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The "on hold" to "closed" process is a property of the Stack Exchange software. It's not something we can change on Worldbuilding. As far as I know, it's not even possible to change the labels on a per-site basis, and even if it somehow is, the concept would still be exactly the same, and it would work just the way it does today.
We can set up custom close ...
9
Question is still there, so it can be voted on.
Downvotes and close votes are tangential to each other. Close votes are about "Should this question really be here? Is it answerable?" and votes are about "Is it well written? Was it researched before posting? Is there a chance it'll be useful for other users?".
Some questions are well written and interesting,...
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The question was closed -- by the community, not by moderation action -- as too broad ("if you can imagine a whole book being written to answer this..."). It did get an excellent and well-received answer, which is valuable content for the site. But it seems that the community, after considering it, found it too big, at least for one question. That happens ...
7
The linked question is currently on hold as "unclear what you are asking".
Begging, bribing, etc. isn't going to make the question any more clear. (In fact, neither is posting on it on Meta.)
Instead, you should follow the advice in the "put on hold" box.
put on hold as unclear what you're asking by Aify, JDługosz, Green, SJuan76, o.m. 1 hour ago
...
7
No, comments should not be closed. This is because questions being closed is a temporary measure. If and when the question has had the problems with it fixed (if that is possible) then it can be opened and the comments are a vital part of that process.
If there is specific abuse of comments happening in one question then that should be dealt with there. ...
7
According to the question timeline:
The question was asked on Physics on 2015-05-24.
On Physics, it was answered by Jimmy360, docscience, anna v, WhatRoughBeast, Loren Pechtel, Thorsten S., Cedric H., Thomas Pornin.
It was migrated from Physics to Worldbuilding on 2015-05-26. Note: Migrating a question with that many existing answers is now considered a ...
6
I just spent an hour writing an answer to a question only to discover that it is put on hold as primarily opnion-based. And this is by far not the first experience within a short time I am on this site. This is a very frustrating situation not just for the author of a question but also someone who believes the question is legit. </end rant>
Most of ...
6
Could do a wording change. Instead of "Vote to Close", "Closed", and even "On Hold", the wording could just be changed to "Paused". Everyone knows that a pause is temporary, and so seeing that your question is paused is less alarming than "Closed"...
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It's off topic for a number of reasons but the main one is very simple:
It isn't actually about world building.
He's already built the city, he's asking a very simple math question with no actual relation to trying to build a world. Imagine if I asked a question saying "I have 10 pennies each 1cm across, what is their total surface area?"
That is ...
6
One additional thing I have noticed is certain users tend to be less than cordial when commenting on closing questions. This is particularly irritating when we are talking about someone brand new to the site (I generally focus on <200 rep).
When you are new you are likely going to ask bad or malformed questions...we all know getting used to the SE ...
6
Don't add more automatic messages - the existing ones are being ignored enough
The problem is that the generic text in the boxes that are displayed on your question if it gets put "on hold" can only be that - generic text. There is no way to automatically give precise personalized feedback. The boxes already contain a number of links to helpful ...
5
I think your question needs to be more explicit (especially in the title) that it's looking for the process of naming a location rather than looking for a name.
"I have this city, what do I call it" - Opinion based
"I have this city, how do I come up with a name for it" - Opinion based
"What is the best process I can use to come up with names for a city ...
5
I think I have a litmus test for what constitutes a "primarily opinion-based" question.
Ask yourself: "What would a wrong answer to this question be?"
For the process of a place name developing, are there any wrong answers? I know of places that were named on a bet, named for game shows, named by drawing out of a hat, named for religion, named for irony (...
5
I don't have enough reputation there to use it myself, but Stack Overflow has a triage system and a help & improvement queue for posts that need a little extra help. Since that code is already written, getting access to those features seems more likely than getting something completely new like automatic temporary holds and the associated tooling.
But, ...
5
After doing a limited investigation of the questions closed as too broad (thanks for the query, DaaaaWhoosh), I noticed a few trends:
New users
Author didn't contribute meaningfully to the discussion
No discussion for close reasons
I don't think there's a lot more we can do about this specific issue.
New users are presented with the tour when they start ...
5
If you look at the question, you'll find:
Then there are the sub-questions, such as:
followed by a bullet list of questions, each of which could have been a question of its own. I think this is a good indicator that the question is too broad.
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There is a grace period for answers that are in flight when a question is closed, because it's really discouraging and frustrating to spend an hour writing a good, solid answer to a question only to have it yanked away from you five minutes before you click "post". (That's a general statement; I haven't looked at this particular question.) So, if an answer ...
4
Too broad -- too many questions
Your question was put on hold because it asks too many questions, which makes it hard to answer with a concise and focused answer and makes it hard for the community to rate answers that address only some of your questions.
Tips on how to fix:
Separate your question into multiple questions. In general we recommend asking ...
4
Dronz, I consider that your edit was a good improvement. I took your edit because the title was straight to the point but I could have either rolled back to KeithS's edit or made my own.
The original question was unclear and misleading. Several people made complains in the comments and downvoted the question because of this.
Although I understand it's the ...
4
Any edit or answer will show it as fresh again. This isn't like a common forum — posts are curated and older posts are still interesting. You don’t need “momentum” and “trendiness”.
In a fitting coincedence, I just got a gold “Great Answer” badge for a post made over a year ago (on a different SE). It was posted in January of last year, last edited in ...
4
That question is not a math problem
That question has several problems. First off, many people seem to have dismissed the question assuming it was 4th grade math problem. But carefully reading, it is not. It is asking for the area of a square, where no dimension of the square are given, and no internal clues.
So this isn't the case, like the ergosphere ...
4
I'm going to blatantly steal Monica Cellio's answer to the same question when it was asked on Mi Yodeya Meta in January 2015, because it puts it far better than I can:
There is a grace period after a question is put on hold during which an answer that was started before the question was put on hold can still be submitted. The rather-old MSE post I linked ...
3
I see a couple of options where a frustrated user could be routed to something more constructive. I think it's ok to suggest other worldbuilding communities where the focus is about open discussion and not the question/answers format. If this were a different SE topic like Astronomy or Physics where there is usually an actual answer, sending them somewhere ...
3
I ran into this issue lately, in a question about what would Romans do with a steam engine. Posted a meta question, which got closed as duplicate. ;D Forget the Bronze Age, we're firmly in the Irony Age now...
In the question in question (ha!) I did my best by suggesting that instead of asking more or less "What would they do?", OP should give his theory ...
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I still think the answer is to have all questions start out as "On Hold" until they're whitelisted as "ready for answers". New users wouldn't feel singled out then. I'd even be ok with a 1 hour hold unless allowed to go early by a moderator.
I am well aware that this conflicts with a lot of the Stack Exchange ethos, but I think that Worldbuilding has ...
3
Since your reputation is over 75, the right course of action is to set a bounty.
With a bounty, you pay some amount of your rep (at least 50) to make your question both more visible and attractive.
Of course, a bounty can be seen as quite costly but if your question is good, you have all chances of getting it back from upvotes pretty soon.
Also, if you ...
3
As a new user (long-time lurker, first time poster) I can speak to this, as my very first question was first posted in the wrong exchange (writers) and when redone here in worldbuilding was slapped with a hold so fast it made my head spin.
Specificity is great as an aid in answering a question but isn't always necessarily a requirement to do so. Case in ...
3
I’ve seen this discussed on the site-wide meta. The poster can submit the answer late, and it is accepted. Normally the browser communicates with the server and learns that the question closed, and refuses to post, within seconds or a few minutes of it happening. But that's just the browser knowing not to try submitting — if the post was in fact submitted,...
3
Firstly, @JBH should be applauded for not only raising this issue, but for providing a detailed account of his reasons for voting to close this question. I say this, despite disagreeing with those reasons, because it sets an admirably high standard for making decisions about questions on this site and in meeting the criteria for peer review. We need more ...
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