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What does the following message mean?

closed as off topic by [Someone], [Someone], [Someone], [Someone], [Someone] [Date]

Questions on Theoretical Computer Science are expected to generally relate to Theoretical Computer Science, within the scope defined in the faq.

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  • $\begingroup$ tsuyoshi, why did you create this question ? is this part of the FAQ ? if so, why not just add it in there ? $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:05
  • $\begingroup$ @Suresh: (1) The FAQ page is already too crowded. I think that putting too many things makes it hard to maintain. (2) I wanted to include the boilerplate message in the question. I cannot do this in the FAQ page. $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:07
  • $\begingroup$ then maybe add a link from there to here ? $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:09
  • $\begingroup$ @Suresh: That is fine, but I believe that the faq tag is exactly for that purpose. If the consensus is that we should consider a question as an FAQ, moderators can add the faq tag and the list of questions tagged as faq serves as the list of FAQ. That is how things are supposed to work as I understand it. $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:12
  • $\begingroup$ these are not exclusive. The reason we had a single "question" was so that there was a single place to list questions. I don't think the question itself is that clustered. $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:13
  • $\begingroup$ @Suresh: Added a link from there to here. BTW, it seems like we should have used chat for this! (I cannot participate in a chat right now, sorry.) $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:15
  • $\begingroup$ indeed. that would have been a good use of chat. $\endgroup$ Nov 17, 2010 at 17:26

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When a question is closed, no additional answers may be posted to it. A user who votes to close a question must select one of the following reasons:

  • Exact duplicate
  • Off topic
  • Belongs to meta.cstheory.stackexchange.com
  • Subjective and argumentative
  • Not a real question
  • Too localized

Since questions on cstheory.stackexchange.com are expected to be research-level questions in theoretical computer science, “off topic” means anything that fails to satisfy this criterion.

Even a question in theoretical computer science will be considered as off topic if, for example, it is too basic to be research-level. Forget about the system-generated boilerplate message.

A question being closed as off topic means that the question does not belong to cstheory.stackexchange.com. It does not necessarily mean that the question is bad. For example, a question about programming (actually writing code) will be probably closed as off topic on cstheory.stackexchange.com even if it is very interesting.

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