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I'm really getting sick of seeing questions like this being closed for being "too localized." More often than not, it's simply coming down to a popularity contest. If someone has never heard of a product or technology, they vote to close.

While the closers may have never heard of it, CloudFormation is a Puppet-like tool used for provisioning resources in Amazon Web Services. The questions is valid, well-written, and one I could have answered. This would have helped the poster and anyone else who happened to stumble onto the question. Instead, by voting to close, the poster was likely further frustrated and considerably less likely to contribute to SF in the future.

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    That's a terrible question to begin with.. If I have to read the question three times to figure out what they're asking, it sure isn't "well-written". Though it doesn't seem like it should be closed as "too localized" either.
    – Chris S Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 14:37
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    Do you have any other examples? That one question was reversed, but "getting sick of ___" implies that it's a frequent happening that you notice. Additional examples would be very helpful if you want to make your case about "Too Localized" in general. If you only care about this one specific question, then maybe you should change the title.
    – MDMarra
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 14:52
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    "Posting about closed questions on Meta is too frequently abused" -- This should really be handled by casting reopen votes. (You're only 1603 rep away from being able to cast reopen votes, so until then feel free to use Meta for exceptionally egregious cases you spot.) If you're REALLY seeing a pattern where "Too Localized" is being abused please update your question to include more than one example. A pattern of one is called "an anomaly".
    – voretaq7 Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 16:26
  • I cast my vote on that question as NARL, not TL, although it was a close call.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 6:25
  • I can't help noticing that the question is currently open but you have not answered it. Better be quick because I don't think it will remain open much longer.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 6:30

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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That's easily fixed - open again. The trouble with questions like that one is they look very like "here's some code fix it for me" which are generally quite localised.

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  • Thanks. But this isn't the only time I've seen this happen. When it happens to my question, it really makes this place seem cliquish and unwelcoming. I feel that voting to close for being too localized ought to be used more judiciously.
    – jamieb
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 14:23
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    @jamieb If you saw the mountains of crap that actually deserve to be closed, you might understand why a couple of "unintended" targets take collateral damage. If you disagree with a closure, you can always flag it for re-open, or post it here for review. Mistakes happen. On the same note, if something is closed legitimately and you disagree with it, but you post here and ask for clarification, it might shed some light on reasons why it was closed that you didn't initially consider.
    – MDMarra
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 14:47
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    @jamieb what questions are you talking about, other than this one. You say "My Questions" but the only closed question I can see thats obviously closed on your profile is serverfault.com/questions/415713/… - and I don't see that as a harsh closure personally.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 15:27
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I'm really getting sick of seeing questions like this being closed for being "too localized'.

Keep in mind that close reason is just whatever reason that received the most votes, but that could be only two votes, if the voting was split between other reasons.

When a question is badly asked, then it is likely to be close, and in many cases questions will received a variety of different close votes.

Often many of the question questions fit multiple close reasons, and the close pre-defined reasons, are a bit vague at times. So occasionally you will see a question closed with a reasons that doesn't really make sense.

If you think the question is good, add a comment and flag it for moderator attention. You could also login into chat, and ask people to cast re-open votes.

Valid questions will sometimes get closed because the poster done a poor job writing, formatting them badly. You would take some time to edit/improve the question too.

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