##Guidelines for reviewing Close Votes ### Basic workflow 1. You may select filters to focus on a particular category. Selecting a set of tags you are familiar with will allow you to focus on questions within your own areas of expertise. There may still be many situations where skipping is vastly preferable over hastily forming an opinion. 2. Each question will ask you "Should this question be closed as X?", however you may vote to close for any reason, or leave open. These reasons are based on the existing close votes and recommend closure flags, and usually accurately identify the "risk" area for the post. ### Off-topic Each site has its own scope as to what questions are considered on- and off-topic, and some specific types of questions may be considered off-topic even though they are related to the site's general scope. For example, on Puzzling, questions without a citation as to where the puzzle came from are off-topic, and on Stack Overflow, questions lacking a clear example of code are off-topic. Note that some of the other close reasons can also apply to such questions, but you should close those as off-topic with the specific reason that applies to them if one exists. For example, product recommendations aren't accepted on most sites as they are considered too subjective; while the "Opinion-based" close reason technically *does* apply to them, if an off-topic canned reason about recommendations exists, you should close with that. This is so that the author will be directed to more specific resources regarding their question. You also have the option to vote to close as off-topic with a custom comment reason as to why the question should be marked off-topic, instead of a canned reason. This is useful for questions that are *blatantly* off-topic (if no canned reason to that effect exists), or for questions that are *just* outside of a site's scope and could use clarification as to why they're off-topic. Finally, if the question is off-topic on that site, but would be a good, on-topic question on another site in the network, you can vote it for *migration*. For more information, see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work. We regard [the help center](https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) of each site as the ultimate guide to what is and is not on topic. When in doubt, consult there. ### Needs detail or clarity The text in the closing dialog is self-explanatory: *please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.* ### Needs more focus The text in the closing dialog is self-explanatory: *Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. Avoid asking multiple distinct questions at once. See the [How to Ask](https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) page for help clarifying this question.* ### Opinion-based Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. Note [Gorilla v. Shark questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) almost always fall under this category. *However*, please note there are exceptions - in Gorilla v. Shark, Jeff uses the question, "Are Google+ Circles better UX for sharing among friends than Facebook Groups?" as an imperfect but potentially salvageable question. ### Duplicate 1. Remember we are asking whether an [*answer* is found at the duplicate-linked question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166514/183887) moreso than whether the questions are identical. You should look at the question linked and verify that it has an *answer* to the question being proposed for closure. If it doesn't, it should not be closed as a duplicate. (You can't vote to close questions as duplicates when the proposed target has no upvoted or accepted answer(s).) 2. If the proposed duplicate target is closed with another reason, then evaluate whether the question should be closed as a duplicate of that. If the question you're reviewing is of better quality than the duplicate target, leave open.