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In the Reopen Review Queue, add functionality for "leave closed" so that it may become "leave closed and change close reason."

One of the things that is not uncommon at all in the reopen review queue is someone changing a question from say... 'unclear' to 'clear, but completely off topic', or one off topic reason to another.

While the OP thinks that they've fixed the problem (I've added the necessary code to reopen it from unclear), they've added 500 lines of code and there's no way anyone is going to reopen that.

So, it's a leave closed review action. And the question remains "closed as unclear" which is really a rather unfortunate thing for the OP who tried to fix it.

Thus the request. In the Reopen Review Queue, have the option for a leave closed vote to change the close reason for the question. If all three leave close votes are in agreement (not a majority - a unanimous vote), change the close vote reason for the question to the new reason.

This will give clear indication for the OP and people who come by later about what needs to be fixed for the question to be reopened. It also allows new users who see the closed questions to better set their expectations about what the content of a question should be.

This is more important in sites where the FGITW is in play or where drive by up votes may make closed questions stay around for an inordinately long time leading to misleading and misunderstood close reasons on questions after they have been edited but still remain closed (but not deleted).

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  • This is related (but not a duplicate of) the other discussion of being able to change your close vote reason. In this case though it isn't necessarily your vote.
    – Kevin B
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:44
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    If community can do it in the review queue, then perhaps moderators should be able to do it with a single little button, too?
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:46
  • @KevinB An important point in the consideration here is that this is an action that completes the review as "leave closed" and that the voters who changed the reason are unanimous in the decision. Certainly, the close dialog and revision history should be updated to reflect this change... though I don't have any suggestions on the specifics there.
    – user213963
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:53
  • @Mat'sMug a mod acting in the review queue could do it. That said, I've got no insight into the mod tools so I haven't done anything to specify how that would be done in this post.
    – user213963
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:54
  • I envision it as your "leave closed but for reason y instead of x" would simply add another close vote, and if enough come in for reason y, the reason shown would switch over. this functionality would have to be disabled though if you were one of the original voters.
    – Kevin B
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:55
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    @KevinB that could take 5 votes to do it though, and also gets into the "casted close votes" which aren't refunded if the question is reopened. If there were 5 unclear votes on the initial post, three additional votes wouldn't meet the threshold to flip the reason. Furthermore, if it was an actual close vote, if the question was reopened for whatever reason, the three people who did a "leave closed" wouldn't be able to cast a close vote (something that exists now). That part is rather important on sites where a second round of close votes is harder to muster.
    – user213963
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:57
  • What happens if you try to address this situation by adding a comment on the question to describe the situation? Is there a reason why that's not an adequate solution?
    – D.W.
    Dec 11, 2015 at 2:05
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    @D.W. a comment at the end of even 5 or 6 other comments doesn't have much visibility to either the next reviewer or other people who come by later (especially on longer posts). Furthermore, when the question has been revised (and not just a 'someone cast a reopen vote on it'), the view is that of the diff - and comments aren't displayed. This is also to encourage look at the post and go "nope, not a duplicate anymore" to be able to take that other step of "its too broad now" and change the close reason accordingly. The close reason also has impact on roomba feeding.
    – user213963
    Dec 11, 2015 at 2:25
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    @MichaelT, sounds good. Thank you for the explanation.
    – D.W.
    Dec 11, 2015 at 4:32

2 Answers 2

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This has been implemented with the new review queue workflows:

  1. Leave closed reasons

    • If a Reopen votes reviewer elects to leave a question closed, the reviewer will be presented with a “Leave closed reason” modal (similar to the close reason modal) that will return feedback to the editors. For example, if a question was originally closed because it lacked details, it may still require further details even after an edit, or new issues with the question might present themselves like asking too many questions at once.

    Reasons to leave a question closed appear in modal

    • In addition to inbox notifications, the closed question’s post notice will also be updated with more information.

    Post notice updated with new close reason

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This sounds like a good idea.

However, how would we attribute this? It takes 5 users to close a question, and for three to change a reason would make for a confusing interface if the new reason was attributed to the reviewers. I don't review close votes on any site, but simple fix would probably to make the queue smart, and increase the review threshold (if that isn't done already).

Even if the new reason was attributed to the original close voters, I see a major issue: reasons that missy tribute (I didn't close this for that reason!). This would be more of an issue where close voters have conflicting reasons: the reason with the most votes will be visible (2 broad vs 3 unclear votes will result in the unclear message, with the exception of the generic off-topic reason).

The way I see this is closed with a different reason by reviewers, that we are essentially re opening and closing the question using a single vote.

That's just my two cents.

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  • 4
    attribution could be put in post history in the format similar to how currently canned review comments are shown, with simple link to reopen review. "close reason changed to whatever - From Review"
    – gnat
    Dec 11, 2015 at 8:46

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