In the discussion this meta thread it was discovered, that the current custom close reason missing context or other details is much less specific than the other close reasons.
The answer to what is context lists six different bullets defining the scope of the close reason. In short these are
- Lack of effort ("Include your work")
- Lack of motivation
- Missing source
- Missing mathematical backgroud of OP
- Missing references
- Missing definitions
Now while some of these may be combined into one bullet (For example "missing source", and "missing references" could be), this still defines a very wide scope for the close reason, leading to the OP being displayed a close message wich might not accurately address the problems of the post.
On SO there are five custom close reasons, while we only have one here. Adding another one wouldn't be much of a problem. So I propose we narrow down the scope of the "missing context or other details" reason by splitting it into carefully chosen categories.
The goal of this post is to
- Find out wich reasons can be grouped into small categories with a uniform and useful description, so than an OP knows exactly why his question was closed
- Find a good, informative message for each of these reasons such that misunderstanding is as unlikely as possible
Suggestions
I will now present my idea. Please give feedback on it and also share your own ideas in answers to make this discussion as fruitful as possible. My opinion is subject to change given convincing reasons, so I might edit these accordingly. This is intended to get the discussion started, not to be a call to vote on this special solution.
1. Categories:
I can see three categories:
- The OP is not putting enough work into the question. This includes showing one's work so far, where a clarification is needed ("I dont get it / need help")
- The source of the question is unclear. A source can be a book, stating that it's homework from course $C$ or that it resulted from some personal discussions. (I've seen quite a few questions of the form "I've seen on an internet forum that $A=B$. How is that?" with no link given, even after explicit request from fellow users)
- The question isn't sufficiently self-contained. Definitions used are possibly linked or given a reference to, but not all users may have access to this reference. Therefor a question should include all non-standard definitions it uses. Note that this is closer to unclear what you're asking than the other categories.
2. Formulation:
Suggestions for a suitable formulation for the three categories should be posted as an answer. I'll post a suggestion for a start but feel free to suggest one yourself.