Replace close flags with close suggestions

Question

Close flags (those in the "it doesn't belong here, or it is a duplicate" category) are arguably the least important flags. A healthy community can usually deal with closing questions on their own, getting the moderators involved mostly just speeds things up.

I think that it would make more sense, and also be more consistent, if instead of close flags users below 3k reputation would have the ability to suggest closing a question analogous to the "suggest edit" feature. This would also put the question into the close review queue, but it would not put it into the moderator flag queue.

I think moving this ability would help to emphasize that closing is the job of the community, and not necessarily of the diamond moderators. It would also avoid filling the flag queue with stuff the community can handle itself, leaving the moderators to handle the more exceptional flags.

The core of this feature request is not new, the idea to not show the close flags to moderators (at least on SO) has already been discussed. But I think that also changing them from flags to suggestions makes it clearer what flags are actually meant for. By removing the part that the community can handle itself, the purpose of flags as a way to call a moderator is made more obvious.

Of course sometimes the moderators also should or have to close questions. This is especially common on smaller and new sites, where the community can't manage this alone. So the close review queue should be improved to be useable for mods, or maybe even visible in the style of the flag queue for moderators in an optional view.

Answer 1

This was rolled out as part of the recent set of changes to flagging and closing. Close "flags" now merely place the question into the close review queue - if the question is closed, the flag is marked helpful; if it is not, the flag is declined.

Moderators' actions are still binding here, in that a "Close" or "Do Not Close" review dismisses the flag instantly.

Answer 2

I like the option of a mod-queue-like interface for the close queue for mods. Alternatively, there can be an option to hide all non-close flags from the mod queue. Some customizability is required here, IMO, since each site has a different situation with respect to the composition of their flag queue.

On Physics, most of the flags I deal with are close flags. We sometimes wait a bit before acting on a close flag, but we still deal with them (we try to get some community closes first). With the close queue, I cannot skip a post and come back to it later without noting it down somewhere. Which is why I like handling the close flags in the mod queue.

I wouldn't mind any of the following solutions:

• Allow mods to toggle them in the queue
• Remove close vote flags, but give mods more control in the queues
• Remove close vote flags, but give mods a flag-dashboard-like interface for dealing with the CV queues.