Why are we so strict with closing questions, can't we just keep them open?

Question

Why are we so strict with closing questions, can't we just leave them open? It seems like it would be a lot better if we worked with the person asking the question to improve it. On PICList people can either just ignore the question or help to improve it, why don't we just take this policy instead of closing questions?

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Note: I am not asking this question for myself, rather I am playing the devils advocate in order to create some discussion that we can reference in the future. The question was spurred on by comments in this question: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/17909/how-can-i-use-a-transistor-with-two-circuits

Answer 1

I think in some cases we are a bit too quick to close questions, but not in that case. The question was a nonsensical pile of gibberish. We are here to help people with electronics, not english or the self-evident logic of how to ask a question. Even if some are so inclined, this isn't the place. It's just noise and clutter for the rest of us.

There is also the other aspect of teaching someone a lesson. People are basically lazy, or to put it more politely, seek the shortest path to a desired result. If someone dumps gibberish on us and some misguided do-gooders go back and forth with the OP, fix the question, and it eventually gets answered, the OP will likely be back doing exactly the same thing again. Worse yet, the many people silently watching this will learn that it's acceptable or at least that it works.

I ref youth soccer on the side. The coaches tell kids many times at the U10 level and under what a proper throw in is. The refs for that age generally give a kid one do-over if they mess it up. As a result, the kids sortof try but there are many bad throw ins. On the second try, they almost always get it right. At the U12 level I don't give any do overs, just give the ball to the other team. I see a few bad throwins the first week or two, but the kids quickly learn to pay attention. You take the ball away from a kid and give it to the other team, and that kid will probably not mess up a thow in that way again. Giving the throw in to the other team is relatively harmless, but the message gets thru clearly.

Fixing peoples bad questions is like letting them re-do throw ins. They're not going to take it seriously until the bad questions is closed.

Answer 2

• "All models are wrong - some models are useful"

  George Box

Olin and I have a long history of mutually disagreeing with best method over this. His soccer analogy has its place - but the differences are significant enough that it should be used with care.

The approaches are essentially either

• Working with beginners to help them improve their questions and, as bad questions very often reflect a woefully poor knowledge of electronics, helping them improve their basic understandings

or

• Shutting down questions and questionsers which fail to meet some threshold until they manage to meet our minimum standards.

Nobody should pretend that closing "bad" questions rather than tutoring the questioners will stop some people from asking questions, or more than one question.

Olin's approach ("writ large" here, albeit less so than it may seem, to make the point clea) is to beat them until they bleed. If they then crawl back, beg forgiveness, follow the master's steps faithfully and learn their lesson well then they may well become productive members of the group.

That's certainly one approach and it certainly does work.

Those who survive this often do become productive members and it certainly does weed out early on those who can't tolerate having their feeble failings shoved back in their faces. Those who equate simple rejection and an invitation to resubmit their question as gross rejection and personal criticism will be driven away and be unlikely to try again.

It can be argued (and very actively is by some) that

• The loss of such people is of little or no consequence to the group - they are just cannon fodder to be winnowed out for the greater good.

• Those who fail to pass this "test" are unlikely to make good engineers anyway and its better for them and the group if the are driven off early before times is wasted trying to educate them, when the outcome is nearly certainly going to be that they don't make the grade.

• Allowing questions of this sort encourages sloppy behaviour. If we encourage it people will never learn and will take advantage of our largesse and will never make the effort to improve themselves. People should learn to ask questions well and if they can't do so their questions should be kicked out until such time as they learn to meet an acceptable minimum standard. Answering sloppy questions is pandering to laziness and abuse by the question asker and they will never learn better if they are not disciplined.

There are several "problems" with this perspective. Whether they are deemed important will in major part define the group long term.

• I'll comment first on the "encourages laziness" claim, as this is an understandably big one to some people. It's a big one with me too. I do not want to encourage freeloaders, to do people's homework, to allow people to ask sloppy questions and to cut corners or to fail to rapidly improve. If you look at my comments you'll see that a frequent refrain is "please provide more information / please tell us what you are trying to achieve / please ask better questions." I am all for getting users to a better level of asking and informing as rapidly as possible. Some highly intelligent people, regardless of how much I have explained otherwise, deny that I am wanting any of these things. [Such persistent assertions sometimes make me wonder about the proponent's ability to learn :-) ] I no more like bad questions and lack of precision than anyone else - my aim is to provide the best possible means for respondents to better their own lot. It is not obvious how cutting them off at the knees (as it were) and isolating them from assistance with bettering themselves will achieve this more rapidly than allowing those who wish to to spend time on educating them.

• Some questioners have "English as a second language" and find difficulty in communicating their desires well. Closely allied with this is the fact [tm] that some with high IQ's and great technical ability have little or no ability to perceive when this is the case, or may not care. Social adeptness and technical capability are less well correlated in engineers than in society in general :-). The result of this is that the technically most competent may be unable or unwilling to accommodate the needs of people for whom the English language is a barrier. The present practice discriminates against members whose first language is not English

• The present practice takes no account of international time scales or thye real world realities of many people's lives. This is (obviously) an international forum and involves (obviously) real world people with other demands on their lives than just group involvement. A person may live in any world time zone, have limited hours in which they are able to access the forum and it may quite reasonably be days between accesses. Whereas, the admins and those with very high involvement tend to access the forum many times per day or, in some cases, close enough to continually (you know who you are :-) ).

  This effect can be seen even on questions where the questioner is very actively involved and is interacting to refine the question and arrive at an optimum solution. Even in such cases there may be a day or two between responses.

  The effect for the asker of a "bad question" is that they may ask a question and then return one or two or three days later, eager to see what answers they may have got, and instead find a series of negative comments, no answers, and that their question has been closed. The degree of discouragement that this can cause is seldom appreciated by those who are much involved and to whom it seldom of never happens. Which leads to ...

• The present practice will be seen as much much much more as a disincentive that it will seem to those of thicker than normal skin. This isn't mainly about Olin but he serves as well as any to exemplify what this is about. Not everyone has as thick a skin as Olin. By far !!! :-). I have come to genuinely respect and appreciate Olin over many years - not only for his technical expertise but for his willingness to spend time and effort assisting others and for his willingness to support the PIC development community by providing high quality PIC development environment software to all comers at no charge. Along the way I've come to understand that his "does not suffer fools gladly, nor anyone that looks in the slightest way like they may be one" approach and his "kick them till they bleed" approach to education are based on his only genuinely thck skin, tolerance for abuse and ability and willingness to shake his head after an "encounter" and get on with the job without in most cases holding (as far as I can tell) grudges. (Some exceptions but not relevant here).

  The "problem" is that his incredible tolerance for abuse and straight speaking blinds him to the fact that many or even most others are not made of the same material. The same applies to various extents to others in "positions of power" who are isolated from the effects of their own actions. When a first questioner, or beginner, or one who mostly lurks and listens, ventures into asking a question and is criticised roundly (in their perception at least) and then has their question closed or is similarly treated, the effect is very often out of all proportion to what those 'on the other side' would think was reasonable or sensible or even likely. Olin probably 'leads the charge in this respect', but few in positions of power probably (indeed apparently) realise how significant a bvlow something like closing a question can seem.

  Most questions that are closed with an invitation to reopen are in fact never reopened - Consider - how many questions that are closed with the comment "this question can be reopened if you xxx" are in fact ever reopened? In my briefish time here I've seen a number of closures but do not recall have seen a reopening. The percentage of reopenings may not be zero, but it's probably not high.

  If it is felt "that the number involved is few" it would be useful to check to see how true this is.

I assert, and this is the sort of thing that can be checked against records and by talking to people, that the disincentive to trying again is very high. I base this not just on n=my brief observations here, but on years of user interaction elsewhere. As an admin elsewhere I get to try and "pick up the pieces" after newcomers have been roughly handled after asking questions "poorly". Many are extremely traumatised by the experiece - even though the treatment that they have received may seem of no great import to others. If we decide we don't want or need such people here then by all means drive them away. A good 50% of humanity is in this class. If this is an elitist meeting place with no place for stumbing beginners then 'go for it'. Otherwise, the vagaries of human nature have to be taken into account.

If this group does not give a damn for such people or their perspectives then shutting them down before they start is certainly one way to deal with them. That's the effect of the present rapid rush to shut qustions down.

• Suggestions:

• Give respondents two chances at responding. ie at least a small amount of dialog. (Most closed questions evoke no response at all from the questioner in the brief time available).

• Leave questions open for some predetermined period if no response received at all. Say 1 week but maybe less.

• Have a standard reference which is ALWAYS referred to when questions need improving. This can be tailored to this list if desired.

• Recognise that some are more interested in helping the more hapless.

  Let those whose time or reputation is too important to waste on such people just leave them alone and

  Let people who seek to encourage them do so. (Note that "encouragement" does not mean "featherbedding". Encouragement can be extremely robust but kindly.)

Answer 3

Please note: this is to address the general question. The cited example was no longer visible when this answer was posted, and is in no way addressed by it.

What many who so readily vote to close forget is that closing isn't an expression of personal dislike for a question, it's an expression of an opinion that no other person on the forum should be permitted to answer the question or work with the poster to improve it.

Few of the closed questions actually rise to that level of needing to be so fundamentally "banned" - in many cases it would be better for the objectors to state their objection and then simply ignore the question. For those with the power to unilaterally close questions, the general response should be even more strongly towards stating an objection, with unilaterally closing reserved for spam-weeding and similar cases where leaving the question up is harmful to the site.

Part of what negatively sets this site apart from the original stackoverflow is that the desire to "curate" the collection of questions so heavily plays a positive feedback role in keeping the site and it's empowered user-community small. On a healthy stack exchange site one normally reads through topic or question-status filters. Here, the volume of permitted questions is so low that the same people have time to see and answer or object to almost everything. While this has produced some extremely high-quality answers, it also slows the rate at which new members of the community gain reputation by limiting not only the overall opportunity to contribute an early suitable answer, but especially the opportunity to answer questions requiring uncommon knowledge or experience, which are often closed by those without the familiarity to understand them.

I would argue very strongly that well intentioned questions which are not unquestionably a stronger positive fit for another stack exchange site be allowed to "age" and collect comments or answers for at least two business days before people start casting close votes. And even questions which do seem like a better fit elsewhere should have some migration delay to make sure that there aren't overlooked aspects, for example what look like generic programming questions that actually require embedded-systems expertise, or what look like PC-hardware questions that really require circuit-level analysis skills.

Finally, the idea of "closing a question until it is improved" is a very poor one, for both psychological and practical reasons. To the poster, especially new posters, it's extremely unwelcoming. Practically speaking, even when the question is improved, it's hard to get enough people to take a second look to re-open it. Many times when a question has been re-opened, it's not so much because the question has been improved, but because the failure of judgment that lead to its closing has been exposed.

Answer 4

Olin's mention of "the self-evident logic of how to ask a question" suggests that, while he may have great experience in Electrical Engineering, he has little to no experience asking questions on a forum. (I assume one is due to the other)

I do have a lot of experience asking questions on many forums, and I have seen all kinds of answers to all kinds of questions. The one thing I have learned is that there is no correct way to ask a question, and it can be hard to predict the sort of response you'll get. I have asked quick one-liners, and been rewarded with great answers, bad answers, answers to different questions, arguments, and suspensions. I have also asked in-depth questions, which carefully lay out what I know, what I assume, what I don't know, and what the question is, and been rewarded with the great answers, bad answers, answers to different questions, arguments, and suspensions.

Isaac Newton, no Mr. Thickie himself is claimed to have said: "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

Let's try to re-word Olin's quote:

"The self-evident logic of how 45 people will each read the question in a different way, from a different perspective, and react emotionally to it."

We can see that the words "self-evident logic" have no place here.

To see why it is pointless to punish questioners who apparently don't follow the "self-evident logic", let's look at something else with self-evident logic, software. There is really no good excuse for writing an incorrect algorithm. The logic is quite evident, yet I'm sure all of us has written a laughably incorrect algorithm and wondered for ages why it doesn't work.

Now, imagine that whenever this happens, some self-important busybody who has never written any software comes along, scolds you, and deletes your code. This is essentially what happens when someone closes a question.

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In my humble opinion, closing a question should be a last resort, and should only happen when we're sure all other avenues have failed. If I could make one change to the Stackexchange sites, it would be this:

Before a question is closed, there should be a purgatory period where the community helps the questioner improve the question. Currently this period is not explicitly implemented, instead there's a period where the community shouts at the questioner and tries to make them feel bad about their failure.

A couple of ways this could be implemented are:

• When someone downvotes a question, they are required to give a reason. There could be a few common reasons to click on, and a text box to write your own.
• When someone votes to close a question, they should give specific reasons, and should also say what changes should be made to the question for the close vote to be removed.

The question would be labelled as [needs improving], and the questioner should have a few days in which to make the changes before it's finally closed.

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Don't think "bad question - close it", think "unfinished question - fix it".

Answer 5

A response to a poor question should remain constructive. A poor question should be treated in two ways which depends on the intentions of the author/student. Enough time and communication through comments should be given to assess which course of action to take.

If the student is being lazy, their question should be ignored and/or voted down. Their laziness should become apparent when they show that they have no intention of incorporating feedback from others to improve their question.

I believe that there has to be reciprocity between the student and teacher. The student must be willing to learn and put in the required effort. A person chooses to be a teacher in good faith with the assumption the student will do their part. A lazy student is not open to learning, they are just looking for the easy way out. I believe that lazy students are harmful to this site because they destroy the bond of trust between student and teacher. This can go on to effect hard working students by discouraging potential teachers. Laziness shouldn't be rewarded and thus these questions should be ignored.

If the author simply does not know enough about a topic to ask a sensible question, then working with them to help better define the question is the right and constructive course of action. It will become clear that the student is not lazy if they respond to comments and work with others to redefine the question. Closing a question from someone with good intentions is unethical as they will not understand why this has been done to them and they will learn nothing from it. At best it is useless. At worst it will be humiliating and crushing. Do we really want to take a potential engineer and encourage them in a different direction such as towards a career in law, finance or banking? ;)

Users of this system can choose to answer a question or not. Closing a question allows the majority who voted it closed to decide for the minority that they do not have the option to help an author of a question. This author may be of the type who has a genuine desire to work hard and learn with some guidance. This has the potential of needlessly depriving someone of advice when they need it most, i.e. when they are taking their first steps towards an understanding of a topic.

An indicator of the quality of a question is also the number of up-votes the question has. An old question with no up-votes or many down-votes is obviously a poor or esoteric question. For this reason, I'm not sure I buy the argument that closing questions is necessary to maintain quality so that the bad questions don't overwhelm the good. Maintaining quality can also be accomplished by improving the questions not closing them. Maybe the site should consider giving points for this! If one wants to maintain quality then questions than have no or few up-votes or answers after a long period of time can be automatically closed by the system. This strategy maintains that a bad question is one that leads to no activity on the system. That sounds like a pretty sensible definition of a bad question to me for this community.

The automated system to close questions would only kick after an extended period of time when it is clear that no progress will be made with the question. In this way the bad questions will never overwhelm the good.

Answer 6

But if a question about a good topic and with a good base concept is badly written, or for any reason requires a complete rework: isn't better to reward the editor instead of the OP, and somehow show him that he had a good idea but who does the work is awarded?

Answer 7

Noting on JMEYER10's account the following:

• I am a ten year old programmer that plays baseball and piano

And

• This account is temporarily suspended to cool down. The suspension period ends on Aug 9 '14 at 0:23

It seems I may have been closer to the mark than I expected in this case.

Is he really 10 years old?

Do we really encourage 10 years olds this way?