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• The OP. There seems to be three reasonable baseline expectations:

  • If possible, try OCR or Google Translate (hand-drawing characters).
  • Provide clear images.
  • Give context: where did it come from? why is it interesting?

• Those deciding whether to vote to close. They have to balance a bunch of considerations:

  • Is there anything concrete the OP can do to improve their question?

    (Maybe leave a comment: "Could you please [edit] your question to include pla pla pla?" and remember to vote to reopen if they do so.)

  • Does anyone other than the OP consider the image interesting?

  • Would the answers have any historical, cultural, educational significance?

  • Could the question potentially lead to good answers (pearls)?

  • Are we being welcoming?

  • I don't like these questions, but some people do; could I just ignore the character-identification tag?

    

  It looks like these questions will get different answers from different users. Personally, I could envisage someone browsing these questions in order to practice reading handwriting, deciphering seals, etc.

• Diamond mods.

  • Personally, I don't feel an off-topic question ordinarily requires moderator intervention (we're meant to be guiding users to better utilize the site, improving questions and answers, helping users understand and refine site policy, watching out for sock-puppets and suspicious voting). Sure, if a mod sees a "you've got to be joking"-level off-topic question (what do these 1000 images say?), it's not a big deal to swing the diamond-hammer. But when there's blurry boundaries, multiple considerations, and conflicting viewpoints, it's risky diamond-hammer closing questions: it may not reflect community opinion.

  • We need clearer close reasons (usable by people who don't spend time on meta). Afterwards, the mods will need to go back and reopen/close the relevant questions (this would take a coordinated effort). Ideally we should ensure they all have the character-identification tag and have as-useful-as-possible titles.

• The OP. There seems to be three reasonable baseline expectations:

  • If possible, try OCR or Google Translate (hand-drawing characters).
  • Provide clear images.
  • Give context: where did it come from? why is it interesting?

• Those deciding whether to vote to close. They have to balance a bunch of considerations:

  • Is there anything concrete the OP can do to improve their question?

    (Maybe leave a comment: "Could you please [edit] your question to include pla pla pla?" and remember to vote to reopen if they do so.)

  • Does anyone other than the OP consider the image interesting?

  • Would the answers have any historical, cultural, educational significance?

  • Could the question potentially lead to good answers (pearls)?

  • Are we being welcoming?

  • I don't like these questions, but some people do; could I just ignore the character-identification tag?

    

  It looks like these questions will get different answers from different users. Personally, I could envisage someone browsing these questions in order to practice reading handwriting, deciphering seals, etc.

• Diamond mods.

  • Personally, I don't feel an off-topic question ordinarily requires moderator intervention (we're meant to be guiding users to better utilize the site, improving questions and answers, helping users understand and refine site policy, watching out for sock-puppets and suspicious voting). Sure, if a mod sees a "you've got to be joking"-level off-topic question (what do these 1000 images say?), it's not a big deal to swing the diamond-hammer. But when there's blurry boundaries, multiple considerations, and conflicting viewpoints, it's risky diamond-hammer closing questions: it may not reflect community opinion.

  • We need clearer close reasons (usable by people who don't spend time on meta). Afterwards, the mods will need to go back and reopen/close the relevant questions (this would take a coordinated effort). Ideally we should ensure they all have the character-identification tag and have as-useful-as-possible titles.

Update: This is what I'm thinking at the moment. There are three roles here:

• The OP. There seems to be three reasonable baseline expectations:

  • If possible, try OCR or Google Translate (hand-drawing characters).
  • Provide clear images.
  • Give context: where did it come from? why is it interesting?

• Those deciding whether to vote to close. They have to balance a bunch of considerations:

  • Is there anything concrete the OP can do to improve their question?

    (Maybe leave a comment: "Could you please [edit] your question to include pla pla pla?" and remember to vote to reopen if they do so.)

  • Does anyone other than the OP consider the image interesting?

  • Would the answers have any historical, cultural, educational significance?

  • Could the question potentially lead to good answers (pearls)?

  • Are we being welcoming?

  • I don't like these questions, but some people do; could I just ignore the character-identification tag?

    

  It looks like these questions will get different answers from different users. Personally, I could envisage someone browsing these questions in order to practice reading handwriting, deciphering seals, etc.

• Diamond mods.

  • Personally, I don't feel an off-topic question ordinarily requires moderator intervention (we're meant to be guiding users to better utilize the site, improving questions and answers, helping users understand and refine site policy, watching out for sock-puppets and suspicious voting). Sure, if a mod sees a "you've got to be joking"-level off-topic question (what do these 1000 images say?), it's not a big deal to swing the diamond-hammer. But when there's blurry boundaries, multiple considerations, and conflicting viewpoints, it's risky diamond-hammer closing questions: it may not reflect community opinion.

  • We need clearer close reasons (usable by people who don't spend time on meta). Afterwards, the mods will need to go back and reopen/close the relevant questions (this would take a coordinated effort). Ideally we should ensure they all have the character-identification tag and have as-useful-as-possible titles.

Update: I want to mention r13's comment:

@Becky李蓓 Does the OP show any interest in learning the content/context of the art piece, or simply requesting the "word recognition and translation" service?

That's a fair point: these once-off "what does this say?" questions seem... pointless. Especially in large numbers. Especially if the OP doesn't care (much) about the answer.