In my view, questions are being closed too readily - how do we change this?
I am a relatively new regular on WorldBuilding being only here for a bit under 2 years. I enjoy coming here and giving people wonderful ideas or explanations, in particular in areas of my expertise, that may assist them in their quest for new knowledge.
However throughout this time I have noticed, and have the opinion that, we are too ready to close questions. This is, I believe, a failure of the system, not necessarily the voters themselves.
Don't get me wrong, the closure of a question is sometimes justified - but this is rare. In most cases of closure, questions are worth answering as the answers would be useful to not just the poster, but others whom may be interested in a variety of answers. The question need not be perfect, just good enough to allow canvassing of answers.
The two common closure reasons I object to are the "primarily opinion based" and "off-topic" reasons. The issue is the application of these two reasons are subjective, difficult to determine specifically, and in my view are frankly not that important enough to dismiss a question, yet they are being used too freely. When used, posters are always confused and often say so.
And closing a question down is a big deal: it inhibits free discussion, it discourages the questioner, it discourages answerers, appears final, looks condescending and it is confusing. It also sends messages to potential questioners and makes them think twice about posting. The question is also shut down forever: I have never seen a question reopen after it is closed in my time, however perhaps it occasionally happens.
So I put forth the view:
- These two reasons should be deleted, or if they remain, should be constrained severely or defined to the utmost precision.
- The threshold for closing questions is 3000 reputation points. This in my view is far too low, and users with only a short time of experience have the power to close questions. I would recommend increasing to at least 10,000.
- Closed questions should still accept answers. There is no good reason why it should not.
- When a question is closed a recommendation must be made to fix it, or at a minimum a reason for closing must be given.
- If a question is closed, it should be then allowed to reopened by the OP. This allows them to rephrase/edit the question and not wait for the Closers to reopen, which they may also never get around to.
Again, I say it is not really worth closing down so many questions for the cost of them being closed. Does anyone recommend other suggestions of how to change this?