If you were on SO/Meta yesterday, you probably saw this question:
What is the underscore actually doing in this Java code?
The question caused a wide divergence of opinion from users. It spawned a Meta post on whether it should have been closed, and at one point was both 1 vote way from being reopened and 1 vote away from being deleted:
share | edit | reopen (4/5) | delete (3/4) |flag
https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/173714/192283
Though the question of whether the question should have been deleted is mostly resolved (answer is no), the question has gone through close-reopen at least three times in one day. It's currently being in the process of being reopened once again.
I'd also like to point out that no substantive edits (other than perhaps the title) were made to the question during the close-reopen cycles, so it's not like the question was being improved much in any way. It seems like the close-reopen threshold of 5 is just broken when this type of situation arises.
If a question is causing such a wide divergence of opinion, shouldn't there be some automated process to lock the question? Or must we rely on moderators to do something? In particular, this question has attracted several answers during the times it was open (some of those answers have been removed), and no one can post answers when it is closed. It's like a traffic light.
I'm not sure how often this type of question comes up, but I'd like to solicit comments in particular for any automated way to handle this issue that we could turn into a feature request, perhaps.