Very often we get questions of the form "What does XYZ mean?", without any context to allow us to understand how "XYZ" is being used. (Eg, Meaning of “Sanely Insane”?.) One can close these as "unclear", but that itself is unclear in that it fails to refer to the lack of context.
Should one just do "Other" -- "Lacks context", or should there instead be a "proper" closing code (with some documentation behind it)?
It may be buried, but the requirement for context is covered by the "unclear what you're asking" close reason.
The "unclear" close reason contains the text
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. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.
The "How to Ask" page contains this help, amongst other information:
Be specific
If you ask a vague question, you’ll get a vague answer. But if you give us details and context, we can provide a useful answer.
This is the reason to use where context is required. Context "clarifies the specific problem". A useful answer requires the question's context.
It may also be helpful to add a comment to the answer explaining why context is necessary (and what that context might be, to give a specific example to assist the asker).
There may be a case for amending the closure text, but as it's not something under moderator control — and neither is the How to Ask page, either — we would need to demonstrate some consensus about wording in order to ask TPTB to make the change. However, it is this close reason which needs to be changed if context is to be asked for explicitly.
Since it's my understanding that the overall number of close reasons is limited and the number of custom one's is three (Cf. Meta.SE), we can't add one. Currently we have general references, missing example sentence, and proofreading in the custom slots.
I would like to enhance the unclear reason with another sentence that concerns lacking context. However, I do not know if that's the kind of request that can or will be granted by the powers that be.
I had a quick look at what the SEDE tells us about our (non-deleted) close reasons since the close reasons were revamped. Unfortunately, the custom reasons are clumped together. I don't know if the 10K or mod-tools reveal more.
101 : 4966 (Duplicate)
102 : 6766 (Off-Topic: Custom Site Reasons)
103 : 1454 (Unclear)
104 : 403 (Too Broad)
105 : 1311 (Primarily Opinion Based)
