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I'm looking at this question. And not five minutes after it was posted there's an "I'm voting to close" Comment.

Should we allow questions a grace period because what someone might see as irrelevant might just be the seed for a GREAT answer. Plus if you look at the comments, we have yet another frustrated first timer who won't come back.

I think we're becoming beholden to the law of the land rather than letting it be a guide. Let the community decide if a question is valid before voting to close is opened. I'd argue the option to close should only be available after two days and only then if a certain threshold of votes/answers with positive votes has not been met.

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I might pick a different example instead of that particular question. But in general, I don't think a "waiting period" is needed.

For that particular question, the OP didn't mention a number of significant factors such as overall size of data, current work load on the server, and typical client devices used in their environment. Too many unaddressed variables is why I voted to close as Too Broad. But I also left a comment in the hopes that they would narrow their question into something more answerable.

Shouting that they disagree in a comment isn't constructive and didn't address the core issue - namely the question was too broad to be meaningfully answered.

Waiting further to cast a close vote on the question wouldn't have accomplished anything.

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  • Glen I don't think you did anything wrong. Like I've said in other posts, for a newbie it can be disheartening to have your thoughts rejected. Hence this guy's response. I'm just fearful that sometimes we may come across as elitist when that's untrue. "Rise to our standards or begone" Comes across as unwelcoming.
    – Michael Brown
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 22:34
  • @MikeBrown - the flip side is "what message do we send by not closing poor questions quickly?" I care about how all users perceive the site. I want the site to be welcoming and to reinforce that we're focused on high quality Q&A. If a marginal question languishes before ultimately being closed, I think new users are disappointed that they didn't find out about problems earlier. Then they have to edit and fear waiting an equally long period of time to find out if the edits were sufficient. To borrow a phrase: "fail early, fail fast" so corrective action can be taken quickly.
    – user53019
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 1:11
  • This is actually part of my premise behind asking for more close votes for high rep users. My belief is the faster we can get corrective action to users, the faster they'll improve their question and get the answer they were really looking for. We need the bar just high enough to clear out the help-me vampires, but attainable enough so users realize we're focusing on high quality Q&A. More close votes allows us to provide community feedback more quickly.
    – user53019
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 1:15
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    Fair enough. Perhaps instead of saying vote to close we can say "I'm voting to put this on hold so that you can clarify your question"
    – Michael Brown
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 13:47
  • You did do one major thing wrong: You didn't explain why it was "too broad". Unless he has directly dealt with fallout from those particular issues, they are unlikely to come to mind, so a generic "There are too many particulars involved" is not even remotely satisfying. I'm with Scottie on this, honestly.
    – Izkata
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 15:39
  • @Izkata - this may be a useful read: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/…
    – user53019
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 15:48
  • @GlenH7 You misunderstood my comment here. Your comment to Scottie was a cop-out that didn't actually explain anything except to users who already have experience on this site.
    – Izkata
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 17:03
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Nah, that's unnecessary. It already is a community decision when a question gets closed: five high-rep users (or a moderator) have to vote to close for a question to be put on hold.

If five people independently erred in their judgement and a good question was accidentally closed, one can always make an argument to that end in the comments, and vote to reopen (or flag to reopen).

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  • worth adding that if "salvaging" comment / edit happens prior to closure then voters even have an option to retract their votes so that question won't even get on hold (per my recollection at Programmers I retract 2-3 times / week average)
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 21:12

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