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Problem: Many of the close reasons are self-explanatory, but a few would benefit from having the descriptive text shown when viewing closed questions. (For example, my recent comment on "Not A Real Question".)

Proposed solution: Simply sticking it in a normal size font in a paragraph below "closed as ..." seems the appropriate place.

NARQ would probably benefit disproportionately more from this than the other reasons. (Or have I misunderstood NARQ?) However, it seems like it would be helpful to new users that get their questions closed and would otherwise have to search meta or discover the title text for the close reason. (Though many 3k rep users seem to not realize these descriptions exist either. I didn't notice the text till around 6k rep, I think.)

And yes, the text is already retrieved and sent along with the page, but it's completely non-obvious you can find it the title text IMHO.

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I totally agree, sometimes people feel a little begrudged because their question got closed

Off course we could leave a comment explaining why it was closed, but it would be a lot clearer if this explanation was highlighted.

While this is only required these borderline cases, it's better to prevent confusion than having to solve it later on

@Jeff: Should we leave a comment with further explanations or would it be possible to manually edit the message with something relevant for that question?

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  • Or the user just silently leaving, thinking they were rebuked or chastised for asking the difference between char* and char[].
    – Gnome
    Commented Jan 15, 2010 at 15:26
  • Though you didn't ask me.. a comment in situations where the generic text is insufficient seems fine, and I'm not sure what benefit there'd be from a special mechanism, not to mention it'd increase complexity in the backend, frontend, and for users.
    – Gnome
    Commented Feb 8, 2010 at 10:49

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