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The reason I am asking (before flagging the question)

DNS issue for internal website routing internet connection from remote location

got a comment from the OP

The problem is solved. ...
Turns out the previous admin had set up... The problem was that he didn't integrate it with AD...

On AskUbuntu this question would be closed as Off Topic because

This describes a problem that can't be reproduced, that seemingly went away on its own or was only relevant to a very specific period of time. It's off-topic as it's unlikely to help future readers.

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    At first glance I like the idea, but need to think it over more...
    – Chris S
    Mar 21, 2014 at 13:01
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    As long as this close reason isn't abused I like the idea as well. Personally I'm also OK with flagging these for summary deletion - a question whose only "answer" is a comment saying "I misspelled xterm - oops!" has no real value to the community...
    – voretaq7
    Mar 21, 2014 at 15:14
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    We used to close these with too localized... but that close reason seems to have vanished. No matter how we go about it, I'm all for closing and nuking these questions - they provide no value to the community and just serve to clutter the place up. Mar 21, 2014 at 22:36
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    It seems to me that if the problem occurred as a result of user misconfiguration, it IS reproducible. It could happen to someone else, and therefore it may be useful in the future. A problem that can't be reproduced would be more like a fault in an application due to a disk sector with application code going bad or a unique problem occurring in an application that was installed from a uniquely corrupted download.
    – Triynko
    Mar 25, 2014 at 21:14

2 Answers 2

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In this case, this user should have answered their own question, rather than leaving a comment. I haven't the slightest idea why they chose not to do so.

In the general case, I feel that unanswerable questions should just be deleted outright, though this particular question didn't appear to me to be unanswerable as given. Someone with more Windows experience might contradict me on this point...

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    OP stated "the DNS and AD controllers all replicate", then said "he didn't integrate it with AD so it doesn't replicate". Sounds like he replaced basic troubleshooting with assumptions. Not sure what kind of answer can account for that.
    – rtf
    Mar 21, 2014 at 19:55
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    Looks to me like it describes a scenario that could be commonly encountered, a common misconfiguration, a missed step. An appropriate answer would be one that explains, given the situation described, whether that situation could legitimately occur or seems to be missing something and then provides the steps necessary to correct the configuration.
    – Triynko
    Mar 25, 2014 at 21:18
  • @Triynko Sounds like a separate answer to the question. Make it one and you get my upvote - I would have said exactly the same as you.
    – Nils
    Apr 1, 2014 at 12:40
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This is similar (but not quite a dupe, I think) to a question I asked a couple years ago:

Are problems that turned out to be typos "Not a Real Question"?

In that post, I suggested closing this type of question as Not a Real Question (a defunct close reason), but I think in many cases the (also defunct) Too Localized would fit them.

I still think that many of this type of question should be closed: whether it's a simple typo, or the person asking misunderstood something about their environment, etc., there are some questions that are highly unlikely to help anyone else, so I'd vote to close them.

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