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Comments on Give actionable feedback when closing questions
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Give actionable feedback when closing questions
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?
Post
This is a current limitation of the software.
Right now, there is simply no way to add detailed feedback to the close reason. There is a list of pre-written close reasons (which can be set per site). If you feel like there is an issue with the wording of a close reason, then feel free to suggest wording changes in a new post (ex. this one on Meta).
Changes are planned
See luap42's post on What are the close reasons on Codidact?. From that post:
If I recall correctly, the future close system will be based on three groups of problems with posts:
- Duplicates.
- Off-topic. This includes every post that isn't suitable for a site. If a community should ban easy questions, "too easy" would fall under this entry. Off-topic posts are inherently unfixable.
- Needs author's attention. These posts can be fixed but need attention from the author, because not everyone can do so (for example: missing information).
For the groups 2 and 3, the sites will be able to define sub-reasons (such as: "opinion based" under off-topic or "unclear" under needs author's attention). It might be possible to support the selection of multiple problems for these groups, or at least group 3.groups, or at least group 3.
Once those future changes are in place, close notices should be much clearer. With the ability to select multiple close reasons, we can make individual close reasons more specific.
So ... can we find a better way to give feedback when closing a question?
If you're asking about methods, then comments are probably the best way to give feedback, since it allows for discussion on why it was closed and how to improve the question.
If you're asking about what we, the givers of feedback, can do, then there isn't much that we aren't already doing, or trying to do. As you said, sometimes the feedback doesn't entirely succeed in explaining the close reason, but if that happens all we can do is have them ask for clarification.
Miscellaneous
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?
This would probably do better as a separate question on Meta. The way I see it, just ignore the "indistinguishable" - i.e., "This post has many possible (different) correct answers." This overlaps with both "too broad" and "too subjective," if there is no way to distinguish which answer is correct, then the question is unanswerable.
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