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I just recently asked Jumping to *just before* the nth occurence? and found a great command I had been unaware of. Well, now I'm thinking about a follow-up:

What are your quick tricks for jumping around a file?

I'm not a Vim expert, but I'm loving all the nifty things I've been able to pick up from the ninjas in this community!

So, would this question be welcome on Vi.SE?

If so, should it be community wiki? Would throwing on a bounty be a good idea?

If not, is there a way I could edit the idea to make it something welcome here?

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    I would probably go with Too Broad for that one. There's simply no specific question, so "big list" questions like these don't fit well with Stack Exchange's strict Q&A format.
    – Doorknob
    Oct 13 '15 at 0:45
  • 1
    Related: How do we share general Vim experience? Or can we?
    – Martin Tournoij
    Oct 16 '15 at 2:38
  • I think I actually remember seeing a question along the lines of "what are the best ways to move around a file", which was of course closed.
    – Kyle Strand
    Oct 16 '15 at 18:40
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I agree with Doorknob; such a question would be too broad.

The first question about jumping to before the nth instance is good because it is focused and has a goal.

The second question is just asking for an unfocused list of "tricks," and not only is an open-ended list hard to choose a "correct" answer for, the definition of "trick" is a bit subjective. What might seem like a trick to me might seem totally obvious to you, because it's part of the vim language you've internalized, for example.

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Not only would such a question be subjective and too broad, it's already been done before. You can learn an awful lot by reading through the answers to that one.

Bottom line: If you just want to learn random helpful things in Vim, google around randomly for helpful things in Vim. If you have a specific task you want to accomplish in Vim, ask here even if it's really simple.

I was startled to find the other day, while writing this answer, that there is no "canonical answer" on this site which explains the basic motions of vi. That's why I wrote my P.S. in that answer. If we had more simple questions on this site, we would have more excellent explanations of the simple commands of vi. (It's all well and good to have extremely intricate Vimscript solutions for things too, of course....)

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You can check these epic SO questions:

and how they end up with endless list of unrelated answers.

Therefore if you think about the question, think also about what kind of useful answers it can provide.

Ideally the question should be focused on specific problem to avoid discussion or list-like answers.

Read also:

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  • Might be an unpopular opinion, but I find such threads helpful(like asking for tips), and think they should be kept. Even the most helpful as they provide extensive knowledge that I might miss some of it(i.e. the 'D' key). And visitors sometimes come here to learn some useful things rather than how to solve a concrete problem. You can see that it got many likes too.
    – eyal karni
    Apr 12 '19 at 11:58
  • It might not be the formal purpose of this site, but as informal side-effect, I think it is blessed.
    – eyal karni
    Apr 12 '19 at 12:00

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