What should we do about the bad close vote culture of this site?

Question

I have noticed a growing problem here during the last year or so - likely it surfaced/escalated when we got the reduced close vote consensus necessary reduced from 5 to 3.

There is a whole lot of people here with the bad habit of casting arbitrary and incorrect close votes. Often picking the wrong reason or close-voting perfectly on-topic questions.

When looking at closed questions, reviewers rarely ever agree on which close reason that should be used - this seems to be the norm here, where on other sites in the SE network, it is uncommon. Those who moderate the sites tend to know what the close votes for the specific site mean and when they should be used, but not so much here, nowadays.

I'm particular tired of watching perfectly fine questions gathering blatantly incorrect close-votes. I'm talking of things like questions with schematics + datasheets posted getting close-voted as "opinion-based", or questions about EMC regulations getting close-voted as "shopping recommendation". Completely out of the blue nonsense close votes. People seem to think close voting is appropriate for "I don't like the question" or "down vote deluxe".

The close-voting on Electrical Engineering in general stands out compared to other sites in the SE network. We seem to have a growing bad site culture and it seems to be a recent trend - I've been a member of this site for some 10 years, so I'd like to think I know the site culture quite well. Perhaps this happened when all those veteran users/mods quit pretty much all at once, a few years back? Leaving a "moderation vacuum" behind.

What can be done about this? Is it a culture problem or an education problem? Should we flag questions such with blatantly incorrect close votes for moderator attention? Can moderators revoke close voting privileges specifically, like they can revoke review privileges?

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EDIT Some of the worst examples that came up during a 20 close vote review round just now. Out of the 20 reviews this time, around 5 were correctly flagged/close voted, around 10 were incorrectly flagged/close voted and 5 were blatantly incorrectly flagged/close voted, I'll include those 5 below:

Why are patch antennas used instead of planar dipole antennas? 2 close votes as opinion-based. Sure it isn't a great question, but it isn't asking about opinions or best practices, it's an answerable question (size is the difference), if not a very interesting one.

How to define a mathematical formulation in order to derive required communication time of a core accessing memory? 1 close vote as opinion-based. This is not asking for opinions, but it's much too broad to be answered. Should be closed as needs more focus.

How can I identify test points in electrical circuits? 1 close vote as unclear, 1 as opinion-based. Perfectly answerable question ("it's those little plated circles indeed") if not very interesting. It is not unclear, it is not asking about opinions, can be answered by anyone who is the slightest experienced at working with PCBs. Should not be closed.

Novel CAN bus design - needs criticism 2 close votes as needs more focus. Should not be closed, design reviews with schematics and details posted are perfectly fine and on-topic. They even ask for specific things for the reviewer to focus on. It's a pretty good question.

Identifying Tenda F3 Router Burned SMD Regulator with Marking 297V0 1 close vote as opinion-based. It's a standard identification question, how is it asking for opinions? It's fairly obvious that the IC is some sort of voltage regulator, likely a buck converter, likely made by some obscure Asian manufacturer that isn't easy to track down. Should not be closed.

Answer 1

I think the heart of community moderation is letting the community moderate, but screening for clear abuses like targeting one user for no reason is probably a good practice.

That said, I'm not, and have never been, thrilled with how the close process works. You can easily vote to close from the question, but you can't vote to leave open anywhere but the review queue. I also don't understand how close votes and votes to leave open interact. Do they cancel each other??

It also feels like three close votes might not allow enough time for the community at large to land on a fair determination. If five was too much, three seems too few. Maybe 4 is the right number.

Answer 2

I can relate to the behavior you describe, and deem it incorrect behavior in those cases that you describe. I expect the moderation team to suspend users who abuse the power of issuing close-votes. If you observe this you should thus flag the questions to make the mods aware of the abuse.

However, it is a natural evolution:

1. Site gets spammed with "RTFM" or "10-seconds-google" questions, which are legitimate questions by the site rules.
2. Proper questions drown in the noise. Users get annoyed and become less picky with close votes.

I believe this overzealous close-frenzy issue is a product of too open question policy of the site.

Answer 3

Doing a bit of research on meta, and thinking about our recent change to 3 votes, I have a bit more insight.

It really feels to me like the close mechanisms are well-suited to high-traffic stacks with tons of bad questions, like stackoverflow, but fall a little short for stacks like this one. The shortcomings of the process have been exacerbated by the change to rapid close.

The main shortcoming is that the urge to pile on just makes the process too fast, not allowing time for editing in cases where questions can be fixed, or creating too low a bar for closing for questions that might be borderline.

Frankly, I think the fix is to go back to 5 close votes, but I can understand that might create a real burden for mods. Maybe 4 close votes is the right compromise.

Also, since I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that most closes come from simply reading the questions, and not from the review queue, that showing the amount of close votes right on the question creates a pile-on to close. Simply NOT showing the current number of close votes right on the question would prevent that. Yes, you would still see the info in the question timeline, and of course the review queue, but it would still go a long way toward stopping the pile-on. In the thread dim pointed to on meta, disagreement seemed to be centered on "people shouldn't use the close history to determine whether to close a question" -- so let's make it harder for the casual user who doesn't participate in the review queue to even know the close vote history.

Answer 4

The answer can be found in the tour, which every user that signs on to EE.SE will see (even briefly if they click through) :

Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about electronics design.

Questions that need improvement may be closed until someone fixes them.

I'm particular tired of watching perfectly fine questions gathering blatantly incorrect close-votes. I'm talking of things like questions with schematics + datasheets posted getting close-voted as "opinion-based", or questions about EMC regulations getting close-voted as "shopping recommendation". Completely out of the blue nonsense close votes. People seem to think close voting is appropriate for "I don't like the question" or "down vote deluxe".

I agree, there are questions that get wrongly closed. It would be great if you could also include a list of these questions, to show that it is a problem. Another option would be to flag these questions for reopening, it also takes three votes for a question to be reopened.

Worrying about questions that have 1 close vote that is incorrect is probably not worth worrying about, if they get closed, then vote to reopen or let the mod team know. Make sure that the vote to reopen agrees with what has been discussed in the meta and on the help site regarding ontopicness.

Answer 5

Most of my answers take at least an hour, often much more, to compose. It's heartbreaking to spend so much time writing an answer, only to be met with "this question has been closed" when I click post.

I only answer if I feel that I can understand the question, regardless of how vague or badly written it is. Often I can fill in the gaps, to try to interpret what a beginner might have wanted to say but didn't have the knowledge or vocabulary for. This means that a question may appear to deserve closure at first glance, but actually does contain enough information to be addressed, and is not so broad as to be impossible to answer a single post.

I had some ideas.

• Someone suggested that it should take 3 votes for the same reason to close a question, but it was countered with the fact that a question can deserve closure for several reasons. To me this suggests that a vote for closure should be accompanied not by a single reason, but by a list of all reasons why a moderator feels it should be closed.
  When three such lists contain the same single reason, then close the question.

• Delay the actual closure (perhaps this is what happens already, I don't know). Give the question some time to attract answers. If people are answering, and getting upvotes for their answers, this could be an indicator that the question isn't so bad after all.

• Provide a means for other moderators (or even trusted users) to vote to "not close" a question. The weight of such a vote may not be as great as a moderator's close vote, but can at least have some influence.

Answer 6

There is a whole lot of people here with the bad habit of casting arbitrary and incorrect close votes. Often picking the wrong reason or close-voting perfectly on-topic questions.

You should link a few of these closed questions. I haven't come across one such occasion from memory. Every question raised that has a close-vote I can see the reason. OK maybe there is the odd-one but I don't recall it. So, please find one and link it here.

$$\color{red}{\text{In other words, where's the evidence?}}$$

When looking at closed questions, reviewers rarely ever agree on which close reason that should be used - this seems to be the norm here, where on other sites in the SE network, it is uncommon.

For my part, I vote to close many questions daily and, I always have a valid reason i.e. one that the site rules support. Many times I'm so challenged by the number of question discrepancies that I have a tricky choice of which rule I vote to close on.

This leads to "closers" not agreeing on one reason (because there are several valid reasons). But how much of a problem is it when folk don't agree on a reason to close. After all, they agree to close but have different priorities.

$$\color{red}{\text{So, what's the big-deal?}}$$

About a year ago I didn't do this. I left comments asking for clarification hoping that something would gel with the OP. That usually worked but, in about the last 8 months or so I've received 4 suspensions for what appear to be OPs (or others) flagging my comments and moderators over-zealously agreeing with them. There are a few postings on meta where this has been discussed.

So, to prevent re-suspension, I just vote to close and usually downvote questions that don't meet site standards. For instance, today, I have voted to close so many questions that my daily close-vote limit has been reached.

So, unless something changes in the way in which moderators handle flags on comments, it will stay this way. Again, let me again state that every close-vote I give is underpinned by a site rule transgression. I don't like doing it this way but, the toxicity of the site has caused me to go down this route.

I'm not even sure I could return to giving comments (as I did months ago) because, it seems to be so much down to how moderators think that, I just can't risk a new set of moderators applying over-zealous suspensions without letting me know. So, it's basically down to how the site is moderated if I'm partially responsible for the number of question closures.

I'm sure other folks have other reasons and I look forward to hearing them.

_{They sow what they reap is a phrase that springs to mind.}