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This post is part of a larger effort to create Help Center pages for each of the Review queues. You can learn more about this project in the overview post. These posts will be locked so that everyone has a chance to review each original draft and provide feedback in the answers. We will continue to collect feedback until November 9th, 2020.

We are looking for your feedback on this draft for the Reopen votes queue.
When reviewing this draft please consider the following:

  • What is essential to know about using this queue?

  • Is there any information that’s missing or should be removed?

How do I use the Reopen votes queue?

Access earned at $Privilege-CloseQuestion reputation
Any closed question that has received one reopen vote gets added to this queue, as well as any question edited within 70 days since its closure. Before reviewing in this queue, you should be familiar with what sorts of questions should and should not be closed. To find that information, see the following two pages:

  • Closed question help article is a network-wide guide for the primary reasons questions should be closed. This generally happens when a question:

    • is a duplicate of an existing question on the site

    • needs additional details or clarity to be answered

    • needs to be more focused, as the existing question is too broad.

    • is an opinion-based question that doesn’t have an objectively correct answer.

  • On topic article is a site-specific guide to what types of questions are on and off topic on this site. This page will differ on each site on the Network.

Basic workflow

Evaluate the question as it is now. Review any edits that may have been made after the question was closed and any comments on the question. If edits were made but are insufficient to reopen the question, consider leaving a comment explaining why.

  • Leave closed if close reason(s) still apply - do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed. Consider leaving a comment to explain why the question should remain closed, particularly if the reason is different than what appears in the banner.

  • Edit and Reopen if you can resolve issues with the question yourself and these edits are sufficient for the post to be reopened. Avoid making minor edits that don’t impact whether the post should be reopened.

  • Reopen if issues with the question have been resolved or if it was incorrectly closed

  • Skip if you're not sure whether the question is reopenable

Tip: You may want to restrict which questions you are shown to subjects you are familiar with by filtering reviews by tags you have experience in. You can do this by clicking “Filter” in the top section of a review task. When in doubt, choose Skip.

Reopen votes filter

Some of the content of this page is adapted from information in our Meta Stack Exchange FAQ, which also contains more in-depth guidance if you are interested in reading more about this queue.

Other drafts

To review other drafts in part of this project, please see below:

Stack Overflow only:

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7
  • Minor correction: the "Meta Stack Exchange FAQ" link links to the answer on the Close queue, not the Reopen queue; this link should be fixed.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 3, 2020 at 1:05
  • Fixed, @SonictheK-DayHedgehog :)
    – Catija
    Nov 3, 2020 at 16:14
  • Is there a separate internal copy of this page being maintained, so user edits to the above quoted section won't reflect on that internal copy?
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:25
  • Please don't edit these, @sonic - there is an internal version but we left them unlocked in the hope people wouldn't make edits.
    – Catija
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:29
  • Okay. I had previously made a comment about how "different than" should be "different from", and provided a link as to why that's the case, but that comment seems to be gone. It may not have been posted due to an Internet connection issue on my end, but if it was posted, why was it removed?
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:34
  • I disagree, so I removed the comment. I'm sorry, but I really find it to be an extremely tiny nitpick about something that is perfectly common English usage.
    – Catija
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:34
  • 1
    Thanks for letting me know. It would have been nice if you had replied to that comment, as I was about to repost it in its exact form until I remembered that that had indeed gone through.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:36

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
4

Add a note to leave a comment if the shown close reason has been addressed/doesn't apply, but a different close reason does

The page has this guidance:

Leave closed if close reason(s) still apply - do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed.

To be clear, I do agree with this guidance when it comes to content curation (with one very specific exception, which I've pointed out in another answer).

However, this note should also point users to leave a comment if the shown close reason doesn't apply to the current revision, but a different close reason applies.

Often, such questions are edited by their authors to address the shown close reason, but the author is completely unaware of the other close reason or why it applies. Since users aren't notified of review decisions on their questions, the author is therefore led to believe that "nothing" has happened to their question, or in other words, that their efforts to try and get their question reopened were for nothing.

I brought this up in a related discussion, where I mention this in the second bullet. Someone answered that discussion with their experience, and a great explanation of why this is important, which I'll quote here (bold added):

To me, on the "asker side" of the process, the general impression was that someone who clearly spends more time on the site than I do (gold badge, high rep etc.) for some reason decided that my quesion should be closed, copied a half-relevant rule with no explanation, and that's it, one person's decision prematurely ended my question.

[...]

In my case, it really gave the impression that the person closing my question didn't actually read it at all and clung on an unfortunate usage of the word "recommend" somewhere in the middle. If I knew the real reason behind closing my question (it was about mobile phones which is generally not welcome on [Super User], an understandable rule that I somehow missed), I just wouldn't have bothered editing it in the first place and accepted the fact that it should be closed.

It would be nice if reviewers were guided in the help center page to leave a comment if they're moving to leave a question closed that has been edited to address the shown reason, but for which a different close reason applies.

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1

In the case the modal can be adapted to check the user seeing it, it may be good to indicate that the duplicate target can be changed by the gold tag-badge holders. So instead of reopening, a user can just add/edit the current target.

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1

The advice to "not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed" is incorrect in one specific case

The page has this guidance:

Leave closed if close reason(s) still apply - do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed.

This is correct in most cases, but is incorrect in one specific case: if the question should instead be closed as a duplicate. In other words, if the question is closed for a non-duplicate reason, none of the non-duplicate reasons apply to the current revision, and a duplicate exists for the question, it should be reopened and re-closed as a duplicate. This is so that future visitors to the question are directed to answers. This is also mentioned in the FAQ post on this queue, which links to that post.

The following text should be inserted to the bullet:

Leave closed if close reason(s) still apply - do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed (unless it should instead be closed as a duplicate).

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4
  • 1
    Is that post on reopening duplicates actually good advice? Will moderators actually accept "please re-close this as a duplicate of X" flags?
    – Ryan M
    Nov 3, 2020 at 1:20
  • @RyanM The answer above the one I linked suggests flagging, and if one provides a link to that post or the FAQ, it increases the chance it would be accepted.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 3, 2020 at 1:23
  • @RyanM Also, emphasis on the word instead. For questions already closed as duplicates where a different duplicate applies, the correct review action is "Leave Closed", and then flag or ping a gold-badge user to change the dupe target (which is a special feature).
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 3, 2020 at 1:24
  • This is too much detail for a help center article. If I combine this with your other suggestion, the Leave closed option gets too long for comfortable reading. This is too much of an edge case and, to be honest, I don't see this happening often enough (getting reopened and then closed with a duplicate target). It speaks to a need for a better way to change close reasons rather than more detailed help pages.
    – Catija
    Nov 10, 2020 at 20:03
0

Suggested changes

(Use Edit History to easily view the diffs between the original post and the suggested changes)

How do I use the Reopen votes queue?

Access earned at $Privilege-CloseQuestion reputation
Any closed question that has received one reopen vote gets added to this queue, as well as any question edited within 70 days since its closure. Before reviewing in this queue, you should be familiar with what sorts of questions should and should not be closed. To find that information, see the following two pages:

  • Closed question help article is a network-wide guide for the primary reasons questions should be closed. This generally happens when a question either:

    • is a duplicate of an existing question on the site, or

    • needs additional details or clarity to be answered, or

    • needs to be more focused, as the existing question is too broad, or

    • is an opinion-based question that doesn’t have an objectively correct answer.

  • On topic article is a site-specific guide to what types of questions are on and off topic on this site. This page will differ on each site on the Network.

Basic workflow

Evaluate the question as it is now. Review any edits that may have been made after the question was closed and any comments on the question. If edits were made but are insufficient to reopen the question, consider leaving a comment explaining why.

  • Leave closed if close reason(s) still apply - do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed. Consider leaving a comment to explain why the question should remain closed, particularly if the reason is different than what appears in the banner.

  • Edit and Reopen if you can resolve issues with the question yourself and these edits are sufficient for the post to be reopened. Avoid making minor edits that don’t impact whether the post should be reopened.

  • Reopen if issues with the question have been resolved or if it was incorrectly closed.

  • Skip if you're not sure whether the question should be reopened.

Tip: You may want to restrict which questions you are shown to subjects you are familiar with by filtering reviews by tags you have experience in. You can do this by clicking “Filter” in the top section of a review task. When in doubt, choose Skip.

Reopen votes filter

Some of the content of this page is adapted from information in our Meta Stack Exchange FAQ, which also contains more in-depth guidance if you are interested in reading more about this queue.

Improve this answer
0

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