I've seen a rather high number number of off-topic flags that I have then marked as on-topic. In many cases I see close votes pile on in what could be interpreted as brigading.
On topic?
This question caught my eye in particular: Image alt not showing at magento product page
The question asks "how can I add an alt tag to an image in a Magento product page"... and has been marked by 3 separate site users as off-topic. However, at the time of this writing there are two answers.
According to our help document for the on-topic guidelines this matches the top three points:
- It does not involve custom code
- It does not involve a third-party vendor
- No 3rd party developer can be contacted for support.
So it looks to me like it is actually on-topic. Perhaps the close votes are trying to signify that the "fix" is not Magento-centric and this is a gray area? At what point do we stop helping locate where to place a change because the change itself is "simplistic"?
Off Topic?
Let's review a type of question which I believe, by our guidelines, is likely off-topic.
Questions about Varnish aren't too rare around Magento.SE - but questions specifically about Turpentine (an OSS 3rd party module by Nexcess) are very very rare.
However, they do have their own tag but they break the community guidelines:
- It involves custom code
- It involves a third-party vendor
- A 3rd party developer can be contacted for support
A question just posted referenced it in the title: http://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/82490/magento-turpentine-excluded-parameters-in-vcl-produce-incorrect-redirect
There are no answers at the time of this writing, and no off-topic votes at the time of this writing.
Getting to the point
Which leads me to my point:
- Have our "on-topic" guidelines changed?
- If so, do we need to update that document?
- Is the document sparse for a reason? Should we be more explicit?
and lastly:
- Is this question in fact off-topic? Why?
(I submit that this question is on-topic and have voted accordingly. But I would like the community to weigh in here.)
I realize that Q to A ratio is important for the overall health of the site, but let's be careful not to appear to be unhelpful in the process.