I understand the desire to keep a closed question around for Google or SO Search purposes, or when a question is a dupe, or has been moved to "(sister site)" and therefore I don't want the to be deleted.

However as a user of the site, logged in, looking to help someone out (or just gain some rep) answering questions, the [Closed] questions just become noise.

Would you consider an option (for logged in users) to not show Closed questions, unless running a search?

e.g. if I search for "IE getElementById error" then please show the closed questions as they may be helpful.

However when just going to the Questions page... p2, p3, p4, p5 etc. I'd rather not see those questions as typically they are the "Spam, Not a real question, or Belongs on Sister site" questions... all of which I'm not interested in.

Alternatively any chance they could be styled similar to "ignored tag" questions where they are almost faded out?

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ChrisF answered this here: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/25496/… –  warren Oct 11 '09 at 13:12
But linked back to this one as the master in a vote to close! –  ChrisF Oct 11 '09 at 15:58
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2 Answers

Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions:


But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed:


On both, they will default to showing you the Relevance tab. But hey, default is for the lazy.

Click your stub on Newest or Active and then you'll be walking in your leather jacket along the rows and pages of questions as if closed was some kind of filter. (And did you know that when you smoke 'em like your lungs are filled with black, that the thumb and fingers block the filter pores so you're getting more tar quicker into your lungs?)

Your interesting and ignored set of tags will still be in play, but your eyes will not be assaulted any more by closed questions.

And then page along your merry way...

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Thanks for the tip on the search! This will help when searching, but for paging through the "Questions" pages, I'll still get all the closed questions. :-( –  scunliffe Oct 11 '09 at 15:02
You really need some fresh weed, man. The stuff you're smoking is a bit off. ;) –  slashmais Sep 26 '10 at 7:12
This is the right answer, and it works, but this is lousy, non-intuitive mechanism. –  james.garriss Jan 16 '13 at 20:02
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I guess, adding an extra tag "closed" when the question is closed and then adding that tag to your excluded list would do.

SO should build on top of existing stuff instead of making the code bigger each time.

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