Reviewing Close Votes

Question

I've been reviewing close votes that don't seem to fit any of the available categories for voting to close. The questions are reasonably good, there's enough background, they don't need to go to ELL (although they might have been welcome there in the first place). What has happened is that they've been briefly and pertinently answered (in comments) by one or two (or four or five) people, the OP has said "thanks", and there's really nothing more to say. As closed, they remain re-openable in the event someone wants to pose a more comprehensive answer. But they're complete, helpful, and finished as they stand. What about adding a reason like "Taken care of", "Fully Handled," "You can put a fork in me, I'm done."

Would something like "close because complete" work? Or "We're finished here" or "We Be Done" or "That's All Folks"

Answer 1

Help center explains:

Closing is a democratic voting process where the community identifies questions that duplicate existing content, are unreasonable to answer in their current state, or do not belong on the site.

When reviewing a question from the Close Votes queue, regardless of what partial or complete answers you see in the comments, judge the question solely on its merits, and if it is close-worthy, close it, or if not, don't.

If you notice an on-topic question poorly worded, tagged or formatted, edit to improve it.

If you need closure for a (clearly on-topic) question in the other sense, that is, a sense of resolution or completion, to save it from forever zombieing around in the 'unanswered' list, you can:

1. Properly answer it, while taking advantage of all relevant information available in the comments under it, and adding sugar, spice and everything nice to make your answer genuinely yours, and give credit where it's due.
2. Make a community wiki answer, where you simply quote the most useful parts of the partial (or complete) answers given in the comments, which becomes a great answer somehow, and it is simply a courtesy, not a rule, to not grab reputation off of it.
3. Request the users who answered in the comments to make a proper answer, and forever wait for them to really care.

Good on-topic questions will always remain open, to welcome new answers with more information.

Getting answers 'accepted' under questions from new users is a rare sight, as most of them would simply read some answers and be on their way and never return.

Answer 2

Your suggestion completely goes against the principles of Stack Exchange. Questions are here to stay and if somebody thinks they can provide a better answer than the existing ones, they should always be able to do so without going through the process of reopening the question first. In contrast to many forums, we do not have a problem with old questions being revived for this purpose – there are even badges for this. Questions being solved is indicated by accepted answers.

Closing on the other hand is intended for questions where answers cause problems, e.g., because we cannot objectively vote on them (primarily opinion-based, strictly off-topic), there are too many of them, or they are too long (too broad), they create redundancy or fragmented information (duplicate).

People answering questions in a comment is a problem, but none that we should take care of by closing said questions.

Answer 3

Many questions that are answered only in comments ought to be closed because of the already existing close reasons. Many of these are closed eventually; some are not. I often answer a question in a comment to help the OP and then immediately VTC.

For a user to VTC a good question because its comments seem to him to be

complete, helpful, and finished as they stand

is....I wish I could think of a kinder word....arrogant. Just because I can't think of anything to add to a set of comments doesn't mean that there isn't some aspect I have not thought of (and don't know enough to think of) that could be addressed. Moreover, we are always hearing that comments are ephemeral; only answers are permanent. Thus, a question is not answered until it has an Answer. Then, logically, if one has a VTC reason "completed", that should apply to a question which has been completely answered by one or more Answers. Ergo, our aim is to get every question on this site to the point where it can be closed as completed? I think not.