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Referring to this question specifically:

https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/83187/unable-to-add-placeholder-for-date-field

The question is completely pointless; the answer is in the 2nd paragraph of the page the OP linked to (the module page); they haven't even bothered to read through the small amount of text on that page before giving up and coming straight here to ask a very poor quality question.

Similiar to Questions that contain nothing but a request for code, does anyone have a problem with these being closed outright?

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Nope!

Lack of research = close the hell out of it :-)

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Closed due to simply being simple? No. Sometime it might be hard to find an answer for a simple question. See Views and their lack of / buggy documentation (and even untrue comments in code sometimes).

Closed for the sake of lack of minimal understanding and own research? Hell yes.

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  • Good point, 'too simple' wasn't what I meant. Updated the question to clarify the language
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 12:26
  • I think the poster needs to have shown at least some effort in having at least tried something. Lately, it seems there's been a lot of "I'll just post my job bid or spec here and see what people suggest using to build my site." I've sometimes directed people to this post: "What have you tried?"
    – Danny Englander
    Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 22:22
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I think that there are some steps that are required before asking a question on Drupal Answers, and part of those steps are listed on What information should be given when asking a question? More answers should be added to that question to cover more cases.
To make an example, a question asking about which module to use that doesn't show any effort to search it on Drupal.org could be closed for lack of search effort.

I would extend the lack of search to lack of necessary steps, which would include also those questions asking why the code showed in the question doesn't work, when the reason is that the code contains a syntax error. In this case, the required step should be checking the code doesn't have any syntax error, for example by using php -l <file>, or any tool for syntax checking the used IDE has.

We could adopt the off-topic closing reason Stack Overflow has:

Questions asking for code must demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also What information should be given when asking a question?

In the case of questions asking for modules, the minimal understanding of the problem would include understanding that the place for looking for Drupal modules is Drupal.org; in the case of questions about troubles with a module, that would be understanding that Drupal.org probably has documentation for the module, which could be also linked from the project page for the module.

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There have been times where I find my answers in threads that have been shut down by over-zealous moderators.

I'm generally very good at reading the docs before asking questions, but I have still posted questions where the answer was pretty easy to find. But I had not found the answer at the time.

I think answers that are simply links to documentation are still useful. There are folks that may not know where to go for documentation.

What's obvious to a moderator may not be obvious to a user. What's the purpose of censoring anyone but spammers, etc?

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  • 3
    Thanks for the input :) We're actually talking about closing specific types of questions in this thread but I'll try to answer your concerns...The link-only answer removal is a network-wide rule, it's not one that's just enforced here. Links are too ephemeral, what's up one day is down the next. The goal of the site is to be a repository of high quality questions and answers about Drupal, which means we need the content here. Providing supplemental information by way of links is great, encouraged even, but the bulk of the response to the question needs to stay here for us to reach that goal
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 20:22
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    Long story short - post a link to docs all right, but also post an excerpt quoting relevant part of the documentation, and a word or three of explanation how does it apply to OPs question. And purpose of limiting content is to make valuable content easier to find. Without it, we would drown in meaningless information, and useful data would be like a barrel of sweet water poured into the sea of salt one.
    – Mołot
    Commented Aug 22, 2013 at 6:29
  • I concur with OP. While the answer might be there, sometimes drupal documentation is poorly organized, confusing, not well written, etc. Your information can be buried a wall of text, or you might even read your answer and not understand it.
    – user1359
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 18:13
  • @user1359 If somebody read the documentation, and didn't understand it, then the question should say that, since in that case the question is not anymore "How can I do this?" but "What does the documentation mean when it says this?"
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 12:20
  • Just to make it clear: There isn't much difference between what the moderators see in a question and what normal users see. It just happens that Drupal Answers' moderators are high-reputation users (which probably means they know Drupal enough to give good answers), and they have a better view of what the site should not become. The latter is not that hard, since there are limits that are valid on all Stack Exchange sites.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 12:28

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