Reversing decisions during the OR Beta phase?

Question

The impression I have is that the dividing line between what is on-topic and what is off-topic for OR is still being discerned by the community during this beta.

What happens if a question has been put-on-hold due to concerns about being off-topic, but then subsequent discussion indicates that the question might actually be on-topic after all. What is the appropriate way to have the put-on-hold decision reversed, or at least for this to be considered?

The particular example I am thinking of is

Installing COIN-OR solvers in Ubuntu (Azure)

As a working OR professional myself, this kind of question is very much of interest to me and I would be sad to see it permanently judged off-topic. I feel that such a question would be less likely to be well answered in other forums.

Answer 1

Right now? Vote to re-open it. There should be a "reopen" link at the bottom of the post, between the "edit" and "flag" links. This will put the question into the re-open review queue for people to vote on.

Once the site goes into public beta, only people with sufficient reputation (500 or more) will be able to vote for re-opening. For anyone else, the options are:

• Edit the question to address whatever issues caused it to be closed. This will automatically place it in the re-open review queue.
• Ask a question on meta about the post, bringing it to the attention of a wider audience (including those people with sufficient reputation to vote for re-opening).
• Flag the post for moderator intervention, explaining why it should be re-opened. Not the recommended method, since moderators can only re-open or decline to re-open, they can't put it in the review queue.

Answer 2

The main answer, as @Mark said, is vote to reopen.

But I'll also add: Nothing is permanent, and even if we (the OR.SE community) decide now that certain questions are off-topic, we can always change our minds at any point in the future.

The thinking in this post was that questions about installation, etc., that don't require any OR knowledge would be off-topic, even for OR software. However, your point is well taken, and I think I am starting to change my own mind about this question, as well. I might edit that post, or post a new question on meta. Thanks for raising this issue.