Revising list of closure reasons

Question

Following up on a past discussions, I'd like to tweak our list of off-topic close reasons. We may have up to three canned reasons. Currently, they are:

1. Questions asking for code to be written to solve a specific problem are off-topic here as there is no code to review.

2. Your question must contain working code for us to review it here. For questions regarding specific problems encountered while coding, try Stack Overflow. After getting your code to work, you may edit this question seeking a review of your working code.

3. Questions must include the code you want reviewed. Code must not appear only in a link to an external source. Doing so makes us dependent on a third-party site and makes it harder to review your code. If your code is very large, please select only the portions in which you are especially interested in for a review. You are welcome to keep the link to the rest of your code.

I've posted a proposal below. Upvote it, or post your own counterproposal.

Answer 1

My proposal:

1. Questions containing broken code or asking for advice about code not yet written are off-topic, as the code is not ready for review. Such questions may be more suitable for Stack Overflow or Programmers. After the question has been edited to contain working code, we will consider reopening it.

2. Questions must include the code to be reviewed. Links to code hosted on third-party sites are permissible, but the most relevant excerpts must be embedded in the question itself.

3. Questions must involve real code that you own or maintain. Questions seeking an explanation of someone else's code are off-topic. Pseudocode, hypothetical code, or stub code should be replaced by a concrete example.

Answer 2

We only have three custom options. I believe we can be more efficient with the close reasons...

:

1. No Code:

   • Code is not included or is only a link
   • Code does not exist (a request for design help)

2. Code is included but the included code:

   • has severe bugs which are obvious
   • does not yet contain the features that are requested in the review

3. Question contains code, but the question is about general design or opinion:

   • the code is pseudocode, or stub code illustrating a design pattern or model
   • opinions on Best Practice in general, or 'choosing' between alternatives
   • getting opinions on someone else's code

These issues are not very different from 200_success's suggestions, but I would re-formulate the close reasons on the above categories

1. Your question contains no code to review. Your question must have code embedded to be reviewed. Specifically, Code Review cannot rely on third-party hosts to maintain the consistency and availability of code. If the code does not exist yet, and you are looking for design help, then Programmers is the place to ask.

2. Your code does not work as designed. Your question has significant bugs, or it is missing required features, and these need to be resolved before the code is ready to review. Stack Overflow is the appropriate place to ask about errors in your code. When your code works as designed, feel free to bring it back for review.

3. Your question is seeking opinions on Best Practices. Your code is example code, pseudo-code, stub-code, or someone else's code. It does not represent your actual code in a working system.