I'd like to focus on an aspect that hasn't been addressed yet. Namely, the edit and reopen rate. During the experiment, the site had an atypically high Close->Edit->Reopen rate. I don't believe that was by chance.

Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened. I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site. That's a very, very good thing.

All of us share a common goal of creating high quality content for the site. Robert's answer very eloquently addresses why it is imperative for us to get rid of the crap questions quickly. This site simply doesn't have the volume of quality questions to drown out the crap questions, so we need to be diligent in cleaning the site.

If we treat active users' time as a zero-sum game, then it's fair to explore how we want them investing their time. Personally, I would much rather they focus on editing the salvageable questions in order to foster higher quality content. I think the experiment created the right conditions to allow active users to focus on more valuable contributions.

All that said, I understand there is disagreement in how to interpret these results. I believe that the true results of the experiment may be masked by the relatively short duration of the experiment and natural fluctuations in the various rates.

I'd suggest re-running the experiment but for an extended period of time. At a minimum, let's see what happens after 3 months. Or more preferably, let's run the next experiment for 6 months and then analyze the results. Arguably the only risk is that we'll close more questions than perhaps ought to be closed. On the other hand, we should see higher quality questions resulting from the additional editing that can be provided.

I'd like to focus on an aspect that hasn't been addressed yet. Namely, the edit and reopen rate. During the experiment, the site had an atypically high Close->Edit->Reopen rate. I don't believe that was by chance.

Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened. I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site. That's a very, very good thing.

All of us share a common goal of creating high quality content for the site. Robert's answer very eloquently addresses why it is imperative for us to get rid of the crap questions quickly. This site simply doesn't have the volume of quality questions to drown out the crap questions, so we need to be diligent in cleaning the site.

If we treat active users' time as a zero-sum game, then it's fair to explore how we want them investing their time. Personally, I would much rather they focus on editing the salvageable questions in order to foster higher quality content. I think the experiment created the right conditions to allow active users to focus on more valuable contributions.

All that said, I understand there is disagreement in how to interpret these results. I believe that the true results of the experiment may be masked by the relatively short duration of the experiment and natural fluctuations in the various rates.

I'd suggest re-running the experiment but for an extended period of time. At a minimum, let's see what happens after 3 months. Or more preferably, let's run the next experiment for 6 months and then analyze the results. Arguably the only risk is that we'll close more questions than perhaps ought to be closed. On the other hand, we should see higher quality questions resulting from the additional editing that can be provided.