Not sure if this is a big deal at all. But it appears to me that newcomers are frequently unaware when their questions are going to get closed. And I conjecture that question quality might be raised by simply visualizing this early on.
Actually I wanted to propose an Upvote Wednesday this week, but I was foiled by a few serial lazy one-line askers. A few of those dozen closevote canditates weren't totally useless, and might have been saved by some editing. But obviously, once a question is closed, the OP seldomly touches it again.
That's why I think it might benefit SO if posters were informed when closevoting is still in progress. Newcomers obviously don't see the close(3) link due to low reputation, and thus are completely unaware of the fact until it's too late.
Also obviously closevoting is usually done without extraneous comments (not advisable anyway!). Therefore it's sort of a sudden death for the OP. He doesn't even get the chance to edit schpelling or redact misguided assumptions etc.
Proposal
Add some clutter to the UI, like closevoting duplicate (2 of 5 votes)
In case I really just overlooked it: make it shiny.
Pros
- Remote possibility that bad questions get edited if OP sees that it's going to be closed else.
- More importantly, other newcomers that answer poor questions should not be accidently punished. Answering dull duplicates will not lead to a reputation gain, if the question is closed quickly enough. But if someone takes 10 minutes to type an answer, it's cruel and overly discouraging to not even let them save it.
- I would go so far and proclaim that answer saving should be possible on closed questions - if the typing started before the final closevoting spell. (But that topic has probably been discussed before..)
- Some closevotes happen too quickly. Often rightly so. But 5 minutes is not a fair enough chance to let people edit something. (I've posted drafts too.)
- Assumption: Noobs don't post bad questions intentionally.
Cons
- UX clutter. Clearly the link shouldn't be there if the reputation doesn't allow it. But the text version is even more lengthy. And if it's OTOH to subtle, it won't change a thing.
- "closevoting (1/5)" or even "(2/5)" should not yet be displayed, because it might lead to early complaints even when there was never going to be a majority to closevote it.
- Cannot teach them a lesson!
:/
There are probably more factors to consider. And really I did search, but could not find specific previous discussions. Albeit there are related topics to take into consideration:
