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Now that we have revised reasons to close questions and have many fewer questions to deal with, how about reducing the daily limit on reviews, especially votes to close?

This would give others a chance to acquire skills in this area and earn such points and badges as may be available. I think two a day, max three, would be good to limit domination by a few users and open up opportunities for wider participation.

17
  • 1
    I wonder, though: is SE practically capable and willing to change how many reviews people get to do?
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Dec 3 at 21:35
  • 2
    It needs to be clarified what is meant by 'limit on reviews, especially votes to close' in this question. Reviewing and voting to close are different activities on this site.
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 3 at 22:03
  • @jsw29. Indeed. I was speaking of the review queues when I wrote it. A user has a daily allotment of 20 for each. A user also has 24 close votes per day, as I understand it. I’d reduce that too.
    – Xanne
    Commented Dec 4 at 5:03
  • 1
    The majority of users simply don't visit the review queues. Those same users who hardly ever cast votes to close or reopen posts when there were over 100+ posts, still don't exercise that "privilege" since the size of the queues have whittled down and since the number of votes needed to shut down a question has been reduced to three. That's the main reason why we have the same users who frequently close questions. It's become much easier now.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 4 at 11:09
  • 2
    Reducing twenty/twenty-four votes to only two or three in the unproven hope that more users, with the necessary rep, will be encouraged to visit reviews will only succeed in pissing off those users who sincerely believe they are doing a thankless task in maintaining standards. Some close voters rarely visit queues also. And what about posts that are really bad? That are off topic (not spam) or consist of one line, do these all get shifted to ELL?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 4 at 11:37
  • Also, in case this needs to be said, the proposal should be approved and passed by SE staff, moderators do not have this power to reduce the limit.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 4 at 12:03
  • Do the moderators have access to any statistical data about what percentage of the questions that are closed by the frequent closers got reopened eventually? If so, could they provide it to us (in suitably general terms, without specifically naming anybody)? That might help to informs the discussion of this matter.
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 5 at 21:22
  • 1
    Yes, SE staff would have to approve. I had thought we had control of this, but we don’t. So it has become pointless. Sorry to have bothered all of you.
    – Xanne
    Commented Dec 5 at 21:46
  • 2
    Please, please, please let's do this!!!!
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Dec 6 at 11:36
  • @jsw29 No, not really. Plus the public SEDE lacks that information. We'd have to prevail upon a friendly CM to crunch the numbers for us, because only Stack Exchange employees have access to raw vote information at that granularity that they could collate it.
    – tchrist Mod
    Commented Dec 7 at 20:44
  • Voting to close a question does not award any reputation points, and for a good reason, it would be too easy to abuse. Earning a badge just means you have an extra badge on your profile card.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 8 at 10:22
  • 1
    @KillingTime A question should not have to be closed to encourage and allow responses to users’ questions for clarification.
    – Xanne
    Commented yesterday
  • 1
    Closing a question has to be considered an act that is discouraging and unfriendly. This is even more true when there are fewer new questions. It used to be that there were so many that site readability was in danger. That’s not true today.
    – Xanne
    Commented yesterday
  • 1
    @tchrist A while back I wrote--and published in chat--a SEDE query that listed which users cast the most close votes that then got overturned by subsequent reopens. I can find it again and share it if you'd like.
    – alphabet
    Commented 21 hours ago
  • 1
    @KillingTime Far better to have answers that might be invalidated than to have no answers at all. A question getting closed is, I think, near-universally seen as unwelcoming and punitive; people who don't understand that are part of the problem.
    – alphabet
    Commented 21 hours ago

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I agree with this. Currently all the current limit does is offer people the chance to earn housekeeping badges by voting to close questions upon only the most cursory of inspections.

This practice is inimical to the notion that SE sites should be welcoming and helpful. It says to newcomers that we are disdainful of those who do not already know what they are asking to know.

Further, I would suggest we get rid of the repetitive badge bounty for closing questions. Hostile behavior shouldn't be rewarded. Earn badges by being helpful, not hurtful.

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    You do know that you can counterbalance the close voters by visiting the review queue and vote to keep more questions open. Indifference is as harmful as "hostility".
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 2 at 22:37
  • How are my remarks here an example of indifference?
    – Robusto
    Commented Dec 3 at 4:58
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    Actions speak louder than words.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 3 at 5:41
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    How about voting o reopen this question, which has been closed twice?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 3 at 9:37
  • Too late. But I do vote to reopen questions, though that is a separate issue. If platitudes are what you seek, how about "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"?
    – Robusto
    Commented Dec 3 at 13:17
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    @Robusto Hear hear!
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Dec 3 at 15:29
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    How do you know that these close voters are doing it to earn more badges? I stopped caring about badges after the first year. Maybe this hardcore of users care more about standards and quality than we do. Accusing them of hostile behaving is not helpful either. Although I agree too many on topic questions (and potentially good ones) are arbitrarily and swiftly closed even after a few hours I see very very few users who actively do something to salvage these questions, e.g editing or voting to keep the questions open. Five or six users, maybe; you're not in that group.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 4 at 11:49
  • 1
    If it walks like a duck ...
    – Robusto
    Commented Dec 4 at 14:08
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    @Mari-LouA, one of the unfortunate deficiencies in the architecture of this site is that there is no such thing as 'voting to keep the questions open'. One can vote to reopen a question after it has been closed, but one cannot do anything between the first and the third vote to close to prevent its closing. One can click on leave open from within the review queue, but that has no real effect (it helps to remove the question from the queue, but it does not counter the votes to close).
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 4 at 21:03
  • Whatever can be said for and against this proposal, I agree with @Mari-LouA that referring to the badges is a red herring here. The experienced contributors to this site are sophisticated, educated people who are unlikely to be motivated by such absurd incentives as the badges.
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 4 at 21:09
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    @jsw29 The point is, I see the same names under nearly all the closed questions. That cannot be coincidence, and if it is as you seem to think done out of a spirit of conscientiousness, then maybe those few people could work on being conscientious about something else besides closings.
    – Robusto
    Commented Dec 5 at 20:58
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    @jsw29 They were trained on badges. The badges further provide evidence that their behaviour is deemed valuable and beneficial by the community. Which is why this needs to be changed.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Dec 6 at 13:11
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    This answer is focused on the effects of unjustified closing on the 'newcomers' whose questions are closed. Its other effects, which should also be taken into account, are the creation of extra work for those who need to reopen the wrongly closed questions.
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 7 at 16:47
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    @Mari-LouA, no, the support expressed on this page for reducing the daily limit on close-votes, is not support for reverting to requiring five votes to close. These are different possible changes; if you want to propose the latter, a separate discussion would be needed.
    – jsw29
    Commented Dec 8 at 16:38
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    @Mari-LouA It didn't used to be feasible when we got 50 questions per day. But now we only have 7-10. A limit of 3 close votes per day is eminently reasonable and will also stop users spreading into closing popular well received questions from many years ago.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Dec 9 at 19:34
4

It turns out that limiting reviews per user per day (now set SE-wide at 20] is less important that reducing close votes per day per user, which is set at 24. Whether ELU has control over this is not clear, but if we do, it should be reduced to, say, 3.

The generic problem here is that these numbers do not respond to the number of questions asked. The decline in questions per day or week thus lets a few people control the questions that make it through.

There are questions posted and closed without even half a day available to the poster to reply or respond to a question to clarify a posting. It seems to me posters should have 24 hours to respond, as access may be convenient only once a day.

An answer may be being drafted while the question is simultaneously being closed. Thus there’s a two-year-old closed question with a highly up-voted answer by the late linguist John Lawler.

I realize changes to SE in its entirety are pointless to pursue, but local ones (that 24!) may be worthwhile.

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  • Regarding your third paragraph: I agree that the questioner should have some reasonable time to respond to the comments when it looks like that could turn the question into something that fits the character of this site. But some questions are so obviously off topic that no amount of editing would make them viable, and some are so unintelligible that one doesn't know what specific requests for clarification to make. Such questions are better closed swiftly.
    – jsw29
    Commented 2 days ago
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    The first paragraph of this answer clearly articulates a definite proposal, which was suggested by the question itself. What has been posted on this page so far (1) expresses approval of the idea, or (2) presents alternative proposals that go in the same direction, or (3) expresses doubts whether something like this can be implemented without cooperation of the SE 'headquarters', which may not be forthcoming, or (4) deals with tangential issues. So far as I can see, nobody has so far expressed general disagreement with the idea, i.e. nobody has denied that closing-hyperactivity is a problem.
    – jsw29
    Commented 2 days ago

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