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There seem to be many questions in this form, which I think tend to indicate that the questioner hasn't found a canned tutorial within a few seconds of trying Google, and wants further research done for them.

It particularly annoys me that they ask 'where to find how to' rather than 'how to'.

But while I think they are particularly lazy questions, I think that they get reasonable answers, with suggestions on how to achieve the effect, rather than pointers to tutorials as actually requested.

So, how to deal with them?

2 Answers 2

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I tend to think the best way is to ruthlessly edit the question until it forms an model for the answers actually supplied.

Thus

What is this effect called and where can I find a tutorial?

might become

How to achieve a realistic engraved-marble text effect?

This ensures that good answers get seen, and makes the question findable in a search, which in turn makes it easier to close/merge new questions which address the same problem.

5
  • 1
    I like this solution. It's elegant and not terribly time-consuming.
    – Aarthi
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 15:43
  • 2
    Good point. I also think it would be helpful to vote to close duplicates WITHOUT supplying answers. It's too easy to get some good answers spread across 3 or 4 very similar questions.
    – Scott
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 21:06
  • @skaught I think I remember seeing somewhere, ages ago, that it's possible for moderators to merge questions - so say you have 4 questions that are duplicates, 2 of them each have a good answer each that aren't the same, you can delete 3 of the questions and put both good answers on the remaining question. Hopefully a moderator can clarify this in including who's able to do this, how, etc.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Dec 11, 2012 at 19:01
  • How DO I create a realistic engraved-marble effect?
    – OghmaOsiris
    Commented Dec 23, 2012 at 3:41
  • @OghmaOsiris Start with some marble and a chisel.
    – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
    Commented Jun 25, 2014 at 13:23
1

I disagree with the e100 in general (specific cases it may be appropriate) because that could mean that we are editing in content, changing the nature of the question itself.

Instead, I suggest we categorize questions differently:

There are two types of classification: style identification and how to.

If someone doesn't know what the style is, they cannot find how to create such an effect, thus they use a question to find that out what the style is in order to look up more about it. Also note we have some requirements for them as well.

How to's, on the other hand, seek for help with implementation creating a particular effect. We have requirements for them, but they are of a different nature than simply identifying a style. They involve steps of how to attain the desired effect.

So, questions like "What is this effect called and where can I find a tutorial?" are too broad and should be scoped to fit either one or other of the above categories, whichever is more applicable.

In any case, questions just asking for pointing to a tutorial should be closed or edited - we want to keep the answers of how to's on our site :)

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