Having had the dubious honor of experiencing the closing process from the perspective of a question author, it seems to me that closing does not adequately communicate why the question was closed, and which aspects need improving in order to make the question work here.

Specifically, for feedback to be actionable, it needs to

• specifically identify the problem
• explain why it is a problem
• and ideally explain a way to move forward

So, how did our process measure up? The close reason given was:

This post contains multiple questions or has many possible indistinguishable correct answers or requires extraordinary long answers.

That lists 3 different reasons for closure, leaving it unclear which one applies to the question.

Also, the second possible reason is not conveyed clearly, because "many possible indistinguishable answers" does not make grammatical sense: if the answers are indistinguishable, they are duplicates - why is that a fault of the question?

And it doesn't explain why that is a problem.

And it most definitely doesn't show a way forward.

Of course, people are smart. They can ask for further information if they care, and then wait a day for that further information to arrive.

I did, and received:

I closed this post because it's asking for personal anecdotes; there's an infinite number of possible answers to such a question, and as such doesn't fit so well into a Q&A format. It might be better suited to chat, or possibly a series of blog posts (which you might want to discuss in the Meta category). See also How to ask a great question in the Help Center.

That's much better:

• It clearly identifies the problem.
• It attempts to explain why it is a problem (but doesn't quite succeed, because it doesn't explain why "many answers" make a question "a bad fit for Q&A")
• It attempts to show a way forward (but doesn't quite succeed: why chat? how do I blog? Does he mean the currently disabled article feature?)

but it also shows how challenging it can be to communicate and explain site policy in a comment box. And how time consuming. And that's probably why Mythical gave that link to the help center. Alas, as the "how to ask" page does not appear to mention "many answers" at all, the link didn't help me much ...

So ... can we find a better way to give feedback when closing a question?

posted about 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

meriton‭

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