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It's well known on SO that some questions are essentially impossible to delete despite being a bad fit for the format, because of their sheer age or popularity. Essentially, they will become a part of a game of tug-of-war where they will be repeatedly closed and then re-opened, never allowing deletion to happen.

What I'd like to propose is a kind of reinforced close vote.

Once a question has been nominated for deletion, people with enough reputation to vote to close a question can elect to 're-inforce close vote', costing them one of their own close votes. For each person who reinforces the close vote, it will take 1 more vote to re-open the question.

This seems like it would allow a good balance between being able to re-open existing questions which have been edited to be a good fit, and allowing a deletion vote on a popular but unsuitable question to go through.

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  • Can't you flag such questions for mod attention? AFAIK a mod closed question can't be opened by the community again
    – juergen d
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 11:45
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    I think it'd be nice if you add some examples of such questions - in my opinion here is one stackoverflow.com/questions/6548826/angular-js-vs-backbone-js - it should definitely been deleted but being re-opened today prevented that.
    – Benjamin Gruenbaum
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 11:45
  • @juergend a mod closed question can be reopened by five people with the reopen privilege. To prevent a post from actually being reopened it needs to be locked.
    – Flyk
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 11:52
  • I don't think this would be helpful to the community. If sufficient numbers users keep re-opening a question it infers some kind of value that others might not be seeing. IMO if sufficient users see real value in a question then it would be better to leave it open. Although, I'd specifically exclude "opinion based" closures from this logic.
    – Philip Couling
    Commented Mar 15, 2023 at 11:15

1 Answer 1

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The aim of this functionality already exists in the form of the moderator ability to lock a post.

In such cases that a question is being repeatedly opened and reclosed, for whatever reason, the correct method of dealing with this situation is to flag the question for moderator attention so that the moderator that handles the flag can decide whether or not to lock the question or delete it outright.

Remember that while you may feel that a question needs closing or deleting, the fact that others feel it should remain open and in existence is an equally important point of view.

In situations like these it is the role of a moderator to moderate the discussion between both parties.

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  • 2
    On a community moderated site, it always feels like moderator attention should be a backup option, yet in this case it feels like the only option.
    – Glitch Desire
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 11:58
  • While you may feel that a question needs closing or deleting, the fact that others feel it should remain open and in existence is an equally important point of view. In situations like these it is the role of a moderator to... moderate the discussion between both parties.
    – Flyk
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 12:00
  • +1 I agree. If you have 5+ people thinking it's good and 5+ people thinking it's bad, you don't want a fight between these two to get to a conclusion. SO is not a democracy, it's community-driven. In these cases, the community is undecided, and hence mod should decide.
    – yo'
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 12:06
  • @tohecz If 500 people think it should be deleted, and 5 people (possibly the people who have 1000+ rep riding on that question) want it to stay, it should probably be deleted. This question is an opinion-based question, there is no argument about whether it's a good question. Nobody even tried to reopen it until a delete vote was thrown up.
    – Glitch Desire
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 12:21
  • If 500 people thought a question should be deleted, you'd have absolutely no problem getting rid of it.
    – Flyk
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 12:28
  • @Suhosin If you have 500 people think it should be deleted, you easily have a mod thinking he can lock/delete it, that's the point. The community is there to deal with majority of cases, not with all the cases.
    – yo'
    Commented Dec 9, 2013 at 12:41

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