Aren't we being too hard on Community Users?

Question

This question is mostly for the moderators, aren't we being too hard on the users of the community?

I'm a regular contributor here and feel like the rules are now strictly applied here, most of the questions are closed saying these are opinion based. I think SharePoint is one of the Platforms where opinion does matter, maybe you won't just give me Perfect solution/answer but an expert opinion is what I'm looking for.

I know rules are there but shouldn't we be more flexible?

Few examples:

Visual Web Part as consumer of PPS Filter Provider -- user is posting a link to show it's completely OK.

https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/95911/displaying-the-root-of-files-in-a-sharepoint-site -- unclear of what you are trying to ask

Building Web Site looks like Brightstar with Sharepoint -- Valid question, maybe too broad but he is looking for some guidance to start with

SharePoint App VS Object Model -- @RobertKaucher asks to reopen the question..

Debug custom sandbox workflow action -- It isn't too broad, is it ?

Many many more examples.. few I think I can answer but it simply gets closed mentioning if it's not clear or opinion based.. Maybe it's just me

PS: NO OFFENSE !

Answer 1

I do agree with you that in some cases the decisions has been made to quick, I will not go in to details about in which I feel this is the case, mostly due to rookieness in the moderator position. In those cases I can only apologies.

But closing a question as "Unclear what you're asking" is valid in many of cases (just check the first post, before edits) and the questions are often impossible to answer before more details has been added.

Regrading "Too broad", the line is thinner, but the guidelines states that a question should be able to be answered in full in just a few paragraphs. A few above is clearly not passing that measurement.

In those cases it is advices to create multiple, more narrow and focused, questions instead.

This guidelines are not specific for SP.SE but for the whole network.

PS, No offense taken, it is very good to have this type of decisions regarding where to draw the lines, and how we want the quality of this community to be

Answer 2

I feel the same thing, I joined this community couple of months ago. I feel that it is race to flag first, capture the badges etc.

Sometime, in this race we effect the real questions or questions and also bad impact on the new customer.

Ia m contributing in Couple of different SharePoint forums but this strictness i only see here.

I noticed people vote down but without any reason, i should say when you vote down this should be a mandatory field to fill, which give you the reason why this is down vote.