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Getting a question reopened is very, very hard. This is in part because the system doesn't encourage us to review edited questions. If I open a question and I see that five users who I know and trust have voted to close it, there is a huge discussion in the comments underneath, and there are some downvotes, there is little incentive for me to actually look at the question and judge whether it should be reopened: It's already taken care of by my peers. Of course, in an ideal world, I would to look independently at every question with my own eyes, but it just doesn't always happen.

There are the reopen queues now that help get questions reopened and that's cool; still, now that we're reworking close messages and possibly explicitly promising OPs that their questions actually have a chance of getting reopened, can we do them a favour and show a banner:

This question has been edited since it was closed.

Please review whether the problems that lead to its closing have been fixed by the edit. If they have, consider casting a reopen vote. If they haven't, no need to do anything.

or to prevent blind reopen voting:

This question may deserve reopening.

Please review whether the problems that lead to its closing have been fixed by the recent edit. If they have, consider casting a reopen vote. If they haven't, no need to do anything.

under the following conditions:

  • If a question has been edited substantially after closing
  • If one reopen vote has been cast already* (by someone other than the OP)
  • to users with reopen powers

*this would prevent the banner from showing up on every question that got some minor edit. The limitation may not be necessary at all, one would have to see

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  • Are closers/reopeners going to garner any reputation from these actions? – Mike B Mar 13 '13 at 20:28
  • Aren't questions edited after being close added to the reopen queue already? I am more concerned with questions wrongly closed, or edit made just before the question is closed. – nhahtdh Mar 13 '13 at 20:29
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    @nhahtdh they do go to the reopen queue, but I'm sure there's still plenty of traffic coming to these questions the "normal" way. Mike - not as a result of this suggestion, no – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
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    @mikeb there are badges for the review tasks. – Andrew Barber Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
  • Why would we get rep from closing or reopening? – user7116 Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
  • Did you mean "if one reopen vote has been cast already"? – Michael Mrozek Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
  • @Michael oh, yeah, of course. Fixed, thanks – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
  • How long should the banner be there? – nhahtdh Mar 13 '13 at 20:30
  • @sixlettervariables Because meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37466/…. If people can get reputation for correcting a typo, I don't think it's out of line to expect the same reward for for helping people find better quality questions/answers than their own. – Mike B Mar 13 '13 at 20:31
  • @nhahtdh potentially for ever - although there may be reasons to limit it. Do you have one in mind? – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:35
  • @Pekka웃: Different from most of the banners (duplicate, closed, locked), which are informative, the banner you suggest is inviting people to take action. I think placing it there long enough may invite people to blindly reopen the question. – nhahtdh Mar 13 '13 at 20:41
  • @nha fair point. Maybe we need different wording? This question **may** be eligible for reopening. – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:41
  • Bullet two: If one reopen vote has been cast already by someone other than the OP. I could count on one hand the closed questions I've seen from a user >3k without a reopen vote. – jscs Mar 13 '13 at 20:43
  • @Josh oh, yeah, absolutely. You can vote to reopen your own questions? Wow. – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:44
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    @nhahtdh yeah, fair point. Maybe it should go away after X views? On the permise that if x people saw the banner but didn't do anything, it's probably worth keeping closed – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 21:07
7

It's a good suggestion. However it's not enough.

Other things to consider

  • Expand the reopen queue. The current queue is incredibly narrow (only closed questions edited by the OP, no more than 5 days since it was closed). Expand it to include any edits to a closed question.
  • Make bumped closed questions last longer on the top of the home page. I don't see many closed question in my interesting questions stream, which is a shame. Present an edited closed question for more time at the top of the steam, to give it more chances of being reviewed.
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    These would probably make good feature requests in themselves. Another idea: show review candidates on the home page as [review] (or [closed, edited] or something like that) instead of [closed] which is a turn-off to click on them in the first place – Pekka Mar 13 '13 at 20:34

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