Proposal: Remove ability to close questions without review or discussion
asked 2014-01-07 00:27:31 +0200
This was closed as a duplicate. It was probably with the best intentions but I believe closing it was an error. From the "answer" suggesting it was a duplicate there was 16 seconds until it was closed, not giving me or anyone else a chance to respond. That does not encourage to healthy discussion, and will sooner or later cause suggestions and bug reports to be lost. The problem is that the board allows closing it without any review or discussion. I think there should be some kind of "grace period" when a question is closed by someone other than the creator, and if someone (creator or other commenter) contests the closing it should be stopped until reviewed by an admin or multiple high ranking members.
Please leave any discussion about whether the question is a duplicate or not in that question, this discussion should be about how to make this site be as good as possible.
Yeah, but if a duplicate remains open for some time, it gets upvoted (since it is a new question, it will be listed earlier than the "original") and thus the upvotes are getting fragmented between the duplicates. IMHO it is best to close dupes as quickly as possbile -- of course with a link to the other topic, to channel the discussion (and the up/down votes) to one topic only.
CsTom ( 2014-01-07 01:09:48 +0200 )editPlease, see my comment in the referenced question.
The closed question can be commented and such comments are sent to inbox of the person who closed that question. If you believe the question should stay opened for a reason, just write a comment.
It's better to loose some time until the question is reopened than to loose the users' votes spread among multiple same questions.
If you look around here there are really many duplicate questions and even requests to merge them (which is yet not possible). With too many duplicates the real problems/requests/bugs would get lost or will not receive the importance they deserve.
strnous ( 2014-01-07 01:16:00 +0200 )editI'd consider it worse if a real bug report gets lost if it looks like a dupe and the poster don't bother to argue. Linking to the other question and advising readers to check it out (and vote up the "it's a dupe answer" if they agree) should lead votes to the original if they are in fact dupes.
Vaskinn ( 2014-01-07 01:35:23 +0200 )edit