leave constructiveness judgement to community? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?

I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.

The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.

It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons.

However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens.

An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.

I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree.

Case in 2 points, briefly -

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history

This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, "the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'". For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.

(quoted from Some inconsistency in closing questions?)

If you could pose a question to a Turing test candidate, what would it be?

Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close -

"I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course."

I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not.

A more complete list -

[.. excessively long list of URLs elided, try searching using the isclosed: and votes: modifiers ..]

Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety?

Thanks.

Edit: 43% closed unilaterally.

Answer 1

There is no need to insult other members of the site.

Moderators often act on message flags that are submitted by the members of the community. Acting on those flags sometimes comes across as acting unilaterally. My personal policy (that evolved somewhat since I first started moderating) is to wait for signals from the community. They can come through flags, comments, or close votes.

Additionally, constructiveness of the question is judged in part by the answers the question receives. It is perhaps somewhat unfair, but the guidelines for good subjective questions focus a lot on the various aspects of the answers, so that's what we go by. Typically when there's a disagreement over constructiveness of a question, we go through the 6 guidelines and check the question fits them. Sometimes questions are reopened as a result, sometimes they stay closed.

I can see from your comments that you are not interested in debating whether or not the questions that were closed were actually constructive. I don't think that's a constructive approach (no pun intended). After all, if an unconstructive question is closed as not constructive, is it really part of the problem?

I'm asking you to read through the links Walter posted in his answer. You're relatively new to the site and having some history might help you see where the answers you're getting here are coming from. Once you've done that, if you still disagree with the closing of your question (which would be fair), we can discuss that.

Answer 2

This topic has been discussed on this site at length. Just a few minutes looking at old posts will get you this list (which is a very small sampling):

• The Six Subjective Question Guidelines -- Enforcement Notice
• Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.
• Is Programmers.SE a discussion board or a Q&A board?
• Question being closed without community requests
• Asking Better Questions
• Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?
• How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?
• What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?

If I cared to spend more time I'm sure the list would grow quite a lot.

The site went through a major transition from it's original purpose at the end of last year. There was a very noticable crack down on different types of questions and it caused a lot of growing pains. For the most part this site has emerged from the transition in the form you see today. Like it or not, the tightening of the rules around questions being asked probably saved this site from turning into answers.yahoo.com. Moderators on this site play a difficult role of walking the line between bringing the hammer and letting it ride. During the transition period that line was distinctly on the bringing the hammer side as it was a huge shift for the site.

The question that you asked yesterday that was closed really doesn't meet most of the guidelines in the FAQ. I would have voted to close it on those grounds as well. The fact that the question was closed as "Not Constructive" doesn't mean that the topic isn't worthy. If you were to edit that question and expand upon it (keeping in mind that your goal is to satisfy around 4 or more of the 6 guidelines), I doubt you would get much argument from those who closed it.

Lastly, it's probably not a good idea to use votes (or popularity) as an indicator of what does or does not belong on this site.

Answer 3

Just for the record, I flagged your question with something like the following comment:

This question clearly fails 2, 4 and 5 of the six guidelines and is gathering some really terrible answers.

1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
2. tend to have long, not short, answers.
3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.
5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.
6. are more than just mindless social fun.

Can you argue with any of those?

And so many of the answers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to name the clearest examples) really were not useful in any way. They get votes because they are funny. Humor has a place on this site, but mostly that's in comments. Humor is also fine if it's also in a useful answer, or maybe as an answer to a question you know is doomed.

I was prepared to vote for this question, because I don't think the moderators are perfect, but your rant turned me off. Yes, there are dozens of examples of questions that are on the fence enough that they could warrant a reconsideration. I've asked some, too. But the moderators are doing a decent job and are generally fair and open when you flag it for reconsideration, address them in comments, or bring it here to Meta.

Popularity != Appropriateness. A simple correlation between popular and constructive questions doesn't make it a rule.

Answer 4

As the moderator being talked about here I thought I ought to answer.

Despite the evidence you've presented I am reluctant to "unilaterally" close posts. I have a policy of usually waiting until there are 3 (or perhaps 2) close votes before adding mine as the "final" vote that will close a post.

However, there are exceptions:

1. When the post is clearly not constructive. This is often the case for posts migrated (in ignorance it has to be said) from Stack Overflow.
2. When there are at least 2 moderator flags on the post.

In a lot of cases if there is a single flag I will add a comment to the effect that I don't think the post is constructive. If later when I re-review that post my comment has been upvoted I'll take that into account as well.

However, I would be much happier if the people who flag the question would either vote to close (if they have enough rep) or add a comment. This gives the moderators a much better idea of how accurately their views reflect that of the community as a whole. Adding comments have the added benefit that the OP gets to see them and has a chance to improve their post either by adding more information or rewording it.

There have been cases where users have challenged my decisions and after a short conversation in the comments or via a question here on meta plus some edits to the post I have reversed my decision.

Very few actions on Stack Exchange are irreversible (question and user merging being the exception). If you disagree with a closure flag the question for moderator attention and I and the other moderators will take a look. I can assure you we do look at all flags. If the flagging doesn't appear to be working raise a question here on Meta.

I am happy to reopen questions if I've made a mistake or the question has been improved, but unless you tell us we don't have the time to review old decisions.