Better balance between "leave open" and "close" voting

Question

Currently, the system is largely in favor of voting to close a question, rather than leaving it open, for two main reasons:

1. There is a "close" button on question posts, but no "leave open" directly available. If you feel a question must be left open, you need to go to the review queue (this is apparently "by design" - see this old post, but it is not explained why).
2. There is no way to see the number of "leave open" votes cast, but you can see the number of "close" votes (see this other post).

The problem is, I often see questions that are initially wrongly formulated and look like off-topic question (typically, let's say, a shopping question - I'm primarily active on the electrical engineering site - that looks like "what chip would do [this thing I need]"). After a few close votes and a few comments indicating it's off-topic, OP edits the post and states he doesn't need a specific IC, but is interested in knowing, more generally, "how can I achieve [this thing I need]". Not off-topic anymore.

Then, from the review queue, users see that close votes have already been cast, read the post too quickly (being biased by the information shown), and cast additional votes and it gets closed. Really. They do that. And I want to scream "read carefully, it's not off-topic anymore"!

Leaving a comment does not work. I tried it a few times, it gets buried, and, if there were already a few comments posted, it is not even shown by default.

The most consistent way to solve this would probably be to show a "leave open" button at the bottom of posts for which there are close votes, and indicate the number "leave open" votes cast, like for "close". This would make the reviewers stop a bit before clicking "close", since there is not a single obvious path to follow anymore.

But maybe there are other ways, like clearly indicating that the post has been edited after close votes have started being cast.

How could we better balance "leave open" and "close" voting?

Answer 1

This would make the reviewers stop a bit before clicking "close", since there is not a single obvious path to follow anymore.

I never vote to close a question because someone else did, so the number of close votes is totally meaningless to me. It merely indicates the status of the question at this moment.

Hiding that number or showing a secondary (functionally meaningless) number next to it to indicate the number of uses who wanted to keep it open doesn't help a bit in my decision to close it or not. If you want the secondary number to be actually functional: that is already declined here.

Answer 2

I largely agree with your analysis. The "pile-on" of close votes can get particularly impactful now, as some stacks are moving to a 3-votes-to-close system.

Not showing the number of close votes on the questions would mean viewers are making completely independent choices about close votes. Problems with doing that are that questioners would then need a mechanism to see whether their questions are attracting close votes (a real issue), and that the info would be available through the question timeline and, of course, the review queue (not a real issue, as those aren't likely to cause the impromptu pile-ons we're talking about)