A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in The Trouble With Popularity article:
we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they need that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...
While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores despite piling on of close votes. All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.
High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this signal is much stronger than the subtle hint of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ("it's okay to ask about roses here...").
The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like broken windows?
Recent examples for review:
I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:
Real questions have answers. Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click here...
Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason (opinion based) looks like a fit. As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.
"...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?" - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?
Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance. And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, system simply wouldn't let them tell.)
"I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting." - If that doesn't make it a shopping list question then I don't know what it makes.
The revision history suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were just shopping and there's nothing else on their mind.
If someone tried to "derive" a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and different question.
- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code
Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:
Questions asking for advice on what to do are not practical answerable questions (e.g. "what job should I take?", or "what skills should I learn?"). Questions should get answers explaining why and how to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click here...
Granted, I think that our own education advice close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason (too broad) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.
And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:
Real questions have answers. Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click here...
Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason ("mentor's concern"). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.
I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... <example how JSON looks like> <example how CSV looks like> ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?
If memory serves, the close reason I picked was too broad. The majority of voters have chosen opinion based which also looks like a reasonable match (Gorilla vs. Shark).
If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired organically due to great content, I'd probably ask for a historical lock. But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.
For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing "lock the question" from any substantial changes I could think of.
One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the question about indentation width. It looks possible to convert it to a collaborative effort question. If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. "Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own."
