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As an addition or follow-on to

The close reason rework project:

  1. Changes to "close as duplicate" (part deux)
  2. Help us make "Off-Topic" close reasons clearer to the OP
  3. Help us make "Not Constructive" and "Not a Real Question" closures more effective
  4. Every "close" has its thorn: replace "close" with "on hold" for the first five days

I propose we add similar (if perhaps more limited) reasons to choose from when voting to Leave Open.

Part of the motivation for the close reason rework was that people were inappropriately closing questions, particularly with the "Too Localized" reason. (Other, perhaps larger motivations included giving better feedback to the OP.) This brought my attention to the fact that there is currently only an extremely limited mechanism to give feedback to the voters. People who were inappropriately voting to close questions as "too localized" (survey suggests more than half the voters) really got no feedback of any kind that their votes were inappropriate.

Currently I only get very limited feedback on the votes to close and I have to go hunting for it. After I make my vote, I can hit the back button and see entries for some of the votes cast by user name and direction of the vote, but not necessarily everyone. I get to see when they voted and if they voted to Close or Leave Open, but not why, nor do I even get to see everyone's vote.

Vote tally

(Note that I got the above vote tally via my close vote history after the question was closed with 5 close votes. I see the other 4 voters in the "Closed by" notice, but not in the tally. That's probably a bug, but I'll skip over that here.)

I propose we show at least the short reason a person voted to close and similarly a short reason a person voted to leave open. Personally I prefer showing the vote tally with option to expand to reasons before a person votes, in that it might slow down dog piling and give people a reason to be more thoughtful about their vote, but even if it's only shown after voting it would be of some help in educating voters about why people are disagreeing with them.

Leave open reasons might be things like (for example only!):

  • Beginner questions are allowed
  • Specific example of general case
  • Proposed duplicate does not answer this question
  • Clear to me
  • On topic (optional fill-in-the-blank of what topic)

Unlike the votes to close, I would not require a leave open vote provide a reason, but I would hope doing so along with giving voters an easy opportunity view the reasons would help us educate new voters and bring the community to a consensus which would make the closing process more consistent.

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  • Leave Open only exists in the review queue to serve as a non-close vote. Other than in the review history of a specific user, I don't think these Leave Open votes are even tracked. Jun 18, 2013 at 18:09
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    @psubsee, Leave Open votes are viewable in the general review history for a question, as shown by the graphic I included in the question.
    – Old Pro
    Jun 18, 2013 at 18:19
  • Can't see images at work - but clicked through the link - I wouldn't call that the general "Review history". That is still part of the review queue and not really part of the question itself. So you are proposing to add this specifically for the review queues? Jun 18, 2013 at 18:20

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