19

Update: The Modded Minecraft Close Reason review is underway. See the following post:

Modded Minecraft Close Reason - Let's Review

It's been a little over two weeks since our latest discussion about swapping out one of our 4 off-topic closure templates with one dedicated to modded Minecraft troubleshooting/crashing. For those that missed it: Should we replace one of our close reasons with modded Minecraft tech support?.

There's a lot of valid points raised on that meta, but judging by the votes it seems that most community members are in favor of updating the close templates in some way to better match the more common use cases.

Regarding the concerns some raised about having a whole close reason template tied to a single game's problem - we hear you on that, however, the usage doesn't lie. I put together the following graph based on the off-topic close reasons used in the past 90 days*:

Pie chart showing massive skew towards custom Minecraft reason

Our community members are spending more time typing custom Minecraft close reasons than any of our templated off-topic reasons combined. It's obvious that this is a particular pain point for reviewers, and has come up time and time again over the years without progress or result. So what now? Well...

Let's just try it out

It is trivial to change these close reasons, and even more trivial to change them back. So based on the support on the most recent meta, we'll replace the 'Unreleased or Illegal' close reason with a dedicated Modded Minecraft Tech support one - for say, 3 months - which will give us the same 90-day window as the above stats. We can then re-convene to review and see if it's worth changing the close reason back. The mod team feels this would be a fair compromise between those which have been barracking for this change for years, and those which disagree for one reason or another. What do you think?

It's also worth noting that this would be a quality-of-life change only, to make it easier for our reviewers, and to provide the best resources for those that have their questions closed. Our 4 template close reasons are not our off-topic policies, and vice versa. The Help Center lists out all of our off-topic reasons - they all apply at all times, even if there isn't a close reason template to pick from.

Here's an example close reason we're leaning towards, but if you have a better suggestion, please post it as an answer below. Remember, the limit is 400 characters (including links), which is less than a comment, so make those characters count!:

Requests for technical support of modded Minecraft are off-topic. This includes crashes, errors or other undesired behavior caused by modding. For other places that accept such questions, please see Where can I ask troubleshooting questions about modded Minecraft?

Markdown:

Requests for **technical support of modded Minecraft** are off-topic. This includes crashes, errors or other undesired behavior caused by modding. For other places that accept such questions, please see [Where can I ask troubleshooting questions about modded Minecraft?](//meta.arqade.com/q/13559)

* Here's the full stat breakdown, including other standard close reasons such as Too Broad etc

7
  • 1
    Hmm, maybe we should create a new close reason for that custom reason. We use that 26% of the time :P
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Sep 19, 2019 at 15:05
  • 1
    Jokes aside, my only comment is that people will try and argue that their problem isn't caused by mods to try and keep their question opened. Not sure how I would reword it though. And if they can prove the issue isn't caused by mods, we could reopen it.
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Sep 19, 2019 at 15:08
  • 2
    Great step forward. 42% is so much higher than 5%, there's no reason to not at least test this out.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Sep 19, 2019 at 17:33
  • 1
    @Dragonrage I've added an updated close reason as an answer here that sorta addresses those concerns. At the end of the day the onus is on the asker to show that their issue happens in vanilla too, via updating their question with more info, crash logs and so on after removing mods from the equation
    – Robotnik Mod
    Sep 19, 2019 at 23:47
  • I feel like we should keep this question in mind. I believe that it it is very important and that it should be taken into consideration. It asks why we should ban only minecraft questions and votes show a lot of support for answers with statements like "We should aim for this description to be general enough, so that unanswerable crash questions relating to other games are also covered.".
    – user232393
    Sep 20, 2019 at 12:22
  • 4
    @bearb001 I don't. It's not representative of the policy that is actually enforced by the community and only serves to muddy the issue. Only modded Minecraft tech support has caused problems, so only modded Minecraft tech support is off topic. This is simple and clear, we've spent almost 5 years enforcing it using custom off topic reasons, it is by far the most used off-topic reason. "But it should cover all games!" has had people discussing in circles for years with no solid workable definition, all that's come of it is a derailing of attempts to define a close template we'd actually use.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Sep 20, 2019 at 13:13
  • 2
    @Robotnik Can you point me to a question that actually asks for a definition that would cover all games? The closest I could find so far was the question that I linked earlier and it asks "why don't we have such a definition?". I looked through a lot of questions now (All 125 questions that you find when using this search query: minecraft is:question answers:1 -[bug] -[support] -[tags] -[specific-question] -[status-completed] -[answers] -[minecraft-commands]) and didn't find any question actually asking for a definition that would cover unanswerable crash questions for all games.
    – user232393
    Sep 20, 2019 at 16:39

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
15

This close reason is now active. We reviewed the stats in the following post, with majority community support for leaving the close reason in place:

Modded Minecraft Close Reason - Let's Review

Here's a slightly more fleshed out close reason that also adds a link to the question: How do I ask a good Minecraft Bug/Crash question? for issues that exist in Vanilla Minecraft. It sits at 369/400 characters so there's some wriggle-room for some wording changes if you have some suggestions:

Requests for technical support of modded Minecraft are off-topic, including crashes, errors or other abnormal behavior caused by modding. See Where can I ask troubleshooting questions about modded Minecraft? for other places to go, or clarify your question if the issue persists without any installed mods.

Markdown:

Requests for **technical support of modded Minecraft** are off-topic, including crashes, errors or other abnormal behavior caused by modding. See [Where can I ask troubleshooting questions about modded Minecraft?](//meta.arqade.com/q/13559) for other places to go, or [clarify your question](//meta.arqade.com/q/9943) if the issue persists without any installed mods.

2
  • meta.arqade.com doesn't seem to work for me, but that might just be the work filter.
    – MBraedley
    Sep 20, 2019 at 13:00
  • @MBraedley yeah my work blocks *.arqade.com but allows *.stackexchange.com. The arqade ones are shorter though.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Sep 20, 2019 at 13:21

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