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Related to this recent question where the suggestion is that users should see why people are voting to have their question closed - I wonder whether users are even aware of it happening.

Admittedly it often happens very quickly, not leaving a lot of time for the question to be "mended" but it might be worth at least giving a heads-up via the recent activity display (the envelope one, not the one in the user profile).

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    I'll give the obligatory +1 to a Jon Skeet suggestion. Conveniently enough, I like the idea.
    – squillman
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:41

3 Answers 3

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Related to this I'd like to see questions that I have voted to close (and delete) in my user profile so that I can revisit them easily to see if they have been improved (if they were improvable in the first place). Same goes for reopened and undeleted questions.

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  • Maybe another "votes" tab, visible only to you (as with the current "votes" tab), but specifically for open/close delete/undelete votes?
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:45
  • That would be fine, too. Just a way to revisit these questions easily is what I want.
    – Welbog
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:51
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    Of course, this would be far more useful if you could then rescind your close vote.
    – Hilarious Comedy Pesto
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:55
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    @Pesto: Hear hear. Or change the reason if you misclick (which I do a lot).
    – Welbog
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:59
  • @Welbog: lern2mouse
    – Hilarious Comedy Pesto
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 18:21
  • @Pesto: Touch screen + fat fingers = missed close reasons. (>'_')>
    – Welbog
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 18:24
  • Now status-completed here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40451/…
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 26, 2012 at 1:35
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My first response to this was, "We don't need it - a comment should suffice to get their attention".

But, i don't think it's true.

First off, we've been strongly encouraged of late to avoid any appearance of "bullying" in comments - i took that to mean "don't mention that the question might well be closed if these suggestions aren't heeded."

Second, i'm starting to suspect that a good many people asking questions just ignore comments entirely. Of course, they might well ignore "close vote notifications" also...

But finally, it would actually be potentially helpful for someone whose question was largely ignored early-on, and then - somehow - given attention later on, in the form of close votes.

So, ++

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    I often vote to close without also commenting, on the grounds that the information is already there and I'm not keen on redundancy... but the notification aspect is a significant difference.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:46
  • I don't think everyone needs to comment. And comments on blatantly off-topic stuff don't really help either... But, i do feel back about not posting some sort of explanation for new users. And duplicates benefit, since it's not obvious how to get the link prior to the question being completely closed.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 17:02
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Now that we have a number of slower moving sites in the Stack Exchange network, it's actually less likely that a slightly contentious question will be "insta-closed" by the community on those sites.

I recently had a question on LEGO Answers meta that was closed 2 months after the initial votes came in - I believe additional votes weren't added at the time because the comments covered why it wasn't a duplicate, however it would have been nice to know at the time of the final (mod) vote that it had been closed so I'd be prompted sooner to explicitly state why it wasn't a duplicate.

Sure, obvious duplicates are insta-closed, but if it's a poor question or a slightly off-topic I'm more inclined to edit it or leave a comment (as a mod) and wait for a couple of votes from the community first before closing - however if the user doesn't get any notification that there are votes to close, that doesn't seem all that fair...

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