Distinguish close votes by reason

Question

Even though a question may be closed by receiving 5 close votes, the votes do not necessarily need to agree. I think this is a good behavior, but recently I voted to close a question for being an exact duplicate (which it was) and found the question was closed as "not a real question".

This is unfortunate, while I'm happy to display my username and acknowledge that I voted to close, I'd like some additional transparency. That is, if it was a 4-1 vote for "not a real question" vs "exact duplicate" I'd be interested in seeing that level of information.

The point is to be transparent about why the question was closed, and though 5 users may agree the question needs to be closed they may not agree why. It's important to recognize all the reasons for closure, not just the majority reason.

I'd suggest displaying this information as something like:

closed on Jun 21 at 4:26 as:

• not a real question by foo, bar, baz
• exact duplicate by alice, bob

Once a question has been closed I'd argue it's more important to understand the rationale than it is to worry about an extra 2 lines of text. If the votes are 2,1,1,1 perhaps keep just 2 bullets, the first showing the majority vote, the second saying "for other reasons" as a summary of the change. The point is to aggregate the summary by reason.

Answer 1

Maybe something like this?

I don't think it's necessary to show every explanation under the list, just the majority one is sufficient, but a breakdown of who voted what is probably good. The main problem is the increased vertical space usage, but I think it looks much better than merging them all together like the first suggestion here

Answer 2

Please fix this bug, at least when the question is migrated. This has a larger impact than just mixing up different reasons for closing when migration comes into picture.

Recently, I voted to close this question on cstheory.stackexchange.com as off topic, and after my vote, a moderator of cstheory decided to migrate the question to cs.stackexchange.com. Although I did not vote to migrate the question, my name was shown on cstheory as one of the users who migrated the question because of this bug:

migrated to cs.stackexchange.com by Tsuyoshi Ito, Robin Kothari, Artem Kaznatcheev, Dave Clarke ♦ 8 hours ago

Later, a moderator of cs.stackexchange.com saw my name in this list. He (naturally but incorrectly) thought that I voted to migrate the question, and asked me why I did so. It took some back-and-forth to resolve his confusion (hopefully now he understands the situation). This confusion should not have arisen in the first place.

Answer 3

Alternative #2:

Just list the members who chose the majority reason, with a link to the revision history to see the full list with the minority report.

closed by foo, bar, baz as not a real question (and for other reasons) on Jun 21 at 4:26)

The bolded parts would be links; the reason part to a FAQ entry on the reason, and the for other reasons part as the link to the revision history.

Answer 4

Similar to Lances's suggestions, but keeping it even simpler, just list the members who chose the final close reason. A breakdown of the votes can go in the revision history.

closed by foo, bar, baz as not a real question

Experienced users will know to look at the revision history if there are less than 5 names in the list, and others are unlikely to care.

Answer 5

Since this question was asked, a similar change was made specifically for off-topic reasons. I can't find the Meta.SE post about it, but -- like you -- users complained that words were being put into their mouths about questions being off-topic, so the detailed reason now only names the people who voted for it, like on this question:

Notice that we don't know from this display how the two circled close-voters voted; we just know that they didn't choose that specific reason. I just checked (using my diamond), and they both voted for one of the other built-in reasons (not other off-topic reasons). We don't need to know the full breakdown, which could lead to up to five reasons being listed; it's sufficient to show but correctly attribute the one that the system chose.

We can do that already for off-topic reasons, so maybe it's not as hard to do it for the others as it was when this question was asked in 2010.

Answer 6

I don't see why we even need to show the names at the question level.

Alternative #1:

Just have a link to the revision history, and list them there collated by reason.

closed as not a real question by these members on Jun 21 at 4:26

The bolded parts would be links; the reason part to a FAQ entry on the reason, and the these members part as the link to the revision history.

Answer 7

I would really appreciate this feature. Even though I can't vote to close (yet), I would like to know who voted for which reason.

I think the best way to implement this would be to show the main close vote reason as normal, but when clicking the word "closed" (or "on hold" for recently closed questions) expand the banner to show the individual close voters and reasons. (similiar to how viewing vote counts works)

Answer 8

The final reason a question is closed is sometimes completely wrong and ridiculous; for example "unclear" or "too broad" on a question that actually received useful answers in short time. Currently, anyone who plows through the close review queue closing questions they have no competence in cannot be called out on it, because for all anyone else can tell, they might have been trying to close as a duplicate. Being able to see the actual reason of closure will make the close review process more transparent, so idiots who review improperly can be caught.

Answer 9

Tossing in my opinion as an individual, not necessary "on behalf of SE staff".

I actually don't agree with the premise of this request. While established users might benefit from seeing all of the reasons people voted to close, it's actually rather overwhelming to new users (who are probably more likely to have their questions closed in the first place).

The reason we display a big banner with large text when a question is closed is to show the author and any passers-by that the questions isn't a good fit for the site. In the case of the author, we want them to know what they can fix. Throwing several reasons at them at once, especially if they're just top-level reasons without full explanations, isn't very helpful. How do you choose where to start if you see four lines of giant text screaming at you? You probably don't; you probably just walk away.

The close reason that receives the majority of votes is usually a good indicator of what the primary problem is. That doesn't mean a post is perfect apart from the one reason displayed, but honestly, the fact that a question is a duplicate doesn't matter if it's too broad or unclear anyway. It would still be closed, even if it wasn't a duplicate.

Beyond the fact that the majority usually does a good job of identifying the most important problem with the post, conscientious authors and readers can learn more by reading the comments. Some auto-generated comments and some manual comments will show that there are multiple problems, and if, for example, the post is being edited, there's a good chance those comments are being read and considered.

So, in short, I'm not convinced that showing all of the reasons that people voted to close is a good idea. We could probably make it clearer that all of the users whose namea appear might not have chosen the displayed reason, but that's a much simpler, and much less important, problem to solve.

Answer 10

This would actually cause huge problems and user dissatisfaction/confusion.

All that matters is that you want the question to be closed. The specific reason is simply a way of providing feedback to the user, but it doesn't mean that the question deserves to remain.

1. First problem: Meta will be innundated with new feature requests that say "Why was my question closed? It didn't receive five close votes in any one category!" This is simply not the way that the site works. The questions are closed with five total close votes, the particulars don't matter, they are only a suggestion for improvement next time.

2. Second problem: Even if users understand that it is a total of five votes, the purpose is that five users agree that the question does not belong on StackOverflow. While their reasoning does not matter, it is shown to the OP that five separate "trusted" users agree that the question is (in some way) inappropriate. Once we start differentiating ("three people think this, two people think this") then we are highlighting the disagreement. Highlighting disagreement only serves to lessen trust in the system, because the system no longer seems internally consistent. If no consensus can be reached by the closers, does it deserve to be closed at all? Yes, because what they agree on, is that it should be closed.

3. Third problem: This causes confusion to the OP. Let's assume that they created a question to the best of their ability in good faith, and it got closed as "Not a real question". Not a real question has specific areas of improvement, ("Not clear enough, not specific enough, etc.) This provides guidance to the OP (if they want it) ask to how to improve. If we present two, three, or four reasons for closing, then the OP suddenly becomes confused. Which of these pieces of advice should they improve on? If one user votes to close everything as "too localized" because it is their favourite reason, then suddenly we are giving the OPs conflicting advice. It is best to pare down to the one main reason that they should improve their question.

Lastly, why does it matter that you disagree? You are free to add a suggestive helpful comment to the OP that indicates what they should improve on, but you have already voted to close. Your vote to close (whatever the reason) indicates that you do not want the question on the site and that has been accomplished.

If you need to distinguish yourself from the other close voters, add a comment. Use your words to explain to the OP what they should do better. This feature would just add confusion and be unhelpful to users.