Oh!

Do you have 4-6 minutes???

Of your valuable time to talk about politeness???

(sigh)

What’s up?

OK, so I'm the lowly worm that walked in-between the birds...

;-)

and wanted to make the Ask+Ubuntu a friendlier site...

and I followed some bad advice from people around me...

I still feel that SE can be improved by making the canned

replies more friendly,

but is it smtg you're still interested in?

Or shall we just drop the matter?

We’re always interested in making sites more friendly or welcoming when we can.

So what's your advice?

Start again in a couple of months and delete this question for now?

You were in the right place - meta’s the best place to discuss it. The problem is the specifics are still fuzzy. In your current post, you talk about raising the char. limit on the site-specific “off-topic” reasons, but the example you give “your question has an answer” isn’t an “off-topic” reason, or shouldn’t be - it’s the duplicate question language.

OK. that's why I'm talking to you... Because A says 1 and B says 2

The only thing I want is AU (and if possible SE) to become more friendly.

so the user base can grow...

now people are being upset and walk whereas they shouldn't

If you think dupe close reason language can be improved, I’d put up a meta post focused on that. If you think that the site specific OT reasons on Ask Ubuntu (pic below) could be much more polite if more chars were available, give specific examples.

I worked on the original question a week and had it reviewed bay a bunch of people inside AU before posting it...

So they are technically 2 different things?

One is site specific and one is network-wide???

I see (from an end-user POV) "close reasons".

You're a busy man and I've taken the time I asked you for.

Yes, that’s why there’s some confusion and negative reaction to the post, I think. There are “top-level” close reasons on all sites: “Too Broad”, “Overly Opinion Based”. “Off-Topic”, etc. For “Off-topic” ONLY, there are then individual sub-reasons for each site.

Thank you for the replies, I'd be interested in your meta post

That's why one of the AU mods told me to take the Q to SE!!! Aaah!

Okay, cool - gotta run to a hangout now. We’re always looking for ways to make the sites more welcoming, though!

Thanks for your time

Go!

:)