Notify close voters when a closed question gets edited

Question

As mentioned in this discussion, a question closed because it was not well-phrased is currently very unlikely to be reopened after an edit clarifying the issues. Those who voted to close should at least be asked to reconsider and reopen the question after such an edit.

Answer 1

I'd like to see this sort of feature possibly integrated with the suggestion to track close votes found here.

As it stands, I can't revisit close votes (unless using Grace Note's favourites abuse which to me feels 'wrong') so that would be a start.

Being able to view them and possibly styled/flagged according to:

• Whether the question was subsequently closed after voting
• Whether the question was edited since voting
• Whether there are reopen votes on the question you voted to close

There have now been 2 bounties awarded on the linked question now without any indication of whether this sort of feature is planned or not.

Answer 2

That's a good idea! Occasionally I vote to close but I never keep track on those votes and almost never come back to a question where I left a closing vote. And I'm absolutely sure I would use such a notification to leave a reopen vote if there was a significatant change or clarification.

I could - as a workaround - (ab-)use the 'favorite' star to mark those question, but, on the other hand, delete-marked question are not my favourite ones ;)

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Some additional thoughts on such a notification feature

• It could be a good idea to limit notifications to edits done by the OP
• It could be a good idea to allow some sort of 'unsubscribe' to those notifications, otherwise the feature could be abused in such a way that the author just applies hundreds of micro edits just to annoy the 'closers' (OTH - a question can be deleted, a user can be banned from SO to stop that sort of flooding immediately)

And another thought - if people are aware that closing a question might lead to notifications, some might start thinking twice before they happily jump on the bandwagon.

Answer 3

In addition to or instead of notifications to the close-voters, this would be a great use case for custom question lists:

This allows every interested member of the community to easily review and (if appropriate) vote to reopen.

Notifications are pull and question filters are push, so these features aren't interchangeable, but we already have a framework for question filters so it makes sense to at least do that, and if we also get notifications it's not redundant work.

Answer 4

I like this idea for a number of reasons

• Added responsibility for closing. At the moment I can imagine its easy to jump on the bandwagon and add a close vote just because others have voted. This might make people think twice

• Allows for feedback between those who cast the close vote, and those who disagree (via comments). At the moment once a question is closed, no amount of comments or updates will encourage a review for reopening or even a discussion about the close reason.

Answer 5

Grace Note's suggestion to (ab)use favorites for this is the preferred way to do it for now. As we're going through a top-down (or bottom-up depending on how you look at it) audit of question life cycles, this is something that seems sensible to consider in concept - provide some way for people to look back on votes used to change the state of a question.

Could be some kind of "Recently changed" area of your profile (I don't think anyone but the most hardcore would want push notifications for this) where you could go once a week just to see if anything changed. But honestly, if you tend to use all or most of your close votes daily, this would just become a source of a lot more work and it feels a little presumptuous providing it even though it would be unobtrusive and something you'd need to actively seek in order to use.

As we examine the flow of questions, e.g. what ultimately happens to first posts that go to the helper queue, and how does more or less visibility affect people's perception of site quality, and how does that balance with stuff that's edited properly eventually getting reopened - this could fill a needed void. As in, this could be the right kind of visibility where the reopen queue might not be, if that makes sense.

Let's see as we systematically try to make everything less bolted together over the years, and more designed intentionally. It's not a bad idea, and it gets better if it can actually help folks spend less time being less effective in another less optimal part of the system.

No ETA, but let's not let the idea slip through the cracks unless we deliberately decide to go another way.

Answer 6

I do not think this is a good idea. There have already been complaints about the multitude of notifications which are being used. Adding more notifications will simply cause people to close less.

Basically it comes down to punishment/reward. When I close a question, the reward is a cleaner more consistent site, the punishment being the possibility of someone disliking me for it (I can deal with that). However, I can do that in one sitting.

Once this solution is implemented, it means that I could be notified about edits to every question I've ever voted to close on. Even if you limit it to only questions which are in fact closed, you'll still be sending out many many notifications to people who don't necessarily care. So you've added "punishment" (that is, undesired results) to an action.

The note "don't necessarily care" is an important one. Currently, the notifications are all geared towards information that an individual user should care about.

• Comments/Answers to my questions
• Comments to my answers
• Comments directed "@" me
• Edits to my favourite questions

When I close a question I am saying that it doesn't belong on the site, so why would I want to be notified every time it changes?

It's possible that I could want those notifications, but it isn't something that we can assume and then force on people.

EDIT: I do have an alternate suggestion "Edited After Closed" view in 10k tools

Answer 7

There's two scenarios here. Either the closer does care, or does not care, what happens to the question post-vote. No matter what, if the closer does not care, no amount of alerts or messages or notifications will make that user budge. They will just be something to click past, not unlike people who would click past all manner of warnings and suggestions when typing posts anywhere online. Some people just don't care, so this really won't help against these users.

Meanwhile, for the users who do care, they won't necessarily want to have info bombarded at them for everything, nor forever. Some of these people already look back, anyway. Personally, I tend to monitor questions that I've recently voted on within a day or so, but I enjoy that I can do this manually. If I'm really concerned about one that might be on-the-fence, then I've already got a nifty feature to get updates on it - marking it as a favorite. This way, I get reports for as long as I want to care about it. Once the question gets reopened or the close decision is completely finalized, then I can remove it. This is something any person can do when they vote to close a question which they might consider looking back on, so I think it's perfectly satisfactory.

Answer 8

I think this would be a great idea, there could be some limits on it (notify only on first edit of the day for instance), but as it is, reopening is excessively difficult. I recently editted a year old question, where the main problem was too much irrelevant information, combined with english obviously not being the posters native language. While the question is now understandable, and probably somewhat generally useful, it is unlikely to be reopened.