Maybe not the most important issue in the world, but I found it interesting. If a question is off topic, too broad or primarily opinionated, vote to close it. If it shows no research or is not useful, downvote it.

But if a question is unclear, that's a reason both to downvote and close. And as far as I know, this is the only individual circumstance that is a reason for both actions.

Is there any rationale behind this?

  • 6
    Imo, any valid reason to close-vote a question is also a valid reason to downvote that question.
    – Cerbrus
    Aug 8 '19 at 11:58
  • 6
    @Cerbrus certain duplicates can be useful. Aug 8 '19 at 12:23
  • 1
    Okay, there are some exceptions
    – Cerbrus
    Aug 8 '19 at 12:57
  • 2
    "Abstaining of voting down off-topic questions essentially deprives site visitors of important information..." (Should we downvote off-topic questions as well as vote to close?)
    – gnat
    Aug 8 '19 at 13:31
  • 1
    @gnat That's a very good point. I'll keep that in mind and change my voting.
    – klutt
    Aug 8 '19 at 13:54
  • I’d downvote thos for being posted on the wrong site, to be honest, @klutt. Should the question get migrated, the vote can be reverted.
    – Cerbrus
    Aug 8 '19 at 13:58

Voting and closing were always designed to accomplish 2 separate goals.

Up/Down Voting reflects the value and quality of the question. It was designed to identify questions and answers that a user may find interesting or want to read. Close Voting reflects the fitness for the site and does not have to have any bearing on quality. While rare, it is entirely possible to have a high quality question that is completely off-topic (you can close vote, but may not want to downvote and may even want to upvote). More commonly though, it is possible to have an on-topic question that has low quality (downvote but not close vote)

Given this, the fact that there are few overlaps in closing and voting criteria makes complete sense.

But why the overlap on unclear?

An unclear question is most definitely not "useful" (how could it be useful to anyone if it is unclear). So that immediately puts it into the criteria of "low quality" and something that could be downvoted.

And for close voting, one of the main on-topic points in the help center is:

a practical, answerable problem that is unique to software development

So this is why unclear questions are also off-topic. How can a question be answerable if it is unclear?


Truly and entirely unclear posts are less than worthless. They are clutter that only an often absentee OP can clean up. Moving them out of the limelight as soon as possible allows for better content to propagate up. Since downvotes and closure combined are the tools for it, it makes sense (well, to me) to allow lack of clarity as a reason for both.

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