So, a bit of primer: I was looking at this question, and I did notice that there were some serious shortcomings of it on its first revision.

Let's point out some issues:

  • It's unclear
  • It's poorly worded
  • The formatting is nonexistent, so the question is unusual and ambiguous to a casual passer-by.

Yet people were eager to answer it despite not understanding what the problem was they were trying to solve. No big deal; downvote and comment to explain why their solution was incomplete at best. That worked for the majority of the bad answers.

With a bit of editing, the question was fixed, so at least the question was better worded, and the formatting was made to make sense with what was actually typed.

However, the fact remained that it was still unclear.

I'm not going to deny that I decided to cast the close vote, but I did so with the full expectation that the OP would come back to fix the deficiencies in their question; namely, clarifying their constraints. Without that, it's simply not an answerable question.

About 7 to 10 minutes later (going off of the comments), the OP does clarify their constraint, and I urge them to edit it into their question, which they do. Cue better answers. Even I start typing up an answer to it, only to find out that the question had been closed, literally milliseconds before I could press the button.

Well, I'll admit that the question itself isn't all that great. It's a general "How do I do X?" kind of question, and if I were in a different mindset (that is, mid-2012 to early-2013 mindset), I'd have downvoted, closed, and moved on. However, that would have sharply ignored the potential quality of the answers themselves, which isn't exactly fair.

But I decided to give the asker the benefit of the doubt and spend some time to answer their question. They held up their end of the bargain by making their question answerable.

I feel like we rewarded that with a slap in the face; their question is put "on hold" now. Perhaps a few of us were too hasty in our choice to close the question, since after the first ten minutes of the question's existence, it was answerable.

Not just that, but I too feel a bit cheated; there was a good thirty minutes of time used up to answer a question - and not just provide an answer, but provide an explanation of the answer, too. All to see the door slammed on my face.

Why are we so eager to close questions? I realize that I did the same, but the point was to encourage the OP to come back and fix their problems, which they did. The question shouldn't have been closed as "unclear".

What are everyone else's thoughts on a situation like this? Was I too eager? Am I overreacting?

since after the first ten minutes of the question's existence, it was answerable: Perhaps not everyone can wait this long to see that the post is answerable. –  devnull May 2 at 6:24
I agree. That's the problem. Patience. Not everyone has enough. –  Makoto May 2 at 6:25
It's not about patience. It's about the quality of the post. I'd say that it was correctly closed as Unclear what you're asking. Moreover, the current version of the post is suitable for being closed as off-topic: This question appears to be off-topic because it lacks sufficient information to diagnose the problem. Describe your problem in more detail or include a minimal example in the question itself. –  devnull May 2 at 6:28
"literally milliseconds before I could press the button." — There's a grace period during which you can post the answer. –  Amal Murali May 2 at 6:28
The comments on this answer give further insight into why the question is off-topic. –  devnull May 2 at 6:32
@AmalMurali: I actually can't post that answer again without the actual button present. The draft may live around for four or so hours, though - but then, in order to post it, there has to be a way to answer it. Kind of a vicious cycle. –  Makoto May 2 at 6:33
@devnull: First, I disagree with both closure reasons - the question isn't unclear (they clearly want to split based on some arbitrary length character limit), nor does it not have enough information (anymore!) to diagnose the issue. Second, the comments in that answer don't provide much insight as to why one would think that the question is off-topic. Just because a beginner to the language answered it in a satisfactory manner doesn't mean it's off-topic. –  Makoto May 2 at 6:35
Why didn't you retract your close vote after the edit had been made? –  Josh Caswell May 2 at 7:43
@devnull: questions asking for code are not a close reason, sadly. –  Jeroen Vannevel May 2 at 12:10
The question has now two upvoted answers and is viewed 150 times while itself the vote is at zero. With this it's quite an average question for SO. Reopening was probably the right decision. –  Trilarion Jun 24 at 19:56

4 Answers 4


Easy to say, hard to change in practice. There are times when close-worthy questions are posted at the rate of one a minute or more. It's impossible to keep tabs on each one of them to see whether they may or may not improve and close after a certain grace period. It's just not realistic. Bad questions are closed when encountered, period. If they are later salvaged, there are review queues for that. You yourself can vote to reopen, which usually even works.

The system is working as intended, just roll with it. You were simply an unlucky victim of bad timing, and I have experienced this myself more than once. It happens. The answer you typed should actually be preserved as a draft, or you can save what you typed on your own computer. Then keep an eye on the question to answer it later when it has been reopened.

It's one thing to lack patience. It's another to not look at the question. Take for instance. Yes, we are closing questions that are not worthy in our opinions, but certainly would be worth to anyone not steeped in StackOverflow worthiness logic. –  Edwin Buck Sep 22 at 1:47
Yes, that was unnecessary indeed. But you're going to have false positives in any complex system with so many users, one such instance doesn't prove the entire system to be broken. But indeed, restraint should have been exercised here. –  deceze Sep 22 at 6:05

The current system for 'on hold' to 'closed' is there precisely to give the OP a chance to resolve the issues with their question.

That's why we put questions on hold, to say:

As written, your question is lacking in some fundamental way. For us to be able to answer your question (And not play a game of 20 questions in the meantime), we need you to take a step back, edit your question to make it clearer or to include detail. Once you do that, it's automatically thrown into a re-open queue, and it'll likely be re-opened.

If we didn't put questions on hold, the OP wouldn't have any incentive to fix their questions. A bad question does not help future visitors, and the on-hold mechanism is the feedback we use to say that. It's the carrot, and the stick.


After the closing procedure was changed to putting questions On Hold instead of outright closing them, this should not be as big a problem as it may be perceived as.

That said, I am sure - if nothing else, then from a purely statistical point of view - that some questions are put on hold without a real need to do so. I have cast a few close votes myself, and of course some of them have been based on what can be characterised as unscientific criteria. Notably:

  • Pattern recognition (it looks like a bad question, it sounds like a bad question, it probably is a bad question)
  • Herd mentality (someone whose view and intellectual abilities I respect has voted to close it, so I don't have to investigate the matter too deeply)
  • A certain sort of weltschmerz (netschmerz?) where the encounter of yet another rambling, unresearched and just plainly confused question leads to a quick click on the Close button.

Aware that this problem exists, I have vowed to participate in the Reopen review queue with a positive attitude, so people for instance providing source code or significant new information at least get a reopen vote from me.

And now that we are at it, with the change of the closing procedure to include an On Hold phase, are we really sure that we need the time and effort of five people to put a question on hold? I know this has been questioned before, but I really, really think it is worth considering.

Ideally, of course, this work should be automatised. The whole history of the computing industry is about automatising tedious manual work, and I don't see how filtering of bad questions couldn't somehow benefit from this well-established tendency.


In general we as a community are not eager and fast enough to close questions. But this is an interesting case because the OP edited their question. Closure of a question is meant to provide a grace period in which the OP can improve a bad question, by editing it, before it might be deleted.

How are votes to close accounted for if the OP subsequently edits the question? Are they retained? I believe they are, although that seems wrong. Yet simply discarding all votes before an edit might not work either: edits that are not substantial enough to fix the question would derail the closure process.

Perhaps when the OP edits a question that has close votes, but is not yet closed, it should be placed on the "reopen" queue? Votes to keep it open from reviewers on that queue could cancel votes to close it.


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