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How should I flag questions that are about software bugs only and, therefore, off-topic here?

I am a contributor to the JabRef reference manager and, thus, am following the JabRef tag on this site.

Quite some of questions with this tag are essentially bug reports that are not specific to TeX (see for instance this). If I understand the policies of the community correctly, such questions are no good fit for this site and, therefore, should be closed as off-topic.

As usual on stackexchange sites, I would flag such questions for moderator attention when I come across them. However, it is not clear to me what reason I should select from the flag as off-topic dialog.

  • duplicate of: does not fit, as such questions are normally new
  • too broad: does not fit, since the error is normally quite localized
  • primarily opinion-based: does not fit, since the question is normally not based on an opinion
  • unclear what you are asking: does not fit, since the problem is normally quite clear
  • off-topic because: seems to be the reason to go with, but leads to another selection with
    • Blatantly off-topic: Not true, the question is related to TeX, in a sense
    • belongs to another site: Just leads to meta.tex.stackexchange, where this question does not belong.

So my only option left is the generic in need of moderator intervention in the initial flagging dialog, where I can specify the reason in free text. I guess this is the way I should do this at the moment, or is there a better option?

I wonder if it wouldn't be better, for users and moderators, to have an additional option in the close as off-topic dialog.

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    This doesn't help you at the moment, but when voting to close (which you need 3000 rep points to do) you can enter a custom reason under off-topic. So you can say e.g. I'm voting to close this as off-topic because it is a bug report for <package/program>.
    – Torbjørn T.
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 13:10
  • Ok, good to know, thanks! Though your comment does not help me right now, it might help someone else who stumbles over this.
    – joergl
    Commented Sep 4, 2016 at 15:13

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Flagging using the generic 'needs mod attention' function is fine (though we tend to be conservative about closing). Whilst we can add a limited number of custom close reasons for the site, the number of uses has never seem worth it: we don't have one big use of flagging.

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  • Ok, thanks for clarifying! I will use the generic function as you suggest.
    – joergl
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 9:56

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