The Closing Problem: This needs to be reconsidered [duplicate]

Question

TLDR version: Too many people can vote to close. People are overzealous when it comes to voting to close. Questions that get closed will very likely remain so because they attract little attention. This needs to be fixed.

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As of last month, there are 6,279 users who can cast close votes, and the number will grow. Unfortunately, the chances of questions getting wrongfully (or not) closed will increase proportionally, since there is currently no way to counteract close votes besides voting to reopen after a question has been closed.

I think this goes against the community-driven model that SO follows. It's no longer the "Community" that can close the question; but a tiny minority of it - 5 (five) users, is all it takes. We now have the "tyranny of the minority." It is also impossible for someone to rescind their close vote even if they feel the question should no longer be closed. In the current setup, there is no way to go but down.

I know this has been suggested before, and has been ignored for unknown reasons, but it's starting to bother me. We should be able to either:

• Rescind a close vote. Example: User posts a vague question. Close votes are cast. User adds sufficient detail to the question, but I can no longer rescind my vote and there are 4 close votes already. One more person comes along and votes to close. Question is closed. User gets demotivated. If it's a new user, might never come back.

• Vote not to close: I disagree with the close votes being cast. I cast a vote not to close and this decreases the close vote count by some amount.

Or do both. The system as it is is broken IMHO. It was a year ago two years ago, it's even more so today, with more users having this ability. It's apparent that a good deal of stackers support these two suggestions. But for some reason Jeff doesn't like them. Perhaps you could explain the rationale on why they shouldn't be implemented?

Answer 1

This has been discussed quite a few times. What I think needs to happen is that we need a second dimension of true voting. For instance right now there is "Interesting and Uninteresting(or right/wrong for answers)" for up and down votes respectively. What needs to happen is a second dimension for "Belongs here and Doesn't belong here".

The number of close votes each person has per day should stay the same but they should be able to cast a "keep open" vote. It would still come out of their close vote count but it'd be the equivalent of a reopen vote. In this way you wouldn't have the mayhem of popular yet subjective questions where the question closes and reopens 10 times in an hour.

So basically whenever the open score reaches -5 then it should be closed, and if it's closed then the open score should have to reach +5 to reopen. In this way forcing a question to flip flop between open and closed is much more difficult and requires many more votes. Also, we need a way to undo our close/reopen votes.

Answer 2

I noted that you voted to re-open, but you didn't edit the question.

What is the R? was the original title. If I saw that I would say, "What the heck is that? Are they even talking about programming?"

You could have edited the question and made it better for others, so that someone else who may come along could vote to re-open, or an original closer could see the actual question and vote to re-open.

You have the power to close, and that means you have the power to edit. Use them in tandem. Before you vote to close under those grounds, see if you can clean up the question first.

Answer 3

Compare and contrast: Should we encourage more closing?

Needless to say, I disagree with your feeling that too many questions are being closed. We need some quality control (with crowd sourcing that is always an issue), but we also need more questions closed and faster with fewer inappropriate re-openings if possible.

Answer 4

Let me see if I can dissect this. The original question, as closed, read thusly:

What is the R ?

There are a lot of questions about R.

What is R?

That's a direct copy-and-paste. That's what got closed. While I'd agree that the accepted answer was rude, the original question was poorly-worded, vague and open-ended. I would have voted to close it, too. About the only actually decent content on that entire page is Shane's answer. Yes, it's a copy-and-paste from the FAQ, but at least it contributes something more than a link to the site.

It's been argued in the past, by myself and others, that there are frankly not enough questions getting closed. Even as rewritten by George Stocker (which happened after the reopening), I'd still vote to close it as NaRQ. And have. (And reopening was irrelevant anyway; the OP got his needed answer and more.)

I would not say that closed questions are doomed -- the community has a long history of reopening incorrectly-closed questions. (And also reopening correctly-closed questions; pobody's nerfect.)

In short, correct closure, and if there's any adjustment to the system that I think ought to be made, it'd be bumping up the rep requirement to vote for reopening, while leaving the ability to close at 3,000. (Except on one's own posts, of course.)

Answer 5

Questions that receive close votes are doomed.

Absolutely not! They can be reopened just as easily.

It's no longer the "Community" that can close the question; but a tiny minority of it - 5 (five) users, it's all it takes

I think you should be able to cast a re-open vote before a question is closed (or an "unvote" to close). That way we could avoid the question bouncing between closed/open while we sort it out.