Skip to main content
16 of 16
added 4 characters in body

I can appreciate that sense of conviction: when you just know something has to go. But encouraging an author to improve their work doesn't necessarily imply it can (or even should) be salvaged. At the very least, the introspection might help them improve their work in the future. That's the point of the new close system. It gives users clearer guidance about where they went wrong so they can either (a) fix the problems or, failing that (b) not repeat them in the future.

Certainly some questions are destined to (and need to) be closed, no doubt. But having the core software tell you that your question is not real by default has fueled the growing belief that we are more interested in alienating users who haven't learned all our nuances of how to ask, rather than helping them with their problem.

You don't get it so this needs to be closed. Buh-bye.

At least that's the perception. It's this "no one is interested in helping me" ethos that the new close system is designed to address:

War of the Closes

There's nothing about the new close system asking you change what questions you accept, or how to moderate users who are unlikely to contribute to this site. But the truth is, our original close system was designed with the experienced community in mind… while neglecting to help the author of the question understand what the heck was going on. The default messaging built into the old system — how potentially brilliant new users were treated by default — did little to help hapless new users understand the system of improving their content so it could work.

In contrast, the new close system was written with the the author (and majority of less-experienced users looking on) in mind — part peer review, part educational.

This question is not usable because of the following problems. If you feel you can address these problems, here's what needs to be done… or at least how you can have a more productive experience the next time around.

Of course we recognize that some posts are simply unsalvageable. There are instances where no followup is going to save that post. But baking a lack of guidance into the close system only engenders the belief that Stack Exchange has become increasingly elitist and unwelcoming to all but the most experience users who have been here since the earliest days.