Return to Answer

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)

As a participant on a range of smaller sites, I don't find it difficult to reopen rehabilitated questions. All of Adam Davis' advice works for me—especially asking meta-questions. Reopening can take a day or two, but so does closing. On a small site, the process relies more on social interaction than on the mechanics of the site, since you have to rally support to obtain enough interested people. It's actually a pleasant thing that I suppose will be lost as the sites grow.

Which is to say, Programmers.SE is not a small site. It's the fourth largest stack with 43k users. That's the size of a small city!

If users aren't participating on meta, you've got really serious problems. Meta is your city council and policies like what sort of questions ought to be closed are decided there. If the group of meta-participants agree on a policy and they can't implement it, then the StackExchange engine should be fiddled with. If your moderators have clear marching orders about which questions to close and which questions to reopen, I suspect the problem will go away.

It sounds like Programmers is going through a period of social upheaval. If so, this isn't really a good time to change the underlying system mechanics.

To give you a taste of how the process works in a site with a few thousand users (the size of a town), here's how things normally go down:

1. Someone asks a potentially close-worthy question.

2. One of the usual suspects notices it and writes a comment explaining why they think it should be closed.

3. If the commentor is also a ♦ moderator, they will usually ask for consensus by other users either in the comments, on meta, or in chat. Otherwise, they will vote to close.

4. If consensus is reached, the question will be closed. Normally, the ♦ moderator will just do it to save time, but sometimes there are enough community votes to do the trick.

5. If someone has pity on the asker and fixes the question (surprisingly common) or the asker fixes it themselves, the change will be noted where ever the original discussion took place and a new round of consensus building takes place.

6. Nearly anytime a question is fixed up in good faith, the community will agree to reopen. Again, ♦ moderators will expedite the process if it seems like consensus is reached.

That's about it. Questions are normally left clearly open or clearly closed after the discussions in the comment, meta or chat. There might be a dissenter or two, but we move on with our lives.

Sometimes it will become clear to a participant that the community is not being shaped the way they hoped. That's not fun, but they usually figure out that the weight of the community's opinion is against them and move on to another place to ask their questions. The more active you are on meta, the better your odds that you will become part of the community.

(There's an on-going example of the process on Christianity.SE meta. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I think it's an example of a healthy site government.)