<p>Almost four years ago there was a <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2425/shall-we-add-this-is-just-a-software-question-to-our-default-close-reasons">discussion on Meta</a> that lead to formulating the "not about statistics" default close reason description as following:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>This question appears to be off-topic because EITHER it is not about
  statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, or data
  visualization, OR it focuses on programming, debugging, or performing
  routine operations within a statistical computing platform. If the
  latter, you could try the support links we maintain.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I think that we should discuss this close reason again. My feeling is that this close reason is unclear for some users because of the "... EITHER ... OR ..." formulation. I've seen people arguing <em>"but it relates to statistics"</em> in case of software questions, where they read "OR" as "AND" and the decision was unclear for them.</p>

<p>Moreover, we have a <strong>large number of software questions</strong>, including questions asking for <strong>code review</strong>. It often <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5556/why-do-we-close-programming-questions-instead-of-migrating-them-to-so">seems to be confusing for users</a> that the question needs to be supplemented with <strong>reproducible example</strong> for us to consider migrating it to StackOverflow.com.</p>

<p>I would suggest that we extracted from the "not about statistics" the strictly "software" reason that mentions:</p>

<ol>
<li>software/programming is off-topic <em>on our site</em>,</li>
<li>code review is off-topic <em>on the whole SE network</em>,</li>
<li>questions without reproducible example are off-topic <em>on the whole SE network</em>. </li>
</ol>

<p>My suggestion is to split the current close reason into two reasons like (I don't insist on such wording):</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about
  statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, or data
  visualization.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>and</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>This question appears to be off-topic because it asks for code review, or focuses on
  programming, debugging, or performing
  routine operations within a statistical computing platform. Programming questions <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve">with a reproducible example</a> should be posted on StackOverflow.com. For help with such questions try the <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/793/internet-support-for-statistics-software">support links we maintain</a>.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>The proposal was declined</h2>

<p><em>The <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5607/should-we-remove-the-datasets-close-reason-from-the-list">follow up thread can be found here</a></em>.</p>
