What should we do with the "find a proofreader" question?

Question

This question asks about finding a proofreader. It is currently cast as a shopping question (who should I use?), so I was going to edit it to make it more along the lines of "how can I find one / what should I consider?". But there are already several answers that this would invalidate.

Shopping questions are off-topic on SE (we missed this at the time somehow), but a question about finding and evaluating proofreaders is valuable for Writers. This particular question is a year and a half old and the asker hasn't been back. This question is also attracting self-promoting answers that I'd rather not keep -- not only are they promotion (feels like spam), but they are "too localized", unlikely to help future readers.

Should we close this question (and invite anybody who wants to ask the more-general question)? Edit it along the lines I suggested and delete answers about specific services? Something else?

Answer 1

TL;DR - This is off-topic, and should be closed.

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Any question asking how to find a writing/editing pro would be out of date very quickly. It would also be advice along the lines of "ask around", "look on job sites", "go to professional editing/proofing associations", and soon. No different than a thousand such questions on any web forum.

In addition, Writers declared this off-topic from the start. Excerpted from the help center:

On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:

• Proofreading requests
• Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.

A proofreader is such a professional. This is no different from a question looking for an editor or a writer. Finding a proofreader would be squarely off-topic, then. I suggest we close, firmly.

Answer 2

It would hypothetically be possible to ask a good question that would be related to "how to find proofreaders," such as

• How can I tell if a proofreader is any good?
• Do proofreaders have any kind of certification/accreditation I can look for?
• How to fairly price proofreading work?

However, the original question is a poor one, and if fixing it would require making up entirely new questions - then that's not an edit, it's just a bad question.

In general, don't take a bad question looking for X, and turn it into "What are good considerations when looking for X?". You've traded a bad question for a vague one that nobody was actually seeking the answer to.

Answer 3

I think since the asker has not been back, editing it is futile. Even if it got enough attention to get a great answer, it wouldn't end up with an accepted one. Personally, I would outright delete it. It's off-topic, and editing it will make duplicates out of questions that might be better and have an asker who sticks around to accept.