New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow

Question

New Post Notices have been launched network-wide. Please post all new feedback, bugs and feature requests to the new announcement post.

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As has been previously announced, we have been working for some time on a full refresh for post notices. I am happy to announce that all initial development work and testing has been completed, and that the new notices are now live on Stack Overflow.

During our initial launch period these will be shown to 50% of users (with the other 50% viewing notices as they have been with no change). After evaluating the impact of the notices during this period and making any warranted changes, our goal is to release these network-wide, and to completely remove the old notices from the system.

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.

The visual change in styling and position relative to content should immediately be obvious. The current notices use legacy styling and for the most part appear below the post (question or answer) content. The experience on mobile and desktop is different as the old layout is not flexible enough to be used on both. The new notices will all appear above post content, will feature a refreshed look and feel (using the Stacks design framework), and will work identically on both desktop and mobile.

_{A new post notice, being shown to users with the close/reopen privilege on a post closed as being opinion-based}

Beyond the look and feel changes, we have also rewritten the language for all of the different messages, with the goal of making them more friendly and results-driven, and taking into account the changing ways in which the notices have been used over the years. New messages language has been guided by our Content Style Guide, which itself is based on user insights and best practices. We hope that the language refresh will make it clearer to users what each respective notice is for, and if appropriate, to provide clearer instructions as to what they can do in order to improve the content that was flagged.

As Meg wrote in her blog post:

For people who ask questions today, if your question is closed, feedback that is directed toward you privately is shared publicly with anyone who views your question. Plus, the names of people who voted to close the question are highlighted publicly, too, setting them up for attack when they’re just trying to curate content according to the system.

Here’s what our holistic redesign of all post notices will prioritize:

• Delivering improved, private feedback to post authors
• Not putting users who curate content on the spot
• Giving actionable, understandable information for the vast majority of public viewers

The change affects all post notices, including mod notices, post locks, migration notices, and every single type of close notice. Many of these feature different messages that will be shown to the post owner, users with close/reopen privilege, and everyone else, with each message designed to expose the information that will be most helpful to the viewer. Another goal is also to provide more instructions and options for post owners when it comes to taking steps to edit the content of closed questions in order to allow for them to be reopened.

_{A duplicate closed notice being shown to the post owner.}

This is a far-reaching project and is also touching other related content like the wording used in the close menu giving guidance on off-topic reasons and the instructions being shown at the top of the review queue. Additionally, the notification language, user workflow, and options being provided to post owners on questions where there are active close as duplicate flags has been modified to give post owners more leeway in preemptively accepting or rejecting potential duplicate posts.

This new set of features and improvements is the first of a series of related projects aimed at improving the user experience on question close workflows and review queues for all users. Our goal is to better facilitate feedback and content curation for all people who code, whether they are new to programming and Stack Overflow, are seasoned moderators and technology experts, or fit anywhere in between.

_{Old and new "On Hold" notices}

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.

FAQs

When will the changes roll out on SO?

The changes are live on SO right now

I still see the old notices and I would rather see the new ones

OR

I see the new notices and would rather keep the old notices

During our initial launch period the new post notices (and all related changes) are being shown to 50% of users. There is no easy way to switch between the group of users seeing old or new notices. If there are things about the new notices that you dislike, please let us know in a respectful and constructive way. We are happy to receive and take all feedback into consideration.

What are you looking for during the initial launch period?

The primary goal of the project is to improve the friendliness of the user experience when viewing post notices. This is a hard thing to measure. Some of the indicators that we will be using are the levels of engagement by users who see old vs new post notices and the rates of closed posts being reopened (specifically focusing on post edits and post reopen votes).

Can you please release a list of all the changes that were made to all notice language and functionality?

We are not going to do this right now:

• There are sooo many changes that were made, that any attempt to document all of these in a clear way will probably still end up being confusing (and it will be challenging to keep this up to date as changes are made during the initial launch period).
• We feel that in order to properly evaluate the changes to presentation, language and functionality, the changes need to be seen in the context of the site, by users who encounter them through normal site usage. Thus, we prefer to evaluate the success of changes by presenting them to users who will encounter and interact with them through organic site usage.

After Meg's blog post that first mentioned these changes, a post on MSE was made that solicited feedback on the preview given in the blog post. Were there any changes to this project that were made based on this feedback?

We read all of the feedback and found much of it to be very useful. Some of it was incorporated into this set of changes, and we hope to incorporate much more of it in a future project that builds on this one to address the underlying mechanics of the close->reopen workflows. Thanks for all the suggestions, and special shout out and thanks to Journeyman Geek for initiating and organizing the feedback post on MSE!

How long will the initial launch run for? When will this go live for everyone?

The initial launch is slated to tentatively run for 2-3 weeks. While we cannot commit to a final go-live date at this point, as there are many unknowns involved, we can say that we are interested in getting the final product out as soon as we can.

What is the average air speed of an unladen swallow?

What do you mean? An African or a European Swallow?

European, of course

Approximately 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 24 - 25 miles per hour)

Answer 1

feature-request status-declined

The notice for the duplicate closure doesn't mention the option to edit the question; the only option it offers is to "ask a new one". Sometimes (maybe even most of the times, it's hard to give an estimate) this is a far better option than posting a new question. I'll reiterate what I said here:

My gut feeling says it will only lead to repeated questions, worded slightly different but not enough to make it clear. If authors decide to edit their question without much improvement, then at least the question stays closed and requires no further caretaking (except maybe from the Reopen Votes review queue). If they post a new one, that's more work for the community and the author is more likely to hit a question ban.

Answer 2

bug status-completed

I noticed that an automatic comment is added when I close as duplicate (a single close vote with my gold badge)

Does this answer your question? How to create an irregular square shape in css? – Temani Afif 6 mins ago

Why is that? Shouldn't the OP edit their question to clarify if the duplicate is not suitable?

This comment will probably make us having a discussion about why it's not a duplicate instead of editing the post.

I close many questions each day, I may easily end with a lot a message about all the questions I closed and I won't be able to answer all of them.

Answer 3

feature-request status-deferred

Hide this blurb and only show it on hover over the stricken-through eye icon:

Viewable by the post author and users with the close/reopen votes privilege.

This is meta information that does not need to be present and read every time someone looks at a close banner, but it should be available if they want to read it. I think putting it in a tooltip shown on hover of the "conditionally visible" icon is a good solution for that.

Answer 4

status-declined

Rationale for status:

One thing that needs to be called out here: there are now three different descriptions for each close reason.

1. The general public gets a very "firm" reason: "this question is opinion based".

2. The close voter gets a very nuanced description when voting: "Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise."

3. And finally, authors / editors / reopen voters get specific instructions on what needs to be fixed: "Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations. This will help others answer the question."

Before, we had only one bit of text that had to fulfill each of these purposes - and generally, none of them were optimal for any one purpose. They were less nuanced than they should've been as guidance for voters, less firm than they should've been as a statement of fact for readers, and... Well, guidance for editors was almost an after-thought.

We don't have to compromise now, so... We're not.

-- Shog9

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In the two examples of close banners here, I notice that the wording has become more definitive:

This question is opinion-based

This question is off topic.

Previously these messages said:

Closed as primarily opinion-based

Closed as off topic

Additionally, the old off topic message had a subtext that said that the question appears to be off topic.

This change seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t it be more jarring to new users to see a definitive statement that their question is objectively “bad” than to see a statement that only says that the subjective opinion of the following five users is that their question is “bad”?

Answer 5

status-completed

I have a small suggestion:

Show the exact reputation requirement on protected questions, even if one has enough reputation.

I, for one, still can't remember how much reputation is required. I think it'd be more informative to show the requirement in the notice:

... Since you have X reputation more than Y reputation, you can answer the question. ...

Answer 6

status-completed

It seems that the close vote reasons have been rewritten from scratch, which is only mentioned as an aside on this post.

Here's what "typo/no repro" is now:

"It's caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a way less likely to help future readers."

This no longer covers typos. We don't want to leave typos open, because they do not help future readers. I'm a bit worried that other subtleties have been missed while rewriting the close reasons. Is there a feedback post where we can suggest alternatives that don't change how moderation has worked for years? I tried finding one but couldn't.

Answer 7

status-completed

Stating the closure date as "months passed since closure" doesn't seem particularly practical.

For questions closed many years ago, we'd end up saying things like:

Closed 92 months ago by Foobar.

If we are not showing the date as we do now:

Closed as not constructive by Foobar Feb 29 '12 at 17:52

We should at least resolve the duration as years + months:

Closed as not constructive by Foobar 7 years, 8 months ago

Answer 8

As Journeyman Geek said, "put on hold" is way better than "closed" because if a question is on hold there is a opportunity to make it better while closed discloses the feeling that the question is closed for good and that takes away the goal of improving a question and just making a new one.

With that said, overall, the design of it and hiding the people who vote-closed it is a great feature. I would like to see a custom message from the people who closed it so the "private feedback" is not some canonical message that everyone is used too on the old version.

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bug

Some bugs:

• status-completed My question was closed on August 1st 2019 so it was closed approximately 2.9 months ago (instead of 29 months). While 2.9 is correct I would prefer a y:m:d format or the exact date. (thanks @Luuklag);

• status-completed The php tag has an underline on it (for gold badge holders single-close). (thanks @JL2210)

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Update

Now it's 0 months!

Answer 9

status-declined

Problem: A generic close reason for most users for most questions

I don't always use my account when browsing Stack Overflow, so this message was my first introduction to the new post notices:

Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers. Learn more.

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Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.

example question

This was very confusing to me, because it wasn't really obvious why the question was closed. Did the close voters just not agree on a reason so none was shown?

The answer is no, it was just one of the "site specific" close reasons like for software recommendation questions. (The other close reasons, like "too broad", or whatever it's called, give some information.)

The detailed information is only shown to the question author and users with 3k+ rep. That leaves 99% of users in the dark. There's not even some trick (short of getting 3k+ rep or switching to the app/API) to get the exact close reason, as the revision history says nothing more.

_{(Everyone can still see who voted to close the question in the revision history, even though this is almost always less useful than the close reason itself.)}

Why was the close reason not shown to me? Was I supposed to go click on the "on-topic" link (not even the link where you think the relevant information would be), research, and deduce what close reason should have been shown? How does this help the people who want an answer to the question?

New users sometimes complain about the closing on Stack Overflow being arbitrary — but that was even before this change. Now I expect this to be an even more frequent complaint, one that I sympathize with.

This also isn't helping future close voters to learn what reason to use.

Please change it back so that everyone can see why exactly a question was closed.

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Despite being declined, it looks like this is actually being fixed? Moderators should be able to decide what gets shown to each group of users:

Most (if not all) moderators will be good with putting close information back into the banner, and I expect that Stack Overflow will do it soon (probably after the community discusses what to put there). I’m not sure how fast we’ll see this feature on sites outside Stack Overflow though.

Answer 10

feature-request status-completed

Completion notes: we addressed point #2 below (now "spam and non-answer activity") as well as point #4 (now "you have enough reputation to answer"). More discussion on this in the comments; summary is: this should be used for questions that have had an unusual level of unwanted activity; that it's misused is not something we can readily solve with copy changes. Further reading

Please consider revising the Protected banner to more closely match the meaning of the words that used to be there. Currently, this banner:

Highly active question. Since you have [insert your reputation here if over 10 earned on the site] reputation, you can answer this question. The reputation requirement helps protect this question from spam activity. Learn more.

Only covers one use of the "protected" banner: situations where it was automatically added due to a number of recent answers being added, with some being deleted. This wording is problematic in that it seems exclusionary where the other uses of the feature are concerned:

1. A question is not necessarily "highly active" (or active at all) while the banner is up. The banner doesn't automatically get removed after some period of inactivity, so at best this wording is only temporarily accurate.

2. A question can be protected pretty much at any time after the question has been posted. A question could receive 15 answers the day it was asked, and then someone could come by and protect it after one or two users post spam posts six years later. Not exactly "active", considering the actual activity was two posts that never should have occurred in the first place. In fact, I think the automated protection mechanism for deleted answers doesn't care about how closely a series of deleted answers were posted... it just counts the total # of spam/rude deleted answers (correct me if I'm wrong).

3. A question can be protected without any activity at all. Sure, this is probably not the ideal use for it (and a lot of the use of protection is intended to be temporary, after all), but it often happens that I come across a question with, say, 30 answers, and the last activity was 5 months ago by a then-1-rep user, but the answer is low quality/shouldn't have been added. Well, I will often protect such questions to prevent other unnecessary/low-quality answers from being added. But is the question currently active/highly active? No, not really.

4. Finally, the wording assumes the question is one I can answer:

   You can answer this question.

   I actually found the screenshot for this answer on a Vim question. I have never used Vim, so I definitely can't answer that question. It would be better to say "may" instead of "can", at least. But I'd also suggest saying, instead of "since you have X reputation" (where X is your actual reputation), just say "since you have earned more than 10 reputation". The live shot at how much reputation is kinda neat, but it's unnecessary since we can see how much reputation we have in the top bar at all times, and the way it's written makes it kind of confusing (for example: "does the site expect me to be able to answer a given question just based on my high reputation?!").

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Also, the new banner has no indication that it is related to the "protected" privilege. Maybe a good solution to points 1 thru 3 above would be to simply change "Highly active" to "Protected"?

Answer 11

feature-request status-completed

Link text should say what it links to. Generic "read more" and "here" links are considered bad practice and especially harm accessibility (users of screen readers rely heavily on link text).

Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers. Learn more.

The "Learn more" link is confusing. Does it explain what's on-topic and off-topic? Does it explain why closed questions don't accept answers?

Considering it links to closed-questions, the text should be "Learn more about closed questions" or something like this.

Viewable by the post author and users with the close/reopen votes privilege. Edit the question to include desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce the problem. This will help others answer the question. Learn more. Closed 4 hours ago by Foo, Bar, Baz.

"Learn more" strikes again. This time it links to on-topic, so the text should be something like "Learn more about what is on-topic".

Alternatively, links can be placed naturally, for example:

Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.

Viewable by the post author and users with the close/reopen votes privilege. Edit the question to include desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce the problem. This will help others answer the question.

Answer 12

bug status-completed

The names of people who have voted to delete/recommended deletion from review aren't shown when an answer has been deleted.

There is a trailing "by ." which is confusing. I'm unsure if names are supposed to be removed, the direction I thought we were heading in, and therefore the by is redundant, or the names are missing.

This post is hidden. This post was deleted from review last year by . Learn more.

Example SO answer

Answer 13

bug status-completed

A couple days ago I found a post where two close reasons were listed:

How are these cases handled with the new post notices? The part of the new post notice reserved for this doesn't seem to adjust to this scenario.

Sadly, it seems I am on the B group, so I can't just visit the question to check it out for myself.

But from the comments to this answer it appears that users below 3k reputation see this:

And users with the close vote privilege see it like this:

Answer 14

bug status-completed

In other places of the site you make use of the serial comma (Oxford comma), for the sake of consistency can we make use of it when listing the people who have closed the question too.

From:

Closed 25 months ago by Yaakov Ellis, Jon Ericson and Shog9

To:

Closed 25 months ago by Yaakov Ellis, Jon Ericson, and Shog9

Answer 15

status-declined

Another small suggestion: Don't show the large "This post is hidden" notice on other users' deleted posts.

This notice is indeed useful for a hapless newcomer who can't understand what a red background on their post means.

But for a 10k+ user looking at a long chain of deleted answers, this seems to be unnecessarily visually cluttering.

I suggest only showing this prominent notice to the user who owns the deleted post. For other users, a small non-highlighed disclaimer below the post (exactly how it looked before the update) is enough.

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Alternatively, show this notice only to users with less than 10k rep. (as suggested by @NathanOliver)

Answer 16

bug status-completed

The bounty period is not displayed in hours anymore if it ends in less than one day:

I see two problems:

• It is unclear: Does it mean “no time left” or “less than one day left”? Apparently it is the latter, but that is not obvious.
• Important information is missing: For a possible answerer it matters whether there is 1 minute or 23 hours left to post an answer (which is eligible for the bounty).

Here is an example of how it looked before (the remaining time was displayed in hours if less than one day, and in minutes if less than one hour):

I suggest to display a more precise remaining time again.

Answer 17

status-completed

In my opinion the below notice is somewhat unclear what it is referring to. I understand that it is only the second half below the horizontal rule but I feel like it could do with being made a bit clearer.

Viewable by the post author and users with the close/reopen votes privilege

Also the icon that is used seems a bit odd to me but I wouldn't know a better choice or even if one is even necessary.

Answer 18

No bug report, no rant, just a simple:

Thank you.

(plus suggestions how to continue from here, see further below)

Seriously, it is great to see that Stack Exchange Inc. actually did put in serious efforts to improve this core aspect of quality control. And albeit many "quality control users" complained for years about lack of support, within a few days, there is plenty of helpful, precise feedback.

So, please continue on this path! And note: even in the midst of that storm that is shaking the whole community, the community users are obviously willing to work with you.

And my direct feedback regarding the UI itself: it really looks/feels "fresh", and I hope that it won't take long to incorporate the reasonable feedback, and to roll this change permanently.

Then, to underline what you already mentioned: this goes way beyond "just the close reasons". Close reasons relate to queues, and most importantly: follow up actions. And oh boy, there is work waiting for you. So, what you seriously need to look into:

• The overall workflow. As explained in the aforementioned link: the triage queue on SO is a nightmare. Fix that.
• One way to get there: improved education. You could prepare an education package that includes 50 or 100 questions for people to train with. Hand selected questions, with manually written explanations for each one of them!

The one thing I ask you folks to remember: stay agile! Don't wait too long in order to release the perfect thing. Rather roll early, but be around to constantly fix bugs and improve features frequently!

Answer 19

status-declined

We used to flag "this post is not written in English on English Stack Overflow" as "unclear what you're asking."

The new verbiage doesn't really allow for that interpretation:

Needs details or clarity

Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

Not sure if we want to touch this/what we should do here.

Answer 20

bug status-completed

When doing a closing vote for a duplicate, there was a comment added, such as "Possible duplicate of Link-To-the-Dupe".
If the question was closed for a dupe, this comment was removed.

With the new post notice system the comments are changed to : "Does this answer your question? Link-To-the-Dupe".
When the question is closed, the comment remains

Answer 21

bug

This post is hidden. This post was deleted from review 2 years ago by . Learn more.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/46930006/1265393

FIXED:

This answer is hidden. This answer was deleted via review 2 years ago by User1, User2, User3, User4. Learn more.

Two things:

1. status-completed "deleted from review" is awkward phrasing. "Deleted via Review" or "Deleted as a result of the Review process" or similar would be better. Hopefully with a hyperlink to the Review itself.

2. deleted "by ." - name missing for some reason? DUPLICATE

another:

status-completed

This post is hidden. This post was deleted and converted to a comment review 7 years ago by Brad Larson♦. Learn more.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/9818900/1265393

FIXED:

This answer is hidden. This answer was deleted and converted to a comment 7 years ago by Brad Larson♦. Learn more.

• "converted to a comment review" ...? Should be "converted to a comment"?

---

NEW:

bug-ish status-completed

This post is hidden. This post was deleted 4 years ago by the post author. Learn more.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/28241248/1265393

Note that in the 2 above original bugs, your fixes changed "post" to "answer" in the 2nd part of the question. But that change didn't happen in other notices such as the new one above. The originals also both have "post" AND "answer" in the same notice.

Answer 22

discussion

I like the idea of rephrasing the close types, but I really think you should bring back the "Too-broad" closure type. It has been replaced with "Need more focus", which to me means something different than too-broad. The message in the notice says:

At the same time the message when closing he question says:

Here are my problems with it:

1. Why do people who vote to close see more explanation than is displayed in the notice?
2. Why is the "How to ask" link not in the notice?
3. Why does it say "Needs more focus" in one place and "needs to be more focused" in the other? There is slight, but significant difference in my opinion.
4. What does it exactly mean that the question needs to be more focused? Take for example this question Please Help I need Your Experience Screenshot for <10k
   How could anyone edit it be more focused? What should I focus on when editing this? For me this is not a real question. It doesn't ask any question, it is just begging for help and free codez. If I wanted to close this question I would hesitate to use this closure type.

The text IMHO is even less welcoming than before. I would suggest we improve the blue notice along the lines of:

On-hold. This question is not about any specific problem. It must be edited before it can accept more answers.

---

Want to improve this question? Edit the question, so it focuses on a single problem only. See How to ask to learn more about asking good questions.

Answer 23

status-deferred

When a question is closed for a typographical error, the display message stating so (that it is closed due to a typographical error) is only displayed to those with close/open privileges:

If, however, you don't have those privileges you get this message:

This asks the user to update the question to make it on-topic. If the question, however, is closed due to typographical reasons then it can't be made on-topic. Therefore users without the close/reopen privilege shouldn't really be asked to try to improve it; as it can't be.

Answer 24

bug status-review

On mobile the gold badge is not displayed properly on duplicate questions closed with a hammer.

Answer 25

bug status-completed

This doesn't sound good:

1. What's "..."? Clicking (more) doesn't show anything. So, the question is a duplicate of what? IMO, the "of..." is useless.

2. Should "Duplicate" start with capital?

Answer 26

bug status-bydesign

Questions closed as "off-site resource request" do not show the reason they were closed. They say only "off-topic".

• Link to example question
• Image of question with post notice that says only "off-topic":

  ---

• SE API query: To verify the close reason, look at the description in the closed_details. You actually have to look through the HTML, but that HTML renders as:

  This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

  "Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it." – Machavity, JL2210, Makyen, tripleee, Vadim Kotov

• All of the other off-topic reasons state which reason it is in the post notice, except custom reasons. So, I'm assuming that the intent is to have this reason displayed in the post notice.

Answer 27

bug status-completed

A gold badge holder isn't "some community members":

This could possible be:

Or even better, "A trusted community member".

Answer 28

status-declined

Since you will be rolling this out network wide and you've said:

We feel that in order to properly evaluate the changes to presentation, language and functionality, the changes need to be seen in the context of the site, by users who encounter them through normal site usage.

Will you be doing a similar test period for sites other than Stack Overflow? For example, the automatic comments for duplicates ("Does this answer your question? [link]") doesn't really make much sense on Code-Golf due to it not being a standard Q&A site. There's also been talk about how the phrasing of some notices would be inaccurate on other sites.

If you aren't, will sites at least be able to edit the phrasing of notices that don't make as much sense in the context of their sites?

Answer 29

bug status-completed

The new version of the bounty notification doesn't provide a specific start and end date when hovering over the "vague" expiring information, like "tomorrow". The old message provided it:

But the new one only provides the ending date when hovering over the bounty amount, but not for the word "tomorrow".

I guess it is a bug, that the popup now shows on hovering over the bounty value, but if that was done on purpose, then I would like to request the feature to do that on the usual spot instead. It is much more intuitive to do it there and matches the usual behaviour on SE sites (hovering dates or similar words provide a detailed timestamp).

Answer 30

bug status-completed

As a power user with close/reopen privileges, I would expect to always see the details of the closure on all closed questions. However, this is not the case on my own closed questions for old (deactivated) close reasons!

I am especially concerned about not even being able to view the date of closure, like on this old question of mine. It just shows up like this: