Today I was talking to a journalist, and she told me that she was checking out Stack Overflow. But of course, she's not a programmer, so somehow she found her way to this site.
Naturally, she asked for some kind of curry recipe. Naturally, her question was closed in seconds. I think somebody went to her house and spanked her, too, but that probably wasn't one of you.
I'm a big fan of the "no recipe" policy, but 95% of newcomers don't know about it, and they ask for recipes just to "try out" the site, and then they get spanked.
For now, we're going to try adding a little note to the "How to Ask" div on the question page that says:
"Requests for recipes are considered off topic, and will be closed."
Please keep an eye out to see if this helps. I hate giving so many newbies the first time experience of getting spanked.
(If need be, we can play with the wording there).