In the past 90 days, 425 questions have been closed as off-topic on MSE

Out of 2185 asked

That's 425 closed as ...

> off-topic - This question does not appear to be about the software that powers the Stack Exchange network, within the scope defined in the help center.

Now, I just delete off-topic questions when I see them

@Shog9 Without closing them first?

Right. And I'm not the only one who does that. It's expedient

@Shog9 What internal discussion has taken place as of yet about this, after Tim Post's messages above?

@Shog9 We also get some questions that are only tangentially related to SE, but otherwise off-topic, such as that Web browser question.

Anyway, figure the actual number of OT questions is probably double the figure I posted above

So that's what you'd have to work with

Every OT question I come across, due to my rep level I can only downvote and cast recommend closure flags. Every one of those flags, the title now shows as "on hold" or "closed" in the flag summary.

If you managed a 1% response rate, it'd take you about a year to get 100 responses

I got 2 responses over the 2 days the original survey was running

Btw: if you have a free-form text field you'll get some number of responses that will just be programming questions

Doing this on SO works because thousands of people ask questions every day. It will take longer on MSE due to the much smaller volume of traffic.

@Shog9 The goal here is to figure out why people post OT questions on meta.

Finally, you'll want to compare folks'responses with what we actually know about them.

For example, if someone says they're blocked, we need to double check that.

@Shog9 Someone could randomly end up on Meta and not know they're posting here even if they've been question-banned on SO

Some number of people never figure out how to get past the interstitial page on SO. Small, but significant due to the difference in size.

@Shog9 Language barrier?

Who knows? Maybe they can't see the check box. Maybe they get bored.

@Shog9 Anyway, what do you think of Tim Post's comments?

?

Up above

It's a rather small conversation, an easy read

what do you want to know?

an engagement survey seems fine. Much bigger, more interesting target to aim at than off-topic askers.

FWIW, it's been almost 5 years since I last looked at this:

@Shog9 Automated filters cannot differentiate among:

and

Also, one "other" reason may be that they asked on the right site, didn't get an answer, and/or got downvoted, so they posted on MSE to see if they could get a different reception. The "car wash" analogy applies in that case.

@Shog9 That was back when MSE was MSO; many of these go on to post on the new MSO

@Shog9 ^^What do you think of that statement and the below one?

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog worth asking

but...

why would anyone want to engage with meta?

like... What are the reasons?

I asked essentially the same question on our internal SE site a bit over a year ago

somewhere close to 300 people at the company at that time, and I got one response.

which... Didn't particularly surprise me, but... The point remains: "what's bothersome about meta" is kinda the wrong question. Most folks using these sites - including most folks building them - don't see a reason to use meta to begin with; there's no initial draw to be discouraged.

Because the truth is, there's no value in a meta site for its own sake.

I came to meta because I wanted to improve Stack Overflow, not be a part of meta; it was a means to an end.

@TimPost It's already 5:15; post coming up yet?