I've been seeing quite a few questions in the process of being closed as unclear what you're asking, apparently because they don't specify an OS. I've also been voting to close these questions. My question, though: should we be?
3 Answers
No, if OS isn't given, we can assume that they don't care.
For two reasons:
A lot of people have access to multiple OSes. Its not unusual to see people (espically power users) who use Linux, windows and Mac.
Alot of software now, will run on all OS's, because the OS market is diverging. We've seen in the last 12-18 months Games, which used to be a big hold out for only working on windows are now becoming very common to work on linux as well. (and we can credit that to Steam and Humble Bundle).
Also it looks like the Tags are not nesc the way we refer to OS. See: Tag for OS-agnostic questions?
answered Feb 9, 2014 at 5:43
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4+1. But I think the OP should mention that there is no OS restriction (otherwise it might be the case that the OP just forgot to specify the required OS). --- Another reason: it may be the case that the OP is going to install the OS for which the best/recommended software is available.– unorCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 6:08
In my opinion, we should be closing these questions as long as they ask for non-web based software. There isn't enough information to know whether a given answer is right or wrong.
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1If there's no way to see what could be recommended, that seems the only thing to do. But give the "n00bs" a chance and leave a comment, asking them to
[edit]their question and add that crucial information.– IzzyCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 3:24 -
2@Izzy Close the question, with a comment explaining what information is missing. If and when the question is edited, reopen. With the reopen queue, this happens quite smoothly. Commented Feb 9, 2014 at 14:15
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Good point, @Gilles. And if re-opening takes a little longer, it contributes to the OP's learning queue :)– IzzyCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 14:33
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I'm in agreement with Undo and Gilles here, this is exactly what the close functionality is for. Perhaps one of our close reasons should clearly state "this does not provide enough information" with a link to a meta post clearly determining what "the right information" actually is?– FlykCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 20:06
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In case this becomes policy, I would ask for "Java" and "Python" to be OK too, as they can run on pretty much any OS. See softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/594/…– Nicolas Raoul ModCommented Feb 10, 2014 at 3:28
In my opinion, it is a bit overdone to aggressively close these question. Ask in a comment if the asker can edit in his preferred OS in the question, and if it is done, delete your comment (and flag the response as obsolete). This prevents potentially good questions to be overlooked, and I can not imagine that an asker will not add the necessary information after such a comment.
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Putting content on hold never hurt anybody - and then any editing that is done to the post after it has been put on hold will result in the question being automatically placed back into the reopen queue. It's better than leaving content that does not meet our quality requirements around.– FlykCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 20:07
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2@Flyk Putting question on hold scares off new users a lot in my opinion– BernhardCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 20:17
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Remember that we're allowed custom close reasons. Putting a question on hold with a "this question does not contain enough information to be answerable, please check this discussion to find out what information should be included" shouldn't be as scary.– FlykCommented Feb 9, 2014 at 20:19
[on hold]nowadays, which helps a lot with this. But opening anything is hard, as reviewers seem to click "leave closed" rather easily.