Lately I've been seeing quite a few “general reference” and “proofreading” close votes that seem inappropriate to me. For example:
- General reference: “At least one” - singular or plural subject?
There is overwhelming agreement that “at least one” is singular in number, but in answering the question, I could not find a source that explains why the consensus answer is correct, clearly and unambiguously. I suspect that people felt the question was too basic, and they assumed that there must be a general reference that answers the question, but so far as I can tell it doesn't actually exist. (I'll note that tchrist did at least link to an ngram that strongly suggests the correct answer, but I don't accept that an ngram alone is sufficient to answer or close a question – ngrams have too many pitfalls, and they don't tell you why an answer is correct.)
- Proofreading: Do I use adjective forms of concurrent and consecutive?
The explanatory text for this close vote states, “Proofreading questions are off-topic unless a specific source of concern in the text is clearly identified.” This question does clearly identify a specific source of concern: whether to use an adjective or adverb in a specific context. I've seen other examples of this recently too.
Both of these questions are pretty basic, and neither one showed much in the way of research effort, so I would understand if people simply downvoted them. However, I don't think we should be voting to close as off-topic unless the questions actually fit the close reasons!