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Now that the close system is a lot more user friendly and encourages people to edit their questions, I feel like reviewers are missing a crucial option.

When a question has been put on hold, say for "unclear what you are asking", the user may provide more information that clarifies but means that the question is invalid for another reason. When reviewing the request to open, I'm only given the option to leave closed, which presumably gives the impression that the question is still not clear enough, whereas what I actually want to say is that it is off topic or similar.

Related discussion: Do I leave a revised question closed even though it falls out of scope for a different reason than the original closure reason?

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  • 4
    Could the message be communicated via a comment?
    – George Cummins
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:32
  • 1
    It could be, but it does seem like it would be nice to be able to do that all in one place rather than having to navigate to the question separately.
    – Joe
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:53
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    Presumably this would work as casting two seperate votes; a "stay closed" vote and a fictional "Change close reason" vote? Each with its own seperate totals (and number of votes required to trigger the change). Possibly with the "Change close reason" converting to a "vote to close" if the question is reopened
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 15:02
  • I agree - when I see "closed as off topic" question that's on-topic, I'm tempted to vote reopen. And then I see in comments that now it's "to broad" and have to agree with that. Not the best experience, it makes misunderstandings easier.
    – Mołot
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 15:33

1 Answer 1

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I think the best option (well, one option) would be for an additional prompt option that displays after the 'leave closed' button is chosen, to choose the actual close reason again rather than just pressing 'leave closed' and leaving it at that.

This is beneficial in two ways;

  1. It forces the reviewer to put a bit of thought into why they're leaving it closed, even if it's still off topic for the same reason.

  2. It gives the reviewer an option to change the close reason (as you've requested in your question).

(This question was also recently asked on meta.ux.stackexchange: What should I do if the reason a question should be closed changes?)

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