##Expedited on-hold & reopen actions ##
Expedited on-hold & reopen actions
At 30k (10k beta), grant the following privileges:
Instantly put a question on hold for any reason other than duplicate, provided that:
- The question has not been previously closed and reopened.
- The question, if in the review queue, does not have pending "leave open" votes.
- (Maybe - open for discussion): the question is on the front page or, failing the ability to implement that, "new" (definition TBD).
Instantly reopen a question that was put on hold by a 30k user, provided that:
- The question has been edited since it was put on hold.
We have the dupe-hammer specifically for duplicates, and tying it to reputation on specific tags makes sense. We need the expertise (and site experience) of specific users, not any old user with a certain rep total, to handle those.
The other close reasons -- off-topic, too broad, opinion-based, and unclear -- do not usually require such expertise. If you have 30k rep on a site you should have a pretty good idea of what's answerable and in-scope and what's not. When the decision is not likely to be controversial, we should empower high-rep users to act quickly, before too many answers start showing up.
Just as we want to put problem questions on hold quickly so they can be fixed, we also want to help them get reopened once the problem has been addressed. So I'm proposing that the insta-hold be reversible; a question that was insta-held and then fixed should be insta-openable. This insta-reopen does not apply to questions that were put on hold (or closed) through other means (community vote or moderator action).
One might argue that the reopen part is unnecessary; the community can take care of that, after all. But on some sites we've seen new users (who don't necessarily understand Stack Exchange) get upset when their (salvagable) questions are put on hold and then it takes a while to get them reopened. Let's trust that our 30k users can tell when a question is no longer too broad (etc); enable them to get the question back on its feet so the asker can get answers, and if there are still problems with the question, the usual community actions are still available.