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There are several posts on this site where people are asking "what is written on this bottle", "what is written on this postcard", "I can't understand what is being said in this video?".

Why those posts are not deleted, and a post about watch was removed?

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    Because one of our moderators takes too much upon himself, I guess.
    – Dmitry Alexandrov
    Dec 15, 2014 at 16:40
  • Another question with positive score, not closed, and not even put on hold, that had been suddenly removed by the same moderator. Something suggests me, that there are more, but I have no idea how can one find them.
    – Dmitry Alexandrov
    Dec 15, 2014 at 16:53
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    Yes, that one was also one of my favourite questions: a romantic story in one line. Why delete post if it can be closed as off-topic? The post is not offensive, no personal information is disclosed etc. I found no recommendations for moderators that encouraged post deletion.
    – Artemix
    Dec 15, 2014 at 17:15
  • @DmitryAlexandrov In fact the question you are mentioned was closed during the discussion in Livejournal blog which in fact was promoting the Russian.SE site. One of the participants there put a link to a KVN show where the same tattoo and ways to "fix" it was mentioned.
    – Artemix
    Dec 15, 2014 at 17:51
  • Funny. Anyway, I could not see how that justifies deletion.
    – Dmitry Alexandrov
    Dec 15, 2014 at 18:08

1 Answer 1

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First of all, thank you for being an active user of Russian SE. As of your question. The questions that you've described - asking translation of some particular phrase heard in movies, songs, seen somewhere etc. - are de-facto in the gray zone of off-topic on all language-dedicated SE sites. There were reasons for this.

For instance, our colleagues from English SE had decided that meme translations are most likely off-topic. Let me cite:

Most internet memes, like any particular cultural artifact, popped out of some narrow situation that was then shared and other people seemed to like it and continued sharing. Sometimes they are language based, but for the most part the hook is cultural.

The same about song/poetry interptetations. The same about single-word requests. The same about many things actually.

So, answering one part of your question - if you feel that some questions are off-topic and do not belong here, than just flag such questions, and moderators always take a look.

Answering another part of you question (ant to @Dmitry Alexandrov as well) - let me indeed apologize and acknowledge that some of deletions I've made are dubious. Indeed, we can close question as off-topic and not neceserily delete it - deletions are for content that's by definition can not be upvoted here - spam, obvious off-top etc.

Also, we can create a question on meta "What quesions are on-topic and off-topic here" just like a similar question on English SE and see how it goes.

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  • Thanks for the great answer! I really appreciate it. I think we need such "gray zone" list on Russian Meta, since it is not obvious where should one look for site policy, otherwise one would say "this is offtopic on Deutch SE", and another one would say "but on Italian SE it is even encouraged!". I think we have to gather all rules that we abide here, on Russian SE.
    – Artemix
    Dec 19, 2014 at 10:41
  • Shabunc, can I ask you to undelete one post for me - the "KATR" question as a sign that we hereafter close such questions as off-topic instead if deleting them? It was not obvious from the very start that this is "meme" or part of "comedy show". An you can see that the answer that matches the answer given in the show did not won the discussion. Many people participated in answering that question and it had 5 upvoted answers. Could you do it as a Cristmas miracle? ;) Thanks a lot!
    – Artemix
    Dec 19, 2014 at 10:46
  • @Artemix, sure, let's rereview. It's not a Christmas miracle, it's more aboutfixing my moderator errors actually. But could you please provide some additional information about that particular question - it's just that I can not find in in my ativieties log.
    – shabunc Mod
    Dec 19, 2014 at 14:37
  • russian.stackexchange.com/questions/7314/…
    – Artemix
    Dec 19, 2014 at 15:33
  • @Artemix done. And, once again, let's always communicate. Moderators are acutally users as well, and we all are interested in making this stak better.
    – shabunc Mod
    Dec 19, 2014 at 15:53
  • Thanks a lot! Is there ways to communicate other than using Meta? What is true stackexchange way for doing this?
    – Artemix
    Dec 19, 2014 at 16:12
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    @Artemix meta + chat rooms)
    – shabunc Mod
    Dec 19, 2014 at 17:17

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