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This is basically the reverse of Should bug-report/feature-request *questions* that duplicate Grab-bag *answers* be closed as duplicates?

From time to time, staff members post questions here with the intention of gathering feedback in the form of answers. A recent example is Review queue workflows - Final release which ends with

Feedback

Please leave your feedback and any bugs you may discover related to this release below this post. We will be monitoring this post until Friday, September 10th. Report any further issues after September 10th as new questions on Meta.

Probably not everybody is reading until the end (granted, it is a rather large question) and seven answers have been posted since the deadline. Note that none of them have received a red status badge (which doesn't mean they haven't been addressed). Instead of having to comment to the authors of those answers that they should post a new question instead (which happened today), should we preemptively close the announcement the day after the deadline, as it will not 'accept' new answers anymore? This is similar to how contests like Time for some more swag! have been closed. It should still be possible to vote on or to edit posts, for status updates or clarifications by the authors.

Apparently there is an exception for maintenance announcements, but those are not as inviting to post new answers to as feature announcements are.

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  • Unrelated to the topic, but I'd also prefer to move the "Feedback" section to the top for tl;dr :/
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:45
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    @MetaAndrewT.: I suspect it doesn't make much sense, in most cases, to ask for feedback before explaining the thing we're asking for feedback on.
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 15:46

3 Answers 3

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Yes.

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should we preemptively close the announcement the day after the deadline

In the example Review queue workflows - Final the dead-line was set as a matter of company policy. Setting timers on questions is something the system wasn't designed for so using a historical lock seems like the closest functionality.

But keeping answers grouped under a single question would make more sense because it reduces entropy. The dead-line expiring doesn't mean all the issues/bugs have already surfaced or been fixed. There's no workaround for that.

Boiling it down to: should be closed yes or no? Is asking if we want half-a-dozen to a dozen separate questions for what can be a single work-in-progress using the "linked posts" sidebar as the only relation. I think this can't be adequately answered without some clarification from the company if they intend to mark late answers as or not.

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Can't we/the person responsible for such posts just lock them as obsolete/historical significance instead?

Obsolete
This post is marked obsolete because the content is out of date. It is not currently accepting new interactions.

Historical significance
Lock this post if it’s off-topic but has historical significance.

The historical significance reason was definitely used in the past for this, an example can be found here. This seems to me to be a better option than closing, because it really forces people to go to a new post, instead of e.g. editing existing ones.

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    I hadn't thought of that, but I guess it should still be possible to edit the posts (both the question and the answers) for e.g. status updates and clarification.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:46
  • Just throwing it out there... :) Moderators can still edit posts that are locked, to add e.g. status tags, or comment on them to add updates to existing answers. I don't know about the employees that are just 'staff' though... Perhaps an 'Official post' lock could circumvent that, but it's not as recognizable as 'Obsolete', and not accessible for moderators to add so then it would all be up to staff to curate these posts.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:48
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    Additionally, there are also examples of feedback posts being locked with the 'historical significance' reason. For example: Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:54
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    No, I very much dislike the idea of locking in this case because that prevents voting (and also editing, but that's less of a concern). Voting shouldn't be disabled, just the posting of new answers. Which... is exactly what closing a question does. (If necessary, you could close and apply a comment-only lock, but I would only do that after determining that the comments were getting out of hand. I don't think it's necessary to do it pre-emptively.)
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:56
  • @CodyGray why should voting not be disabled on a feedback post specifically? I can understand it's not something you'd usually want, but after the period for feedback is up, what purpose does voting still serve? After all, it's just another way of 'adding feedback' and you can argue that the time period for that is up.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:59
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    I don't think that should be limited to just moderators and staff members. I think the author and others should also be able to interact with the answer, as they would be able to if it were posted as a separate question, to add additional info or reasons to their request or to respond to comments or decision reasons on their suggestions.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 10:59
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    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Adding to your answer with additional info or reasons is a waste of time if the time-period for gathering feedback is up (for months), and no-one is going to look at it again. As for responding to comments, you had the whole feedback gathering period to do so, why do you need to do so after that is over? As for the decision reasons, I know you like to challenge those, and that people find those challenges usually annoying, so I don't see the problem with locking that out so much either.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 11:02
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    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog, if the feedback post is no longer being monitored and thus any changes to the feedback will be fundamentally equivalent to shouting into the wind, what is the possible benefit of people (author, or otherwise) being able to interact with existing answers?
    – Rob
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 11:02
  • @Tinkeringbell From what I understand, this question is not asking about closing many months after the deadline, but immediately after the deadline expires, to proactively stop new answers: "preemptively close the announcement [...] after the deadline". It's not like the team will not consider edits made recently after the deadline, if the suggestion was posted before it and is still the same thing. Also, when I referred to comments earlier, I was referring to those posted after the lock is imposed, which is what you mentioned in your earlier comment.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 11:10
  • Plus, the historical lock isn't meant for questions and answers that are still being updated: edits on such things are meant to be rare. The FAQ states that the historical lock is not for questions that are being actively maintained (in this case, by the team updating answers). It does make sense for announcements are are truly well into the past (posted 6-8 months ago), but not for the case in the question here, which is immediately after the deadline.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 11:15
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    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog The FAQ states so many things, and so many things are regularly done otherwise just because it's convenient. I'd have to dig up numbers on how often answers to feedback posts are actually still edited by staff, but as far as I know, it is rare for them to still get interactions after the feedback period is up. The question says nothing about immediately closing those posts either, just closing them after the deadline. The example quoted includes a 'void' of 2 days, I'm sure there's more where that period is longer.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 11:24
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    The question has just been edited to clarify that the closure would be done the day after the deadline. Still, many of the same points apply even if there's a waiting period of up to 24 hours.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 19:12

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