Why allow closed questions to be voted on?

Question

In seeing some of the potential solutions and problems related to this answer and question I noticed something. Why are closed questions allowed to obtain more reputation for a user?

So my recommendation(even though it's a pain to implement probably) is this(note, this includes all close votes except for migrations)

1. When a question gets closed, only the question gets retroactively marked as community wiki. By retroactive, I mean all upvotes on the question before closing are undone. Also note, downvotes are kept. This means a closed question with downvotes will always have a net negative reputation.

2. When a question is reopened, it gets retroactively assigned to the user instead of the community user. This just undoes point #1.

Details:

Point one solves these problems:

• User asks a popular, but "bikeshed" subjective question. Even if the question is closed an hour later, they may accumulate 15 upvotes. With this system, those 15 upvotes won't matter.
• Downvotes are kept to the user while being closed. This deals with low-quality questions that people should get a negative reputation affect for. However, after being closed downvotes should be assigned to the community user to prevent the downward spiral affect, especially since pitty upvotes won't be able to save them.
• People can still upvote as a method of suggesting that a question should be reopened. The upvote just won't count for the author of the question until reopened.

I see no actual point in closed questions being capable of acquiring reputation, except for maybe duplicates(but only barely).

So, here is my feature-request. :)

Also, to solve the duplicate-answer problem you could apply the same thing toward the answers of closed questions. This isn't a big problem with any close reasons other than Not A Real Question, where many low quality answers fall but with users who try to answer them anyway with the small amount of information given. I think those users should not be discredited for their attempts.

Answer 1

Ideally, closed questions are eventually deleted, except for duplicates. When this occurs, the votes accrued are lost when participants reputation is recalculated.

Further, users that can't vote to open or close can continue to show their support for the question, or against the question, by voting on it. It's something we allow so that people still feel as though they can have input in the whole process.

Generally, changing something to cw is a one way street, and changing that would probably lead to confusion, but removing reputation that has already been accrued would appear pretty hostile to users, not to mention making it so down votes still count.

Given that the reputation will be lost upon deletion, I simply don't see any reason to alter the current behavior of the system. Closing is the trial, deletion is the sentencing. The user(s) shouldn't be punished until the sentence is carried out.

Note that in some cases a closed question serves a useful purpose, such as duplicates filling out keywords for search engines. I firmly believe that if the question is useful enough to keep around in a closed state, then the person who submitted it should be eligible for any and all reputation they accrue from submitting it.

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How do we tell when a question has been definitively answered, such that we can put it in a bottle and say, "There will never, ever be anything new to be said on this topic."?

You identify several things which you believe are problems, so I'll approach them one by one:

Why are closed questions allowed to obtain more reputation for a user?

Closed questions are eventually deleted, except in the case of some duplicates. When a question is deleted, the reputation gained is lost on the next reputation recalc. Therefore closed question, ultimately, don't result in permanent reputation gain.

This is not a problem.

In other words, your feature request won't be implemented because it doesn't fix anything - the issue you are proposing as a problem is actually already dealt with through the deletion process.

Just in case this isn't clear, I'll also address your remaining issues:

• User asks a popular, but "bikeshed" subjective question. Even if the question is closed an hour later, they may accumulate 15 upvotes. With this system, those 15 upvotes won't matter.

Again, it will eventually be deleted, and the reputation gained will be lost. This is not a problem.

• Downvotes are kept to the user while being closed. This deals with low-quality questions that people should get a negative reputation affect for. However, after being closed downvotes should be assigned to the community user to prevent the downward spiral affect, especially since pitty upvotes won't be able to save them.

If reputation gain is not allowed, reputation loss should not be allowed. We shouldn't be creating an unbalanced system. Further, when the question is deleted, the downvotes would be lost anyway, so there's no real point in making it hurt the user.

• People can still upvote as a method of suggesting that a question should be reopened. The upvote just won't count for the author of the question until reopened.

This is not a problem. Once the question is deleted the reputation isn't an issue.