clear, although it is not answerable and lacking details. $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 2:40
  • $\begingroup$ @David If the question is lacking details then I would argue that it is not "perfectly clear". $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 16:03

1 Answer 1

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For this particular example at least, I quite like "too localized".
To me, the "too localized" reason is for questions so specific, one would not expect any (or hardly any) other people to have them.

A question about a specific crash on an antique version of blender certainly seems to fit that description, especially as the crash is not readily reproducible (forgetting for the moment that questions about crashes generally would be better off as bug reports).

That said, I'd like to exercise caution with the "too localized" reason, as it doesn't really offer the OP any guidance on how to improve their question. I don't think this is avoidable, as writing useful instructions for improving all manner of esoteric questions in a single paragraph doesn't sound feasible. I expect any new close reason attempting to fill a similar roll will suffer a similar problem.
To combat this, I'd say it's extra important to comment some feedback specific to the post when closing, indicating what makes the question localized and why. For example, in this case, the main thing making this question esoteric is the blender version. So, to address that:

Is there any special reason you are using 2.72? The latest version of blender is 2.78a. If you still get a crash using the latest version, consider submitting a bug report

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