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I just read a blog post by Sam on hot questions ... read it at

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/can-stack-exchange-capitalize-on-hot-trends/

Personally I think we closed the question I am a small retail investor. Can I invest in the Facebook IPO at the IPO price?

deserved to be closed. Commets and discussion on should we be more open and should we be chasing hot topics to get more traffic??

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Lets stop closing them and rewrite them to be more on topic. I propose Hot Topic questions that we want to close should have a corresponding meta discussion on how to make it better.

For example (and this is why the community needs to help)

Instead of

I am a small retail investor. Can I invest in the Facebook IPO at the IPO price

How about

How can small retail investors get IPO prices?

and a new question

Should small retail investors be terribly concerned with IPOs?

and since the aftermath

What indications existed in the market that would have predicated the Facebook IPO trouble?

We did get some facebook related questions that were pretty general. But the timely-ness of the question is the issue here. (Not being an exact duplicate IMO)

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    Agree to what you are saying. However I am stuck between 2 things, a) If we make the question generic, "How can small retail investors get IPO prices" we will not get Facebook question traffic. If we keep "How can small retail investors invest in Facebook" we will get traffic however its would be classified as stale & question on specific stocks – Dheer Jun 6 '12 at 4:13
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    How about "...get IPO prices on hot stocks like Facebook or Skype"? Best of both worlds? – MrChrister Jun 6 '12 at 7:26
  • How about we just keep both questions? Just because its closed does not necessarily mean it's a bad question. What happens with the next hot IPO? We glob 'em all together into one massive question? Leave the dupes be, if they provide value. Dupes which provide a significantly different wording can be great feeders/search-bait. Again, because it's worth stressing, closed does not necessarily equal bad. – George Marian Jun 7 '12 at 1:29
3

I'm not sure about chasing hot topics, but...

I'm a relative newbie to this SE site and have learned a lot by reading posts but have yet to ask any questions myself. Part of this is because it does seem like a lot of posts get closed for being duplicates and I'm afraid of being admonished because my question has been covered elsewhere, even if it is specific to my situation. For example, if I was to ask a question about what is better - paying down my high-rate consumer credit card or paying down my lower-rate school loan - would it be closed because others have asked a similar question?

(I wonder about this with a lot of the non-programmer SE sites where it's harder to pose a question that has a definitive answer. Seems to me the nature of this flavor of SE site is more discussion/opinion than answer.)

My two cents... now back to lurking!

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    If you ask a question and put your details into it, then you can get a best answer for you. However, don't you know the answer you will get to that question? Is there a particular wrinkle in your deal? – MrChrister Jun 5 '12 at 22:15
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    Questions getting closed for duplicate is not bad. We like duplicates and keep them. They don't get deleted. Its is better to search traffic as everyone asks the same question differently. So if you repeatdely ask duplicates, the community may admonish you, however occassional duplicates are fine and welcome. BTW you question on credit card vs lower rate school loan is already answered. – Dheer Jun 6 '12 at 4:17
  • FYI - the question I posed was hypothetical... I do know I should pay off the higher rate first... and did so years ago. ;) – JHFB Jun 6 '12 at 10:51
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Personally, I think the question should have been closed duplicate. I think the community did the right thing.

What's the difference between:

  • How do I buy Skype at IPO?
  • How do I buy Facebook at IPO?
  • How do I buy AnyCompany at IPO?
  • lather, rinse, repeat once per IPO.

There won't be new information unless we try and become a repository for which brokers are running the IPOs (a great example of too-localized).

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