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I recently had a question which attracted 1 close vote. I don't know why this vote was cast. If I have not conformed to the site's protocol in any way I am left 'none the wiser'.
Should it be made mandatory for a user to comment on why they are voting to close a question?
If this site is to remain 'clean', part of this will be achieved incorporating processes that educate users.
No. It has been suggested and declined repeatedly in the past. You did the right thing in requesting that someone clarify the vote for you in the comments. Remember, though, that it requires 5 people who agree that the question should be closed before it actually is closed (or migrated, if that's the majority close reason).
However, many mods do leave a comment to give the person who posted the question a chance to change their question if needed.
With over 1,800 people who can vote to close, it's not uncommon to see one or two votes to close with no comments on questions that might be remotely related to a server or hardware issue, so just ask politely why people are voting to close and you should get an answer before too many people vote to close it.
Generally-speaking, this isn't something we want to rub folks' faces in unless and until a question is actually closed.
That said, in certain scenarios it can be worthwhile. So we generate comments automatically when someone votes to close as a duplicate, including a link to the duplicate question. And we prompt folks voting to close for a reason that's not already represented in the system for an explanation, and generate a comment for that as well. In both of those cases, there are two good reasons to let the asker know early:
They may be able to correct the problem (by editing) or make use of the linked information (for duplicates).
If they (or others) disagree with the rationale for closing, they can dispute it ahead of time (duplicates and obscure rules tend to be somewhat more controversial).
Of course, nothing stops any close voter from commenting to provide advice or guidance should he feel it would benefit the asker - but in most cases, this isn't necessary and just contributes overhead.
I actually feel that it's sometimes a bad idea to leave such comments. Consider a situation when a relatively new user posts a question that is arguably off-topic (and might be more on topic on SuperUser, CodeReview or elsewhere).
If the question is off-topic, it will be closed/migrated anyway. But the close-voter can't know it in advance. Receiving a comment like "This should have been asked on X.SE" or "This is off-topic" or just a link to another SE site doesn't really help the OP, and, I imagine, doesn't give the best impression. While such a comment can be incorrect, it can cause the poster to delete the question, with or without reposting it on another site.
This prevents the natural course of events, i.e. migration of the question, or, in the worst case, an eligible question is deleted and the user is not helped.
So, at least in the described situation, I think posting such a comment does more harm than it does good. The comment could be verbose enough to explain the situation in a proper way, but people don't care enough to do it. I usually refrain from posting such short comments, because it's not clear what the OP should do with it, anyway. And if someone has already posted such a comment, I usually post another one explaining how the situation should be handled.
The reason (non-mod) users have to vote to close a question is that whether or not a question should be closed is often debatable (as is re-opening them once they are closed).
If someone has voted to close your question and left no comment, even after you have commented asking for an explanation, you can still try to figure out why they voted to close.
Most importantly, remember that even if your question does get closed, you will either get pointed to a duplicate (Presto! You now have an answer), get your question migrated to a site where other users will be better suited to provide you a quality answer, or have the opportunity to improve your question and get it reopened!
I tend to only vote to close questions because they're exact duplicates, in which case the comment is fairly explanatory.
I imagine that others who don't give explanations either can't be bothered discussing the issue if someone disagrees with their vote to close, or think that the onus should be on the OP to Read The Friendly FAQ. While I can sympathize with such a point of view a little, I don't think it's a very good attitude.
