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On Stack Overflow at the moment, there is a popular question which is currently high in the Hot Questions feed: https://stackoverflow.com/q/17807531/42473

So far it has been closed twice (once by the community and a moderator and once by a moderator alone) but re-opened twice by the community. It is clearly not a Stack Overflow question. Reading between the lines, there could be a valid Programmers question there, but it would be a very basic one (at the fizz-buzz competency level) and looks more like a populist attempt to farm reputation than a serious question.

Worst of all, even though there are some interesting answers on this question, they are all going to be completely useless to future visitors to the site, since they will be completely undiscoverable. If the question were at least "What is the best fair distribution algorithm?" it would still be off-topic (primarily opinion based), but at least it might help someone once the topic falls off the Hot Questions feed.

Although this has turned into just a bit of fun, and I don't want to kill that, enough is enough. While this question is open, unlocked, and still seen as a valid question, it is setting a bad example for the whole Stack Exchange network.

Bike shed questions like this, especially on the grandfather Stack Exchange site, devalue the work we are putting in on every other site by making it appear acceptable to re-open populist questions like this after two moderators have classified it as off-topic.

What should we do about this question?

• Should it be left open? Power to the people?
• Closed and locked by a moderator?
• Migrated to another site?
• …or something else?

On Stack Overflow at the moment, there is a popular question which is currently high in the Hot Questions feed: https://stackoverflow.com/q/17807531/42473

So far it has been closed twice (once by the community and a moderator and once by a moderator alone) but re-opened twice by the community. It is clearly not a [so] Stack Overflow question. Reading between the lines, there could be a valid Software Engineering question there, but it would be a very basic one (at the fizz-buzz competency level) and looks more like a populist attempt to farm reputation than a serious question.

Worst of all, even though there are some interesting answers on this question, they are all going to be completely useless to future visitors to the site, since they will be completely undiscoverable. If the question were at least "What is the best fair distribution algorithm?" it would still be off-topic (primarily opinion based), but at least it might help someone once the topic falls off the Hot Questions feed.

Although this has turned into just a bit of fun, and I don't want to kill that, enough is enough. While this question is open, unlocked, and still seen as a valid question, it is setting a bad example for the whole Stack Exchange network.

Bike shed questions like this, especially on the grandfather Stack Exchange site, devalue the work we are putting in on every other site by making it appear acceptable to re-open populist questions like this after two moderators have classified it as off-topic.

What should we do about this question?

• Should it be left open? Power to the people?
• Closed and locked by a moderator?
• Migrated to another site?
• …or something else?