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This post on Suggest me some good seller for Arduino UNO HAS to be a troll. Asked by a new user, responded by three people, all very low reputation.

What's the best "flag" to set?

I was going to choose spam, but they're not selling anything, although the answers provided very well might. So I chose opinion based answers.

I personally don't mind opinion based stuff, although it's not in line with StackExchange generally, the question (if asked via google) would yield hundreds of websites and ebay auctions to see the stuff...

Likewise for questions that don't show enough research, which is a pet peeve of mine, I would prefer a better mechanism than closing the question for low quality or lack of research. I'd much prefer the question be hidden from view and the author given 24 hours to rewrite/edit it to meet a better standard.

I realise that last point is beyond the scope of here, but what IS the best action for questions that show a complete lack of research, knowledge or personal examples of what they've done to try and resolve it?

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  • I say that this is certainly not a troll, but someone after some shopping advice. I have noticed that low rep responders will often step in to answer a poor question. I'm not sure of the sociological reason for this - maybe because: no one with a high rep would want to answer a low quality shopping question, and so the low reppers step in, or; because they are all beginners too and have recently had to go through the whole "which one should I buy" process, and so it is fresh in their minds and they are eager to share their new found knowledge. I felt a little like this when I first started.
    – Greenonline
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 12:21
  • It is actually quite common to see someone set up two accounts - ask a question on one account then answer it, advertising a product, on the other account. That way it gets around the immediate "this is spam" knee-jerk response. It takes them a bit more work but the posts do tend to stay around longer. I have seen it many times before.
    – Majenko
    Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 22:18

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This post . . . HAS to be a troll. Asked by a new user, responded by three people, all very low reputation.

What makes you think it was a troll? Although the term "troll" is subjective, I do no think that this is a troll, but rather a new user who made a mistake.

What IS the best action for questions that show a complete lack of research, knowledge or personal examples of what they've done to try and resolve it?

  • Lack of research: Do not close a question for lack of research; just don't answer it. No one is forcing you to answer or even pay a tiny bit of attention to that post, so, frankly, don't if it bothers you. It doesn't matter if it's a pet peeve of yours or not, and I assure you that the dev team is not going to spend time implementing your suggested fix. (Link to SE policy on low research questions).
  • Lack of knowledge: If you can close it as unclear what you're asking, do that. However, it should be unclear what they're asking, and not just an excuse to close a question by a beginner.
  • Lack of personal examples: if they don't include their code/schematics, then closing as too broad is sufficient because the lack of details makes the question become a list of every possible thing to try for a generic issue.

As for the post itself, I closed it as primarily opinion based and have left it to be auto-deleted in a few days if left untouched. Since the posts did not have any evidence that it was self promotion and were directly relevant, I left them there and they will be auto-deleted with the post (assuming it does get deleted).

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