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I just went though the closure review queue, consisting of a couple dozen questions with close votes. At least 75 percent of these questions were not even remotely closeable according to the guidelines we are supposed to be using. How in the world are 146234, 146638, 146500, 146576, and 146597 "off-topic"? (Most of the close votes use the "generally available reference" copout, yet these questions are mostly grammar questions that cannot be easily answered using dictionaries, thesauruses, text corpora, or widely available language references or style guides.) How are 146538 and 146612 "primarily opinion-based"? This is insanity.

Some of these will eventually be closed, which is unfortunate and should be reversed, but at least in those cases the users who voted to close will become known and can be held accountable. In a way, though, I'm more irritated about the ones that won't: frivolous close votes clog up the queue and make me waste my time wading through them. Without necessarily asking for names, I'd really like to know whether these close votes are getting anything approaching a broad consensus, or if there's just a handful of overzealous users running around voting to close any question that looks at them the wrong way.

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    How in the world are 146234, 146638, 146500, 146576, and 146597 "off-topic"? -- without that sentence, this Q. would have been close voted, at least by me, for being no more than a peeve. Now you have one lead to understand why some Qs. deserve to be close voted. I had to say this as I do close vote some Qs: "Where's the homework?". If OP expects anything beyond what is GR, that needs to be clearly explained, and that makes for different kind of Q altogether. That's just one point.
    – Kris
    Jan 18, 2014 at 14:13
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    146638 is very GR. It is about whether a singular subject should be used with ‘is’ or ‘are’. That can be found in any English grammar. The answer to 146576 can be found in any good dictionary (‘neither of’ + plural, or ‘neither’ + singular). The rest I would agree are not off-topic.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Jan 18, 2014 at 17:57
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    What does GR mean?
    – Martin F
    Jan 18, 2014 at 23:06
  • I guess GR = general reference.
    – Martin F
    Jan 19, 2014 at 4:54
  • Yep. GR = General Reference. Which means "This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information."
    – Chris
    Jan 19, 2014 at 4:55
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    This site has an opportunity to become a valuable General Reference site. That is, it arguably should contain high-quality definitive basic questions and definitive answers. Then any further such questions can be marked as duplicates of the definitive one. Then, this site will be a more attractive and popular go-to site for language questions, rather than being just a niche "elitist" site.
    – Craig McQueen
    Jan 22, 2014 at 3:34

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I'll give you specific statistics about the five questions you link, but there's no easy way that I can think of to get at data in general:

0 users voted to close 5 questions
0 users voted to close 4 questions
2 users voted to close 3 questions
1 user voted to close 2 questions
7 users voted to close 1 question

That at least seems suggestive that there is no secret cabal going about casting close votes.

Most of the close votes use the "generally available reference" copout, yet these questions are mostly grammar questions that cannot be easily answered using dictionaries, thesauruses, text corpora, or widely available language references or style guides.)

Unfortunately, yes. Please vote to re-open any such questions if/when they get closed. I'm afraid this has been a problem for some time, and short of abolishing that close reason altogether, there does not seem to be an effective solution.

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