Comments on Please find other ways to hide inloved questions that prompt close
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Please find other ways to hide inloved questions that prompt close
I have not been present in the hard and very productive work performed by what must now be a pretty spectacular team for the last 10 months.
Having returned and found my cherished Electrical Engineering remade with nicer rules I feel blessed. I have boycotted the SE and neither asked or answered any questions so am happy to have a new home here.
I however have a concern that a certain measure of elitism is being allowed here for the sake of expediency. Also I believe that my and many others who have called for less closes and deletions may not have been fully heard even yet, I still see discussion now on meta here and have to wonder why everything must be binary with select people deciding for everyone.
I bring to your attention a question that was closed as being too "broad with multiple questions" in the space of less than two hours.
https://electrical.codidact.com/questions/278522
I make the plea again that closing of a question should be a last resort and only if it provides some VALUE to close the question. Having an open question provides VALUE and the close must somehow offer greater value before it should even be considered, I contend that this will be a very rare case.
Hiding a question from power users or anyone who cares is a simple and fair remedy that I have often proposed on SE and Codidact, it would be easier as it only affects the person who is bothered by the question. It would allow it to remain hidden until an edit or an answer is made and then the question could offer itself for inspection to the power user again if he has set it that way. Perhaps the OP was called away for a family emergency and did not have time to answer his own question which would possibly have remained open because the answer has VALUE even though the question was not so good.
The reason this bothers me more is that I see similar "broad questions with multiple questions" that should be closed for the same reason but are not, in fact they are answered and what is worse they were posted and answered very well by the same person who is guilty of closing similar questions by others in less time than it takes to post an answer. While this was likely a valuable FAQ type Q&A it still looks like favouritism in the end result.
https://electrical.codidact.com/questions/276105
I think both questions are valid and have VALUE and closing one and answering the other is not the spirit of Codidact. Either we close both or we find a neutral way to handle the perceived fear of open questions that some have.
Hiding them is a fair and neutral way to handle the situation. If a question gets a lot of flags for attention then it can be considered on it's merits. A check list for deciding if it MUST be closed or MAY be hidden from lists or COULD be left open to collect interest should be prepared so this action is not left as a subjective decision by a single moderator that requires begging to undo.
This has always been a flaw with SE that drives new and old folk away. When a total stranger can ruin your day when you are vulnerable and in need of answers it is not nice. I am triggered by this action for reason/s I do not know but I have seen enough comments over the years to know I am not alone. Also there is NO technical reason that a middle ground cannot be found. I had hoped this would have been baked in from the start and I am deeply sorry that I was not more present to motivate more when it might have been easier to implement but I have made these same suggestions on many of the Codidact discussion platforms in the early days with interest from others as well.
Please make Closure a rare event only for damaging questions with no VALUE. Remember that the simple ACT of posting a question on a open source public spirited Q&A platform may have been a profound achievement for the OP due to any number of reasons and that is VALUE enough for me.
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Here's the thing, and this is where I think there's a disconnect of understanding. On Stack Exchange, and to a similar extent here, question closure signals "this question is not suitable for this site in its current state". Blocking the ability to answer (which is what closing does) is therefore logical: if the question is unsuitable in its current state, so will any answers be; to leave the question open for answering is to invite answers that ultimately, a site may not want. That's unfair both to the question's author (the answers might be deleted later), and to the answers' authors (their hard work might be deleted).
On the other side of that coin, it feels unnecessarily harsh - and simply unnecessary - to the question's author, and to other users who may want to answer it. From that point of view, closure becomes an unnecessary stumbling block, and can feel rude or come across as a put-down - even if the intention is just to say "unsuitable as written; needs work".
What Stack Exchange's closure mechanism has failed to do (and, by extension, ours, since we haven't really had a chance to look at it in depth) is to bridge those two points of view. Yes, blocking the ability to answer is necessary, but how can that be done in a way that says to the author "you can do [some things] and then this will be suitable here", instead of "this is unwelcome here, go away"? I don't have ideas there - as I said, this isn't something we've really had a chance to look into - but I'm more than open to suggestions.
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