Possible Duplicate:
Introduce a “general reference” close reason
Related: Closing 'easy' questions - yes or no?
Stack Overflow gets flooded with questions of extremely basic things.
Just some quick examples of recent questions:
- How to add a UIView above a UITableView in iOS?
- Taking Screenshot of UIView using UIButton
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8412301/how-to-move-a-ball-randomly-on-a-screen-in-android
These questions show zero research effort and are not useful for the professional community of Stack Overflow. Although the above-mentioned question comes to the conclusion that it's wrong to close them, they do get closed all the time, even by diamond moderators:
- Objective-c random point which lies in given cgrect
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7925765/divide-24-hours-with-a-particular-number
- How do I detect when a row or multiple rows are selected in my NSTableView ?
Taking that in consideration, they should be flagged. However, there's no valid flag for them.
The current flags, and why they don't fit:
it needs moderator attention.
This doesn't seem like something to bother moderators with, especially since there's so many of these overly easy posts.
exact duplicate
Granted, most of these kind of questions are duplicates, but even the originals should be closed, really. Besides, this is not the real reason you're flagging at all.
off topic
Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to generally relate to programming or software development in some way, within the scope defined in the faq.
They are not off topic. These sort of questions quite obviously relate to software development.
not constructive
This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.
The specific expertise bit comes close to the issue, but it says "or". They're asking for facts and in a way, specific expertise as well, just not very impressive expertise. These sort of questions don't solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. In fact, the answers and comments are generally a bit dull on easy questions.
not a real question
It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form.
This usually ends up being the close reason, but they are real questions. It's actually extremely simple to tell what's being asked.
too localized
This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.
It's the exact opposite of too localized, it's the stuff everyone uses and knows.
it is spam
This question is effectively an advertisement with no disclosure. It is not useful or relevant, but promotional.
Nope.
it is not welcome in our community
This question contains content that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
Unless people are offended by the waste of time, nope.
I can only imagine that the effect of this missing flag is that more people will think it's okay to ask easy questions without even a single google search. Plus, when the questions do get closed, the OPs won't understand why, because the close reason doesn't describe their question at all.
Plus, people will decide not to flag because of this. I know I do, sometimes.
Edit: I just tried to compose a draft for a description of the flag, but it turns out to be complicated to properly describe the level of simplicity of an issue. I'll not risk posting any unfortunate phrases.
