New Post Notices are live network-wide

Question

For further issues, bugs and feedback that have not been covered by existing answers here please feel free to ask a new question.

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A few minutes ago, new Post Notices were launched across the Stack Exchange network. This includes all public sites, all meta sites, and all Basic and Business tier Teams (Enterprise tier will get it in a future release).

For our purposes, a 'post notice' includes any status banner shown on questions or answers: deleted, merged, migrated, closed, locked, protected, bountied, as well as any information notices that can be applied to posts by moderators.

As the blog post summarized:

We have some guiding principles that we’re applying as we improve any feedback loops in the Q&A system, including post notices, going forward. Wherever possible we will work to provide better, actionable guidance for all users that helps everyone use the platform successfully while reducing room for public shaming.

I would like to thank the hundreds of users who posted comments and answers to the MSE and MSO meta posts announcing the initial test run. In the 5 weeks since the test rollout on SO commenced:

• Approximately 71 million notices (of the new style) were shown to users (posts were 50/50 on SO through Monday of this week, at which point we had a silent soft launch to all users on SO)
• 58% of notices shown are close notices. This is followed by Protected (28%), HasLocalizedVersion (6%), Locked (4%), Migrated (2%), and everything else (Mod, Deleted, Bounty, Merged (2%)
• 97 answers made on the two meta posts resulted in dozens of changes and improvements. I count 44 cards in my trello board for the project (each card representing a different issue that originated on meta that we addressed or responded to in some way)

Here is an example of how the new notices appear:

_{Closed notice – Post owner}

_{Closed notice – Users with 3,000+ reputation}

_{Closed notice – Public view}

In addition to the visible changes in positioning, look and feel and language, the new system allowed us to consolidate much of the background architecture that is related to post notices, and will enable us to maintain and improve the new notices in a significantly more efficient way than the ecosystem that grew around the old notices allowed us to do. So while this release is a major milestone for us, we do not view this as the end of the product line. As the blog post stated:

This new set of features and improvements is the first of a series of related projects aimed at improving the user experience when a question gets closed. Here are some of the kinds of things you can look forward to:

• Better guidance for improving closed questions (e.g., in the question editor and via emails) to empower question askers/editors and lower the burden on users who review content quality issues
• Mechanisms for “hiding” closed questions so they can be worked on out-of-view
• Easier paths towards re-opening improved questions

We will also continue to iterate on post notices. With a holistic system now in place, this is easier for us to do.

General feedback is welcome on this post, as are feature-request and bug reports. We promise to read everything, and will do our best to engage with the community to address concerns that are raised.

Anticipated Questions

For off-topic close notices that have different versions for public, post author and high-rep users: can we customize those on a per-site basis?

There are plans for releasing additional functions on the Close as Off Topic Reasons editor (currently available to site moderators) that will allow moderators to set these different messages for each Off-Topic reason. Until then, all sites other than SO (and international SO sites) will have the same off-topic language showing up for each of the above viewing scenarios.

Where did the "On Hold" label go?

"On Hold" had been used to label recently closed questions. The idea was that this language would imply less permanence to the current state than "Closed". However, user research showed that this distinction was generally found to be confusing to users at all levels, and did not seem to have an effect on reopen rates. So we have removed this label. All Closed posts are now labeled as Closed but only the label has changed. Edits within the first five days will still put the question in the reopen queue.

Has the help center been updated to reflect these changes?

Yes, we have updated the following help center articles:

• Remove new user restrictions
• Protect questions
• What does it mean if a question is “Closed”

Has anything changed about what notices are shown?

No. We are changing what is being shown, and how it is being shown. But not when it is being shown. The same criteria as before apply now as to when specific notices are shown on a question or answer.

I feel like the old notices did X better, can I get that back please?

The old notices are gone for good. And the main structure of the new notices is not going to be changing for the time being (so no, we aren't going to move some of them back down to the bottom of the question) That said, we are open to hearing all suggestions. Make a case for how we can fit your needs into the new notices (taking into account that any changes that we make need to also work in the context of notices that are seen by millions of people every month).

Answer 1

bug status-review

Overflowing notices on responsive view

Using the responsive full site view on mobile this post notice overflows:

Link to question: Choosing a canned comment for new users on the first few downvotes

The discussion tag could be an edge case due to the long username of the gold-badge holder, but the standard text has no reason to overflow like this? Or is there a fixed height set?

After looking into this a bit more, I believe this is an edge-case related to long usernames, as for most posts the message is just fine.

Answer 2

bug status-completed

March 2018 is "last year" (today is 3-rd January, 2020).

Example: What should you do if you're serial downvoted & it isn't automatically reversed within 24 hours?

Closed last year by Glorfindel, fedorqui says Reinstate Monica, ale, M.A.R., James.

But its revision history gives a timestamp for this closure as

occurred Mar 16 '18 at 1:12

In fact, that's almost 2 years ago now, but it's certainly not "last year" (2019).

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More examples:

1. Community rejects edit with incorrect reason also "Closed last year" but timestamp "occurred Jan 17 '18 at 8:51".

2. Should grammar edits of closed questions be approved? also "Closed last year" but timestamp "occurred Jan 26 '18 at 7:21".

Answer 3

Since I shall not comment:

Why can't I find a list that compares all changes made?

Specific example:

• What happened to the "Citation needed" post notice?

This was used to fairly good effect on some sites to indicate a below average quality post to casual readers. ('Very low quality' being of course deleted)

The new version seems like huge step back from that. To me, it reads just like an invitation to "edit something", much too weak:

Want to improve this post? Add citations from reputable sources by editing the post. Posts with unsourced content may be edited or deleted.

Plus: as far as I know all posts may be edited? Why this redundancy?

For sites like eg Skeptics or HistorySE this now means that

• quite a backlog of posts were marked visibly with "this isn't really up to spec. Owner: you really need to improve this. Reader/voter: take a dose of salt before taking this too seriously"
• but the new notice severely weakened the "caveat" aspect, effectively raising the standing of those posts

The old banner added some kind of 'official' weight to comments requesting clarification/sources. That seems gone from the new version. But we need that weight back.

Answer 4

bug status-review

I posted this to the other question on this topic, but as you since edited said question and asked bugs be reported here I duplicate my answer for completeness.

On this Q: Is it considered poor form to answer old and inactive questions? (thread resurrection) the suggested dupe comment hasn't been removed after dupe closure with the suggested target. The comment doean't appear to be edited, which would invalidate the auto deletion.

Perhaps because the comment is not by one of the people that closed the Q?

Click for larger version.

Answer 5

status-completed

help/on-topic still uses the "On Hold" terminology.

On the help center article On Topic the "On Hold" terminology is still being used:

Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question. Questions which are too broad, unclear, incomplete or primarily opinion-based may be put on hold by the community until they are improved.

^{Emphasis mine}

This part of the text also links to the Closed Questions help center article.

Answer 6

bug

The "needs clarity/details" notice contains the words

... the problem being solved.

This should read something like

... the problem needing a solution.

or just

... the problem.

Answer 7

support status-bydesign

Are the icons in the images provided in New Post Notices are live network-wide necessary? They don't add any information over what's already provided textually. If they were clickable as links to something, that would be another matter.

I know I can use CSS to remove them on my screen.

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Here's a post by a 60-k rep user confused by the presence of the "crossed-out" eye icon: Why duplicate questions are hidden now?

Answer 8

Notification is to have moved to the top of the post, a description of the How do I search? - Help Center is stuck in "notice shown below them".

hasnotice: yes/true/1 returns only posts with a notice shown below them; no/false/0 returns only posts that do not have a notice applied.

Answer 9

When I VTC'd this question for this reason:

"The problem described here can no longer be reproduced. Changes to the system or to the circumstances affecting the asker have rendered it obsolete. If you encounter a similar problem, please post a new question."

and the OP VTC'd it as a duplicate (as suggested to do in a different comment) it produced a "Does this answer your question ..." comment (which while technically correct seems odd to ask the OP if he agrees with himself).

The bug report was closed by the Community and myself as a duplicate, despite my choice of a different reason. It's completely unclear that the OP was the deciding vote (for a different reason), if the 'duplicate closer counting comment' (whatchamacallit) were deleted as it's supposed to be.

This "Bug Report" (feedback of mine) is:

The "Does this answer your question ..." comment was not deleted, as would normally be the case had a few users VTC'd this as a duplicate; though obviously that's not the only shortcoming of the Post Notice: