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LаngLаngС
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It seems quite clear that we should not just shoot down all questions that appear as personal advice/medical advice. They should be put on hold quickly and we should try to help OP to get the question into on-topic area.

As one of our residents put it:

I think this is another way we need to approach the floods of "diagnose me" "advise me" questions. If we only downvote, it doesn't help the dilution of good questions. This way we pull out the good in their question and increase the % of good questions. Also, sometimes the answers to downvoted questions are great and deserve a good question stem!!

Please, those who have downvoted, look at questions that have been revised and see if it deserves an upvote instead! If not, consider revising it.

And another professional had this say:

To edit or not to edit?

I happened to look at the front page and saw an interesting (to me) question which was appropriately closed as seeking personal medical advice. I edited the post to remove that aspect.

To which yet another pro added:

Any question can be potentially re-opened in this fashion, but this becomes very old very quickly.

Of course this should be accompanied ideally by the OP further editing the question to comply with guidelines. But if OP cannot or simply will not edit then I see no reason for any of us not to edit the question. If anyone feels like she is up to it, I'd say "go ahead". I thought we only abstained from these edits as they were too strenuous on our time budgets. If that's the case, just do not edit. But if you see value in the de-personalised core of the question, you have the time, do edit. It then may need further edits by the OP. But we should not take pride in closing questions. We do that in desperation, I hope, at least.

Removing the personal/diagnosis/advice aspects is a first start to help users, we should try to do that. If that leaves the question in a poor state it is at least not as bad as before. The example was personal and lacking research. Now it's lacking research and not personal. That is an improvement.

And a reminder from our own How to ask page:

Personal medical advice questions are off-topic here on Medical Sciences.

We care! And that is why Medical Sciences cannot give individualized medical advice or diagnosis for multiple important reasons! Such questions will be revised or closed.

LаngLаngС
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