Why I closed the "Why is Kali so hard" question

Question

UPDATE: The question is now here on meta: Why is Kali Linux so hard to set up? Why won't people help me?

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As the regulars will know, there seem to be many people out there who think that Kali is a good way of starting with Linux. As a result, we get quite a few questions from newbies trying, and failing, to do basic things with Kali. The community is understandably tired of these since it's sort of like having someone trying to learn how to drive and getting a Formula 1 car to practice in.

The Why is Kali Linux so hard to set up? Why won't people help me? post was created to be a dupe target that we can use when people who are obviously out of their depth come here and ask for help using Kali while they are clearly newbie Linux users and have no business using Kali in the first place.

I've long felt that we've been abusing the Why is Kali Hard question (WKHQ). It is being used to close pretty much any question that mentions Kali. This has been discussed a few times already:

• Why are Kali questions hated so much?
• Systematically closing Kali questions

In the vast majority of cases, the questions have other problems. Most often, they are either unclear or too broad. Well, we can close them for that reason then. The original intent of the WKHQ was to give users an explanation of why they shouldn't be using Kali. And that is a laudable goal. However, closing a question as a duplicate suggests that the question will have an answer in the dupe. The WKHQ provides no answer to any technical issue, it only explains what Kali is for. It is a great answer to link to, but not a good dupe target. And it was never supposed to be a catch-all for Kali questions:

Note that I do not propose systematically closing Kali questions! Each question should be judged on its merit.

But a catch-all is what it has become. I think Michael Homer put it very well in his answer:

At best, it's a helpful see-also, and not a duplicate; at worst, it's just people getting off on the superiority they feel from belittling people they think are beneath them.

My comment under that answer currently has 6 upvotes:

@slm I am becoming more and more convinced that we should close the "Kali is hard" question so it can no longer be used as a dupe target. It was a good idea, but I agree 100% with Michael that it is being abused. –

So, after seeing yet another (bad, but not duplicate) question getting a close vote as duplicate of the WKHQ, I made an executive decision and closed the WKHQ which, I hope, will encourage people to stop using it as a dupe target. Instead, I left this comment under the question (the link goes to the WKHQ):

Please note that Kali is a tool designed for experts. It is not a normal operating system and should not be used as one. The error you are getting is quite clear: you don't have easy_install. But if you don't know how to correct that, I would strongly urge you to use a different operating system.

I am posting here first to let everyone know what I did and why, and to give the community a chance to voice their disagreement (or support), and also to open a discussion about how to proceed. If we really, really feel so strongly against Kali questions, then maybe we should make it off topic. But I don't see how we could justify that: Kali is most certainly a *nix system. We could perhaps make only "expert" level questions on topic but then who would be the judge of what constitutes an expert question?

I instead suggest that we treat Kali questions like any other on topic question. We close when the question is unclear, but because it is unclear. We close when it is too broad but because it is too broad. We can leave comments pointing the OP to the WKHQ, as a way of explaining why Kali might not be the best choice for them, but unless there's a clear consensus to the contrary, I vote for keeping the WKHQ closed and no longer using it as a catch-all duplicate for bad Kali questions.

Answer 1

In retrospect, I agree that the WIKSH thread isn't working out as intended. I do think that the WIKSH thread is useful, but it doesn't work as a duplicate target. It guides people towards solving their problem — by telling them to use a different distribution — but it doesn't answer their actual question: instead, it explains why their question isn't getting answers.

So it should be on meta. It's useful, so it shouldn't be deleted. It could get new useful answers and the existing answers could be improved, so it shouldn't be closed or locked. Even the title of the question is a meta title — “why won't people help me” is a meta question. The content is more main-site content, but it works as a meta answer too.

Moderators can't migrate the question because of an age restriction, but staff can. Please migrate this question to meta.

Answer 2

I have to write an answer because I disagree with how you formatted the main points; let me try:

• We close when the question is unclear, but because it is unclear.

• We close when it is too broad but because it is too broad.

I said when the Kali dupe was proposed that:

I think we should treat them just like questions for any other distribution, perhaps with extra warnings in the tag excerpt and wiki. Just a quick reminder that we voted to allow Kali questions as on-topic here (pushed over from Ask Ubuntu), given that they applied the Kali tag. I try to re-tag questions that "forget" to include the tag.

Let's maintain the StackExchange mechanisms for what they're intended to be. How should duplicate questions be handled? says:

Questions asking about the same aspect of the same concept, but with different examples, may or may not be considered duplicates. It depends how easy it is to figure out one example from the other. If it's only a matter of changing some numerical values or some variable names, they're duplicates. If understanding why the questions are at all related requires a detailed explanation, the questions aren't duplicates, merely related.

Answer 3

Currently the WIKSH question is linked in the tag info. This isn't visible when asking the question. If something along those lines was also in the excerpt, that might help a bit too.

An other alternative could be to add an info pop-up with a message when users add the tag kali-linux to a question, similar to how BiologySE and several others have on their identification tags. This could then be used to either point the user to the WIKSH question or at least warn them about the beast they are dealing with.

Answer 4

I've had misgivings about the use of this question for a while and feel the need to vent. @terdon thankyou for taking this action and offering a good place to discuss it.

How we answer XY problems

Kali linux questions are an excellent example of common XY problems. The majority of Kali questions we see may try to ask something specific, but the real problem is that new users are using Kali when they shouldn't. The way we give answers to XY questions is critically important.

I've written elsewhere on this subject. In all cases we should make some effort to answer a clear concise narrow question. A big problem with marking duplicate of this is that we cannot tailor the response to the question being asked. To my mind, WIKSH should be used as a warning comment of the form:

Please be aware that Kali questions often receive no good answers. This is discussed here...

This at least makes it clear that we are trying to help.

Excessive use

I've seen too many Kali questions closed which are clear, concise and reproducible. Comments with these duplicates are getting dangerously close to "if you have to ask, you'll never know". This painfully reminds me of "the bad old days" of *nix forums where newbys were regularly shunned for no greater crime than being new. The Linux reputation of being impossible to use for all but a handful of lifeless nerds is a reputation that belongs in the past.

It does take an expert to use Kali Lunux. It does take a Linux expert to know if Linux is behaving normally or truly oddly. By this logic, it does take someone capable of (preferably experienced with) using Kali to know if a question really is a newby error or evidence of something much more involved. Unfortunately I feel a few users have picked up on the trend and are closing Kali questions without any understanding of what is being asked.

Tone of the question title

I have no doubt that this question was written in good faith. The content, both question and answers, is of very high quality. Unfortunately the question title can be taken out of context and misread as a bully pretending to cry. "why won't people help me, why, why... waaaar". I know that wasn't intended. But when combined with comments that have sometimes accompanied duplicate close votes it has sent a very unfriendly message to some new users.

Answer 5

IMO, that the problem isn't that Kali Linux isn't for beginners, but the temptation to close Kali questions as dupes for the sake of closing.

From my observations, many SE communities have a tendency to close questions when there's a reason to, even if the question should probably not be closed. I once asked a question on Ask Ubuntu about a general issue on an EOL release, and the AU community quickly closed my question for that reason (EOL). I ended up asking a moderator in chat and he reopened my question.

That says, the existence of this WKHQ gives people the temptation to close K questions as dupe to that one. Imagine the following scenario:

• apt-get some index files failed to download on Ubuntu (outcome: answered or closed as dupe as another one with a working solution on Ubuntu/Debian)
• apt-get some index files failed to download on Fedora (outcome: closed as whatever reason)
• apt-get some index files failed to download on Kali (outcome: closed as dupe of the WKHQ)

While it makes its own sense, it's not all that friendly and productive.

And to sum up, I'm all in for closing the WKHQ. Maybe lock it for historical significance as well?