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Possible Duplicates:
Why can’t I keep nominating a question for opening?
Close/Reopen Votes - Sliding Scale For Threshold
How about a “Vote not to close” option to counter the “Vote to close”?

Members have the option to close questions, which is fine. But when there's a difference of opinions about if a Q needs to be closed or not, the ones who want to keep it open have no other option than to post a comment requesting to keep it open. Then, when the Q is closed, those members will have to start voting to re-open the Q again.

This is not effective! Once a member has voted to close a Q, a new option should appear allowing members to vote to keep the Q open!

My suggestion is to close a Q when the amount of Close votes exceeds the number of Open votes by 5. Then, when the Q gets as many Open votes as Close votes, the Q will be re-opened again. This scheme would allow members to firmly close a Q simply by doing a huge pile-up on the Close vote. (But the number of Open votes can never exceed the number of Close votes!)

It should also allow members to change their vote from Close to Open or vice versa.

I did a search, didn't find a Q that could be a duplicate of this one, which I consider strange. Am I the first to think of this? Impossible! Please prove me wrong! ;-)

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If something like this is implemented then the owner of the question can not vote on anything (unless the question is closed, then he can vote to reopen)

Why?

Because of course he will vote against the first person that votes to close his own question. Negating that person's vote.

That reason and many many others have been discussed here before.

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  • But does it matter when someone argues that his own Q needs to stay open? I'm doing this right now in this Q by pointing out the difference with the possible duplicate Q. It's a matter of opinions and even the person who asked the Q has the right on his own opinion. – Wim ten Brink Sep 15 '09 at 11:24
  • (Btw, if I really thought the other Q is a duplicate, I would vote to close this Q myself too!) – Wim ten Brink Sep 15 '09 at 11:24
  • And I just did close it. :-) Another Q turned out to be a valid duplicate. – Wim ten Brink Sep 15 '09 at 11:27
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All questions are considered open by default.

You need five (5) people to close (or a power vote from a moderator) and when you do that's your vote to close gone for the question.

If it is closed, you're given another vote to possibly reopen.

You have one of each per question.

This stops you from blocking a question either way and allows also for fresh eyes to look at a question hopefully stemming any open/close/"why do you never close this door?" wars.

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Instead of having two counters, just have one: let a vote to re-open just cancel one vote to close. Close the question when there are five votes to close, and reopen it when there is none.

As the OP says, the interesting period is the one between zero and five, as votes to re-open can be cast without waiting for the question to be closed.

Visually this could be done just like up/downvoting (a counter with arrows), but probably this would leave room for missunderstanding (is the up arrow increasing the votes to close even though it signifies "thumbs up"?). I would leave it at

edit | close ↑ (2) ↓ reopen | flag

or use descriptive hints.

I still think that one vote per question should be the limit. But maybe like up/downvotes you should be able to reconsider after the OP did some changes to the question or some answers show the real value of the question.

Moderators would still keep their superpowers.

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  • Is the number betweeen the streams for or against? – random Sep 15 '09 at 11:01
  • As the arrows in this view indicate, it would be for closing, against the question ;-). I do not know whether this is counterintuitive, maybe the number should be negative and the arrows reversed. – malach Sep 15 '09 at 11:08

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