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Indeed, a Linux distribution is software. “This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a Linux distribution and not about software” doesn't make sense. This question is very opinion-based (“good community support” is not an objective criterion, and “excellent support” is inviting debate). But it is definitely not off-topic. Let me stress ...

Be very wary of closing down very specific use cases and treating (for example) "every question about photo editors" like your trying to build a general encyclopedia of software reviews that will work for everyone — That is NOT what we are here for. Ideally, this site is going to be filled with long-tailed, specific problem statements where the &...

No - there should be no punishment for closing questions Closing a question is a temporary state to let you know that something is wrong with your post. Once a question has been closed you should consider the following: What was the reason it was closed with? What feedback have you received in the comments on your question? Is there anything you can do to ...

You can't vote to close a question while it has a bounty. I think the reasoning is that the bounty setter is trading reputation for an increased likelihood of getting answers; closing the question would be unfair since it would prevent answers. However bounties are not an excuse to keep a bad question around. If a question clearly needs closing, flag it as “...

The core of what defines things as duplicates is that they are, at heart, the same problem. Things having the same solution is often a warning sign that they may be duplicates, but it's not always the case. It has to often be evaluated on a case by case basis. What we would need to look at is whether or not we can see the problems to be solved as being one ...

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 ...

Given the size of our review queues, this is a good idea. Yes, let's ask for the same experiment on Software Recommendations SE. If lowering the threshold to 3 is not sufficient, we can then experiment with 2 or even 1.

As a beta site, we can't migrate to other sites. Once we graduate, we'll have the option of migrating to other sites and have other sites migrate to us. Note that moderators can migrate to any site on the network, just not normal users. If you see something that clearly belongs somewhere else, and the author hasn't already cross-posted it, flag it.

None of your “contros” are valid, because we do not close questions for these reasons. Closing questions doesn't limit freedom of expression in any way (not that Stack Exchange is about freedom of expressions: it's a collaborative platform, not your blog). It doesn't limit changing policies: feature requests and discussions related to possible changes are on-...

Having participated as a 3000+ user, Yes. I have participated in quite a few reopen and close voting polls and it seems even after the final graduation of the site, the community (with help of our moderators don't forget) are able to to handle the load quite easily. For now, keep using the Flag-> Close Question and a 3000+ user and/or moderator will be able ...

This would be very welcome here! There are always a hundred questions in review, and the volume of incoming off-topic questions is such that our community is not able to reduce the backlog despite doing its best. It leaves the 3 moderators alone to do all of the work of closing questions, which is not their primary role, and causes burnout. Single-vote ...

We've closed questions 656 times , and reopened 186 times (~28%) not including deleted. Note that this may double-count cases where a question was closed and/or reopened multiple times; those should be negligibly rare. Seems reasonable.

As long as it's an actual problem or decision that you face, you're fine. This site is going to get questions that are just hard to answer. This could be for a number of reasons: You're doing something that not many people do Technology to do what you want to do isn't very good Answers to your question would involve software that is extremely expensive and ...

As stated in the comments, just being "too localized" is no longer a valid reason for closing on Stack Exchange (a fact that I believe to be a good thing--how would you feel if you came here for help only to be shut down because no one though your problem would be relevant to other people?) Additionally, we've consistently emphasized precision and ...

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.

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 ...