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Meta Closing self-answered question due to not being clear enough

A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge. T...

posted 5mo ago by Lundin‭ · edited 2mo ago by Lundin‭

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#3: Post edited by

Lundin‭ · 2024-09-17T13:32:20Z (2 months ago)

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A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge.
That is, it would be impossible to answering it without speculating or coming up with opinions. Or the question is unclear/too broad so that multiple answers would be required, or that the answer would be a "it depends". Or when multiple mostly unrelated related questions are asked at once.
Closing means that the question needs to be clarified by the original poster. Closing does not necessarily mean that the question is bad or unwanted. It is indeed no big deal to close a question, given that the OP is attentive to edit it into shape. Because that's what closing usually means: "can you edit this into shape?" For example, I don't really see why we should close rather than delete things that are blatantly off-topic.
For self-answered Q&A, that's a bit of a chapter of its own but then the OP themselves at least knows how to answer the question, even though the question itself might be unclear and unanswerable by anyone else. The OP has the advantage of being able to read their own mind in these cases :)
I think for the vast majority of self-answered, on-topic Q&A, the post can be fixed without closing and the OP just needs some pointers in how to improve it.

A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge.
That is, it would be impossible answering it without speculating or coming up with opinions. Or the question is unclear/too broad so that multiple answers would be required, or that the answer would be a "it depends". Or when multiple mostly unrelated related questions are asked at once.
Closing means that the question needs to be clarified by the original poster. Closing does not necessarily mean that the question is bad or unwanted. It is indeed no big deal to close a question, given that the OP is attentive to edit it into shape. Because that's what closing usually means: "can you edit this into shape?" For example, I don't really see why we should close rather than delete things that are blatantly off-topic.
For self-answered Q&A, that's a bit of a chapter of its own but then the OP themselves at least knows how to answer the question, even though the question itself might be unclear and unanswerable by anyone else. The OP has the advantage of being able to read their own mind in these cases :)
I think for the vast majority of self-answered, on-topic Q&A, the post can be fixed without closing and the OP just needs some pointers in how to improve it.

#2: Post edited by

Lundin‭ · 2024-07-08T15:00:50Z (5 months ago)

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A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge.
That is, it would be impossible to answering it without speculating or coming up with opinions. Or the question is unclear/too broad so that multiple answers would be required, or that the answer would be a "it depends". Or when multiple mostly unrelated related questions are asked at once.
Closing means that the question needs to be clarified by the original poster. Closing does not necessarily mean that the question is bad or unwanted. It is indeed no big deal to close a question, given that the OP is attentive to edit it into shape. Because that's what closing usually means: "can you edit this into shape?" For example, I don't really see why we should close rather than delete things that are blatantly off-topic.
For self-answered Q&A, that's a bit of a chapter of its own but then the OP themselves at least knows how to answer the question, even though the question itself might be unclear and unanswerable by anyone else. The OP has the advantage of being able to read their own mind in these cases :)
~~I think for the vast majority of self-answered, on-topic Q&A, the post can be fixed and the OP just needs some pointers in how to improve it.~~

A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge.
That is, it would be impossible to answering it without speculating or coming up with opinions. Or the question is unclear/too broad so that multiple answers would be required, or that the answer would be a "it depends". Or when multiple mostly unrelated related questions are asked at once.
Closing means that the question needs to be clarified by the original poster. Closing does not necessarily mean that the question is bad or unwanted. It is indeed no big deal to close a question, given that the OP is attentive to edit it into shape. Because that's what closing usually means: "can you edit this into shape?" For example, I don't really see why we should close rather than delete things that are blatantly off-topic.
For self-answered Q&A, that's a bit of a chapter of its own but then the OP themselves at least knows how to answer the question, even though the question itself might be unclear and unanswerable by anyone else. The OP has the advantage of being able to read their own mind in these cases :)
I think for the vast majority of self-answered, on-topic Q&A, the post can be fixed without closing and the OP just needs some pointers in how to improve it.

#1: Initial revision by

Lundin‭ · 2024-07-08T15:00:32Z (5 months ago)

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A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge.

  That is, it would be impossible to answering it without speculating or coming up with opinions. Or the question is unclear/too broad so that multiple answers would be required, or that the answer would be a "it depends". Or when multiple mostly unrelated related questions are asked at once.

Closing means that the question needs to be clarified by the original poster. Closing does not necessarily mean that the question is bad or unwanted. It is indeed no big deal to close a question, given that the OP is attentive to edit it into shape. Because that's what closing usually means: "can you edit this into shape?" For example, I don't really see why we should close rather than delete things that are blatantly off-topic.

For self-answered Q&A, that's a bit of a chapter of its own but then the OP themselves at least knows how to answer the question, even though the question itself might be unclear and unanswerable by anyone else. The OP has the advantage of being able to read their own mind in these cases :) 

I think for the vast majority of self-answered, on-topic Q&A, the post can be fixed and the OP just needs some pointers in how to improve it.

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