Admins need to give a reason when they close a question!

If you close a question that hasn't been flagged and has people trying to help someone admins shouldn't be able to close a question because they feel like it. I was helping a new person out and the question was closed before she was even close to having an answer. I've seen people describe questions a lot worse and vaguer and they still get an answer. If people can just close a question on a whim, when you have people trying to help then what’s the point of this site? If a question has to be closed I think you should have to post a reason to why you closed it.

EDIT:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/42413#answer_59769

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

The Close function prompts us for a reason. However, the interface does not allow that reason to be displayed. I suggest that you add your vote to the Wish-List #2 item for that enhancement.

[Matt Fig]

Also, shouldn't the closer be revealed so that one may ask that person directly?? I can't seem to see who closed this particular question.

[Walter Roberson]

Doug sweeps through the Questions that have been flagged and makes decisions about what to do with them. I do not know why the question might have been flagged.

Answer 2

[Jan]

There is a comment field in the dialog for closing a question already, but its contents is not "publicly visible".

Of course it would be helpful, when a closing is explained in the comment section.

Which thread are you talking of? Perhaps it can be opened again...

[Walter Roberson]

It was http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/answers/51785-help-i-m-a-complete-beginner-is-it-possible-to-create-a-loop-within-a-function

The reason for closing was not obvious to me when I reviewed it.

Answer 3

[Daniel Shub]

Whenever I close a question I add a comment as to why I have closed it. Of course this needs to be done prior to closing it. This has three effects: it lets the OP (and others) know why it was closed, it lets people know it was me, and it lets me know I already closed it if the OP does a minimal edit reopen.

[Walter Roberson]

When a Question is Closed, it is intended that the poster of the Question will edit it to revise it, or else will choose to abandon it. There is a different mechanism for more permanent closure: we Delete the question instead.

Answer 4

[Doug Hull]

I did indeed close this question. It had been tagged "DoIt4Me" and there was already a comment stating it was unclear. I agreed.

The purpose of closing is to avoid attracting answerer's time on questions that are not clear. I am not sure how to deal with the situation where someone is working off-line on a question that is marginal like this one was at the time I closed it.

It really looks to me like the questioner modified the question (as requested), so the system mostly worked.

There was reasoning sent to the questioner. IT is not public, but maybe it should be. I do not close questions that have answers in place.

[Jan]

I have the impression that it was me who re-opened the question unintentionally by formatting the code. However, it is very easy for an author to re-open a thread.

@Doug: You wrote "There was reasoning sent to the questioner". Is this sent automatically? I've closed my dummy thread two hours ago and did not get an information by email yet.

[Doug Hull]

The fact that someone else was able to reopen it is an intentional feature. We are not looking for autocrats, or benevolent dictators to "run the site". anyone that earns the editing privileges can override the actions of other editors.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was right. Someone else reopened the question (in this case apparently unintentional- but that is not really of philosophical concern) I do not feel so strong about my closure that I would fight it.

Also, now that there is an answer, I default to not closing.

[Randy Souza]

@Jan: We don't send an email notification if you close your own question. We assume that you know you did it, and why :-)

[Jan]

@Randy: You assume, that I know, why I close one of my own threads. This should let me think twice...

Answer 5

[Andreas Goser]

I do not use "Close" at all. But I deleted a couple of questions when there was obvious content related to piracy.

Answer 6

[Jan]

When I look at http://www.mathworks.de/matlabcentral/about/answers/, I find a description of the closing feature in the "Earn privileges" list:

 Close questions.

 This privilege temporarily closes the question. If the contributor does not edit or resolve the question within 10 days, the system automatically deletes it from MATLAB Answers.

This means, that the closing should make it easier for the editors to delete a question, with giving the author a chance to improve it. As soon as the author edits the question, the closed status vanishes (as far as I understand). So if the author show just at least a minimal effort, the question becomes active again. This mechanism helps to remove the "orphaned" questions: The question is not clear enough, but the author does not react to questions of clarifications.

Formerly such threads got the tags "author has left the building" or "orphaned". The closing feature is smarter, but the reasons for closing should be made public such that the author understands what's going on.

[Daniel Shub]

This question http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/48478-reconstruction-of-audio-from-absolute-spectrogram has been closed for a month now, so much for automation.

[Jan]

Wow, Daniel, this means that closing has a more virtual meaning.

I have the impression that my code-formatting re-opened the question implicitly. To find out more about closing, I'll open a test thread now.

Answer 7

[Daniel Shub]

I think this discussion is useful in an abstract sense, but the comments made to Doug about the closing seem like an inappropriate complaint. The moderator tools we have are pretty limited. The question seems to have been flagged ( I believe that is how Doug found it). That is essentially a vote to close. Doug seconded the vote. No one else removed the flag. It seems like the system works.

It is important to remember that closing is not a big deal. The OP simply needs to edit the question for it to be reopened. As has been stated many times the SNR on Answers is very low and any work to improve it should be appreciated. There will always be a grey area, and I am not even sure this is one of those cases, and we need to respect the users who help clean up our site.

We also need civil discussion to establish the grey areas.

[Jan]

I agree that any complaints would be inappropriate. Doug had good reasons to close the thread and in theory this mechanism improves the quality of the forum. +1

[Daniel Shub]

Okay, but it doesn't really matter. Doug has earned the right to close questions. Closing a question is not a huge penalty. He deserves to be commended for his efforts not questioned.

[Doug Hull]

I consider the "DoIt4Me" tag to be a lighter version of flagging. I consider "requests for clarification" that go unheeded to be lighter versions of flagging.

Maybe I just needed some coffee!

[Walter Roberson]

The activity list is not an absolute record. There are some activities which will remove previous activities from the record.

Do not think of Recent Activities as being a text file: think of each Question having an associated record, and the database software querying those records to construct the Recent Activities list.

I just tested and have confirmed that when a tag is deleted from a Question, the addition of the tag is removed from the Recent Activities list.

[Jan]

@Doug: In my opinion, the "doit4me" tag is disastrous. My personal translation of this term is insulting and due to its rudeness not accepted and wanted in this forum.

Answer 8

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

I don't agree with closing a question because it's not a Matlab question, because I've seen several answered questions that seem related to Matlab, but in fact, they are not, at least the main answer is not. I think we can't dissociate Matlab from mathematics, automatic,...

[Jan]

• "Where can I buy new wedding dresses" is clearly not Matlab related.
• "Is PLOT better than LINE" is clearly Matlab related.
• "Why is there a non-random structure in INV(RAND(400))?" is not clearly Matlab related, because this is a mathematical phenomenon.
• "Is the non-random structure of INV(RAND(400)) caused by Matlab's implementations of INV or RAND" is Matlab related.

The experiences show, that the wedding dress question will not be closed, but deleted. The 3rd question could be closed, but this happens very rarely.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

I will say

• The W-D question will never be asked.
• Questions like N°3, even not related to Matlab, the answer can be illustrated by Matlab tools,

Being in this forum, I did learn a lot of things about Matlab programming, but also, learned many things that are not related to Matlab

[Walter Roberson]

The wedding dress question was asked, and was closed by Matt Fig. The question was subsequently deleted as being spam.

[Walter Roberson]

There is an issue at play, sometimes referred to as "dilution". A forum such as this can (usually) withstand any one stray or marginal question, but when the number of stray or marginal questions increases, the distraction becomes enough to reduce the effectiveness of the forum, in at least two ways:

1. the resources (i.e., volunteers) to answer the questions do not grow in proportion to the increase in questions, so each question ends up getting less attention on average
2. the people with the interest in the original purpose of the forum start perceiving the forum as being less about the original purpose and more about the "noise", so those people tend to leave, which has the effect of removing most of the "signal" and leaving mostly the "noise".

This forum itself is having problems with topic creep and resource dilution, with regards to the matter of Excel. Since, after all, control of Excel can be illustrated by MATLAB tools, some people try to answer the borderline Excel questions, and that attracts more people to ask questions that are further and further away from MATLAB.

I have, in another programming language forum, seen people start discussions about whether Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Mountain Dew is the "best" soft-drink, and then attempt to justify the discussion by saying "But people might want to drink it to stay alert during long sessions" of programming in that particular programming language.

A significant problem in the Answers forum is that a fair number of students are using it as a first resource in their studies, asking theory and algorithm questions here instead of reading textbooks or asking their professors or doing simple search engine searches. Answering those questions rewards that behavior, attracting even more of it. We went through a stretch were we semi-regularly had students asking the volunteers to program their entire 4th-year project, including writing the project report. This gets very frustrating for the regular volunteers, who start to feel very much that they are being taken advantage of.

[Walter Roberson]

Lucas, your arguments have been made many times over the decades. The experimental results of those decades is that the kind of system you suggest turn out to be significantly less usable than systems that retain a core focus.

I have been using and programming and maintaining and moderating electronic communications systems for over 30 years -- before Ethernet, before the Internet. Systems such as you discuss can attract large numbers of users (e.g., 4chan), but they tend to be rather weak to use as technical resources.