Should we bring back the "not a real question" closing reason?

Question

After my recent discussion starter (Towards a policy for hint-only answers) and some chat conversations, I think that the biggest problem we have with questions now is if they don't contain a (real) question.

While a definition of what we mean by real question is pending (right now, we are acting on a template basis with an "I know it when I see it" paradigm), I think this covers the most common problem posts: dumps and check-my-work.

Why do I think these are problematic? Well, we don't want them but we don't have a clear-cut argument for closing. We often use "unclear" which confuses people; it usually is quite clear what the OP wants! It's not clear what their problem is, though; in other words, there is no real question.

SE used to have a closing reason "not a real question", which I think would be more apt for these types of question-posts. We can bring it back as a custom close reason, if we want to.

So, here's my query for discussion:

1. What constitutes a real question for us?
2. Do we want a "no real question" closing reason?

Answer 1

The close reason “not a real question” was too broad and unclear. Bringing it back would solve nothing. It isn't any less confusing than applying the current “unclear” to problem statements that are clearly presented but where we don't understand what kind of answers are expected.

The guidance about “unclear” does explain that case (“add additional details to highlight exactly what you need (…) it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking”); it could use some clarification (“it's hard to tell what kind of answers you're expecting”?), but who reads the guidance anyway?

We can add one more per-site close reason. Unfortunately, these reasons have to be under off-topic (allowing per-site close reasons that aren't under off-topic has been requested but in vain), so adding a close reason for computer science “problem dumps” is unlikely to alleviate much confusion.

Having a per-site close reason would at least have the advantage of clarifying our policies. My impression is that different people have hugely different ideas of what constitutes “check my answer” types of questions — I've seen it applies to questions that presented a potential solution with an obvious questionable step. The situation is even worse with “problem dumps”, and heads back to one of the reasons why we didn't make “homework” a close reason¹ — the boundary between a problem dump and a perfectly reasonable question is pretty fuzzy.

¹ _{Not the only reason — “homework” carries the much worse problem that it seeks to distinguish on how the problem came about, which we can't know and have no reason to care about since it doesn't affect the answer.}