I'm wondering if there's any data/statistics on the percentage of close votes that age away vs end in closure vs end with the question being reopened here on Worldbuilding. Perhaps even some breakdown of questions closed by close reason would be useful? Maybe even a breakdown by tag?
As we discuss site policies it would be nice to have hard numbers to look at on occasion.
I spent a bit of time digging into this. I looked at the past 365 of questions posted on the site to get the numbers. Here is what I found:
Over the past 365 days, there were 6,534 questions asked, of these:
Breaking these numbers down by close reasons, here are the total number of *flags/votes on questions, and then total number of those votes/flags that aged away by close reason:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
| Flag/Close Vote Reason | # Flags / CVs | # Flags / CVs Aged Away |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
| Too broad | 4394 | 881 |
| Primarily opinion-based | 2892 | 601 |
| Off-topic This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the sco | 2393 | 424 |
| Unclear what you're asking | 2108 | 389 |
| Off-topic You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about buil | 1202 | 322 |
| Duplicate | 1196 | 186 |
| Off-topic Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong) | 164 | 48 |
| Off-topic This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network | 62 | 1 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
I also looked at the questions that had been closed and then received reopen votes/flags to see how many of them aged away.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------+
| Close Reason | # Reopen Votes | # Reopen Votes Aged Away |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------+
| Too broad | 152 | 4 |
| Off-topic This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the sco | 111 | 0 |
| Unclear what you're asking | 111 | 3 |
| Primarily opinion-based | 98 | 9 |
| Off-topic You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about buil | 60 | 2 |
| Duplicate | 52 | 2 |
| Off-topic Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong) | 4 | 0 |
| Off-topic This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network | 3 | 0 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------+
Far fewer reopen votes were cast, so even less of them aged away, but over the past year, approximately 19% of close votes/flags aged away.
As requested here are the comparisons to the other sites on the network for Pct Aged Away:
+---------------------------------------------------+---------------+
| Site Name | Pct Aged Away |
+---------------------------------------------------+---------------+
| Freelancing Stack Exchange | 54.18 |
| Esperanto Language Stack Exchange | 47.58 |
| Artificial Intelligence Stack Exchange | 45.88 |
| Martial Arts | 42.35 |
| Sustainable Living | 40 |
| Stack Overflow | 37.59 |
| Homebrew | 33.33 |
| Coffee Stack Exchange | 31.86 |
| Linguistics | 30.97 |
| Super User | 29.88 |
| Health Stack Exchange | 29.16 |
| Graphic Design | 28.75 |
| 3D Printing Stack Exchange | 28.54 |
| Chinese Language and Usage | 28.16 |
| Mythology Stack Exchange | 26.9 |
| History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange | 26.53 |
| Audio-Video Production | 26.31 |
| Programmers | 25.67 |
| Arduino Stack Exchange | 24.88 |
| Tridion Stack Exchange | 24.75 |
| Computer Science | 24.64 |
| Software Recommendations Stack Exchange | 24.39 |
| Amateur Radio Stack Exchange | 24.22 |
| Photography | 24.11 |
| Open Data Stack Exchange | 23.95 |
| Project Management | 23.9 |
| Jewish Life and Learning | 23.78 |
| Open Source Stack Exchange | 23.51 |
| Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Repair | 22.96 |
| Emacs Stack Exchange | 22.77 |
| Server Fault | 22.65 |
| Game Developers | 22.65 |
| German Language and Usage | 22.24 |
| elementary OS Stack Exchange | 22.07 |
| Beer Stack Exchange | 21.95 |
| Quantitative Finance | 21.69 |
| Startups Stack Exchange | 21.4 |
| Pets Stack Exchange | 21.26 |
| Law Stack Exchange | 21.17 |
| Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange | 21.11 |
| Expatriates Stack Exchange | 20.97 |
| Literature | 20.75 |
| Economics | 20.69 |
| Korean Language Stack Exchange | 20.59 |
| Ebooks Stack Exchange | 20.41 |
| Cognitive Sciences | 19.99 |
| Worldbuilding Stack Exchange | 19.75 |
| Latin Language Stack Exchange | 19.75 |
| The Great Outdoors | 19.66 |
| CiviCRM Stack Exchange | 19.08 |
| Cooking | 18.97 |
| Moderators Stack Exchange | 18.75 |
| Music Fans Stack Exchange | 18.16 |
| Philosophy | 17.7 |
| WordPress | 17.16 |
| Buddhism Stack Exchange | 17.14 |
| Chess | 17.11 |
| Politics | 17.11 |
| Arts & Crafts Stack Exchange | 17.11 |
| Lifehacks Stack Exchange | 17.06 |
| Writers | 16.75 |
| Theoretical Computer Science | 16.62 |
| Raspberry Pi | 16.18 |
| Retrocomputing Stack Exchange | 15.98 |
| Sitecore Stack Exchange | 15.59 |
| Internet of Things Stack Exchange | 15.55 |
| Computer Graphics Stack Exchange | 15.49 |
| Gardening and Landscaping | 15.31 |
| Biology | 15.3 |
| Stack Overflow на русском | 15.2 |
| Woodworking Stack Exchange | 15.18 |
| ExpressionEngine | 15.15 |
| Bicycles | 14.91 |
| Russian Language and Usage | 14.86 |
| Aviation Stack Exchange | 14.58 |
| Astronomy | 14.57 |
| Language Learning Stack Exchange | 14.14 |
| Sports | 14.09 |
| English Language Learners | 13.94 |
| Apple | 13.67 |
| Sound Design Stack Exchange | 13.63 |
| Blender Stack Exchange | 13.62 |
| Islam | 13.59 |
| Computational Science | 13.28 |
| Board and Card Games | 13.16 |
| Earth Science Stack Exchange | 13.06 |
| Hinduism Stack Exchange | 12.86 |
| Skeptics | 12.75 |
| Engineering Stack Exchange | 12.64 |
| Puzzling Stack Exchange | 12.41 |
| Movies | 12.38 |
| Personal Productivity | 12.33 |
| Japanese Language and Usage | 12.1 |
| Personal Finance and Money | 12.09 |
| Bitcoin | 12.01 |
| Windows Phone | 11.83 |
| Parenting | 11.68 |
| Android Enthusiasts | 11.63 |
| Software Quality Assurance and Testing | 11.62 |
| Biblical Hermeneutics | 11.5 |
| Role-playing Games | 11.29 |
| French Language and Usage | 10.92 |
| The Workplace | 10.87 |
| Vi and Vim Stack Exchange | 10.84 |
| MathOverflow | 10.76 |
| Christianity | 10.75 |
| Signal Processing | 10.66 |
| Science Fiction | 10.61 |
| Travel | 10.61 |
| Stack Overflow em Português | 10.11 |
| Ethereum Stack Exchange | 10.1 |
| Web Apps | 10.07 |
| Home Improvement | 9.95 |
| Mathematics | 9.56 |
| Fitness and Nutrition | 9.51 |
| Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange | 9.51 |
| Space Exploration Stack Exchange | 8.98 |
| Statistical Analysis | 8.96 |
| Portuguese Language Stack Exchange | 8.82 |
| Academia | 8.76 |
| History | 8.65 |
| Joomla Stack Exchange | 8.6 |
| Data Science Stack Exchange | 8.36 |
| Ubuntu | 8.26 |
| Code Review | 8.08 |
| Spanish Language and Usage | 7.92 |
| Patents | 7.81 |
| English Language and Usage | 7.8 |
| Salesforce | 7.8 |
| SharePoint | 7.76 |
| Stack Overflow en español | 7.74 |
| Genealogy and Family History | 7.5 |
| Hardware Recommendations Stack Exchange | 7.46 |
| Monero Stack Exchange | 7.44 |
| Database Administrators | 7.31 |
| Magento | 7.28 |
| Gaming | 7.26 |
| LEGO® | 7.19 |
| Italian Language Stack Exchange | 7.14 |
| Poker | 7.01 |
| IT Security | 6.91 |
| User Experience | 6.86 |
| Craft CMS Stack Exchange | 6.69 |
| Physics | 6.66 |
| Code Golf | 6.6 |
| Musical Practice and Performance | 6.39 |
| Drupal Answers | 6.3 |
| Electronics and Robotics | 6.27 |
| Mathematica | 6.22 |
| Anime and Manga | 5.89 |
| Unix and Linux | 5.64 |
| Robotics | 5.2 |
| Cryptography | 5.06 |
| Chemistry | 4.65 |
| GIS | 4.62 |
| Stack Apps | 4.4 |
| Webmasters | 3.52 |
| TeX - LaTeX | 3.32 |
| Tor Stack Exchange | 3.18 |
| Network Engineering Stack Exchange | 1.44 |
+---------------------------------------------------+---------------+
I don't know if votes that age away are tracked anywhere.
Users with 10k rep can see some close/reopen statistics for the last 90 days. For each close reason, it includes the number closed, the number of those that were reopened, the number edited, and the number edited and reopened, like this:
(I don't have time to figure out how to make that into a nice table. Anybody who does, feel free to edit!)
"Too broad" is by far our biggest closure reason, at 34% of closures. This also seems like the one where edits would help a lot, and, in fact, more than a third of them got edited. But only a small fraction got reopened. Is that because people aren't noticing and voting to reopen, or because the edits aren't enough? ("Primarily opinion-based" is the next-most-common reason and has a similar pattern.)
I suggest a deeper review of "too broad". What can we do to help those questions get fixed and reopened?
