Close questions with reputation > 5K

Question

Edit 02 Mar 2021: in line with the suggestions in the comments below, I asked a new question on Quant SE Meta here, with a clearly defined and narrower scope than the previous one. With no down-votes and six up-votes (as I outline below, there is only about ~10 higher-rep users on Quant SE who regularly contribute at the moment and would engage on Meta, so 6 votes is a decent result).

Combined with the discussion under my original Quant SE meta question here, where users also expressed their preference for a more agile way to deal with low quality posts, the consensus is that we would prefer if 2 or 3 higher rep users could close low-quality questions on Quant SE (instead of the current 5).

I.e. something along the lines of this experiment or this proposal.

What would be the next steps, please, to request an implementation of this? Any guidance on this would be highly appreciated.

=============== Original Question Below ==================

This question is somewhat related to an older question on Meta SE here and directly related to my latest question on Quant Meta SE here.

The Quant SE is a relatively small community compared to some other SEs, with only two admins and only a handful of users with reputation above 5K.

Additionally, based on my experience, only a handful of "higher-reputation users" (say rep > 1000) regularly dedicate their time to answering questions (perhaps 10, sometime more, other times less). Quant SE regularly receives "burts" or lower-quality questions that should not feature on the site, mainly for the following reasons:

• too basic
• off topic
• simply "low quality", poorly phrased, or copy-paste homework (I am sure many other SE communities "suffer" from the same)
• career advice
• many other reasons

Due to the relatively small size of the active community on Quant SE and only two admins, I believe it would be strongly beneficial if high-reputation users (say above 5K), could either:

• single-handedly close low quality questions (until the OP improves the question, or permanently, if the question is not improved)
• make the low quality question invisible (until the OP improves the question, or permanently, if the question is not improved)

Such proposal hopefully doesn't seem "too far fetched", since 10K users on Stack Overflow can single-handedly delete questions (Edit: I learned in the comments that multiple votes would still be required, so ignore the word "single-handedly").

(so being able to close questions or make these invisible until they are improved seems like a reasonable "lower-level" privilege for - say - 5K reputation users).

Many users on Quant SE raised a similar point in the past (for example here), and the general feeling is that:

• multiple users having to vote first to close a question is time-consuming and a more agile way of dealing with low quality questions would be preferred
• with only two admins, it would be beneficial to take some burden off their shoulders (they do an amazing job, but they can't just spend their time deleting low quality posts or closing questions)
• low quality questions distract and degrade the Quant SE website (as pointed out in the example above, which I reference here one more time, some users will just naturally burn out after having to sift through really basic or low quality posts day in, day out, let alone that some finance professionals will not want to be associated with Quant SE if there are too many low quality, poorly phrazed or basic questions): therefore some Quant SE community contributors (including myself) would prefer if some low quality questions could be made invisible by higher-rep trusted community users, until they are improved (or permanently deleted, if they are not improved). Or, at the very least, it would be beneficial if low quality questions could be single-handedly closed by high-rep trusted community members (until the OP improves the question, or permanently, if the question is not improved).

I open the floor to comments and further questions, regarding my proposal,

Edit: from the comments below, the Hardware Recommendations SE model would seem great for Quant SE: if only 1 vote is required to close a question but then again only 1 other vote is required to open said question, that seems a fair and agile way to deal with low quality posts.

Alternatively, the Three voting closure linked in the comments would be an improvement too.

Could someone please clearly guide me on how I can request either of these for implementation on Quant SE?

Answer 1

Letting ordinary users, close with single vote is bad idea. That's what moderators are for.

If you think the site needs more moderators, start a new discussion on the per-site meta, gather ideas of more users, and ask the existing moderators to escalate it to the CM team through the proper channels.

If the moderators are not active, contact the team directly via the "Contact" form (see footer on any site) and let them know. Keep in mind, in nobody is willing to step up and moderate the site, the site will be closed. Letting ordinary users do moderators job without being moderators is just wrong and won't fix anything.

Answer 2

1. Users with 10k on the SO can not single-handedly delete questions. They can vote for the deletion of closed questions, but it needs at least 3 deletion votes. Only mods can single-handedly delete questions (happens rarely), and their OP, if it has not yet multiple answers or an upvoted answer.

2. Users with a golden tag badge (tag score >= 1000) can single-handedly close or reopen questions as dupe (except if they did not edit its tags before). But that is so also on other sites (some sites have no users with golden tag badge or only a very little).

On the hardwarerecs SE, even a single vote is enough to close or reopen questions, and being a beta site, everybody with >= 500 rep can do that. I think it is too dangerous, what if I mislook something? Anyways it is a bitter feeling to cause harm, particularly that a mod nearly on the spot appears and also deletes it. I would be more happy to get only a fifth of this bitterness. I think the HwRecs would do it better, if at least 2 votes would be needed and the mods would not do this.

Android SE is the opposite side: they have not enough reviewers, probably because they too early left beta. For example, sometimes it takes weeks to get a decision for my edit suggestions. I believe, that site should get back the beta privilege levels (but without an actual downgradation).

About your site: the problem with such power is that it leads to misuse, and tends to fix a small group of power users in the site. They avoid others to get high rep, because they close the well-answerable questions.

In my opinion, the major, and maybe only, factor to decide the power of the reviewers, and the reputation levels for the votes, is that the site has enough reviewers (voters) or not. Your post states that you have enough reviewers and votes. In my opinion, this is an argument for the opposite: to decrease their power or to increase the privilege levels.