This question already has an answer here:

I asked a question several days ago. Very shortly after that, some people put it on hold without leaving any comments. After that, I reworded it several times in order to hopefully meet the rules, but nobody left any comment and the question is still on hold and I am beginning to wonder If I shouldn't ask the exact same question as a new question, and answer it myself immediately and see if this time it is okay...

I don't know what exactly happens when a question you have voted for putting put on hold is being edited since I never did it myself (and honestly I find this mechanic totally counter-productive). Do you even get a notification? Does the system check if you review the edited question? If it is not the case, I think that the vote for putting on hold should expire after some time, there is no reason why a person who votes to put a question on hold and never review it after it has been edited should be able to block it forever, especially on low traffic questions who interest only a few people.

I tried to look how I could PM some of the users to notify them that I have edited and need them to review it again but didn't find how I could do that. I mean, if you vote for puttin on hold the question of someone else, you are morally endorsed for reviewing it again once it has been edited and if you still feel that this question should stay on hold, you should at least leave some comment to explain why, this would be the least politeness don't you feel?

I read this question very similar to mine and learnt that after editing my question should have been put in the reopen queue. How to know if people actually reviewed it again? Should I keep making minor adjustment to prevent it from being automatically closed after five days? Finally, if the question really happens to not having its place here, how do I delete it?

Thanks for reading

marked as duplicate by gnat, Martijn Pieters, Infinite Recursion, iCodez, brasofilo Nov 7 '14 at 22:45


  • 4
    When an on-hold question is edited it is put into the reopen review queue for the community to vote on. There will be reopen votes noted on the question itself if anyone has voted to do so. No single user is morally required to do any sort of reviewing of past actions. It's entirely up to the community as a whole. – J. Steen Jun 10 '14 at 10:20

If you have edited your question after it was put on hold then it gets added to the Reopen Review Queue - as you have seen.

This is where anyone - not just those that voted to close - can review your edits and decide whether they are sufficient to warrant reopening the question. It may take a little while for it to gain the 5 votes needed to be reopened.

If the review queue doesn't seem to be working then you can try asking in an appropriate chat room (or even on meta if you're feeling brave) for people to review the question and hopefully vote to reopen.

If that doesn't work then it may be a better idea delete the original (which you can do if it has no answers) and ask a new question - but if you do decide to go down this route make sure that your new question is clear and obviously not just a straight re-post of the original question. Our users take a dim view of that. Also bear in mind that deleted questions are considered by the automatic low quality question ban, so if most of your questions are low or negative scoring this wouldn't be a good idea.

  • @SList - yes deletions can count against you, but only in the context of most of your questions being low quality. – ChrisF Jun 10 '14 at 11:00

Your question wasn't put on hold for being poorly phrased, missing details and exact error messages, etc. It was put on hold because you asked for a tool recommendation. It's really not salvageable, because you really are asking for a tool.

  • why answering now? Also I agree with you in the general case where you have hundreds of tools available, asking for which one to use is too broad and very subjective. But when you narrow down the criteria to a point where you will be lucky if there is barely one tool which match it, I think the matter should be different. – Aldian Nov 7 '14 at 14:19
  • 3
    I answered now because I happened to come across this on meta, and the existing answer didn't address reasons why a question staying closed after editing don't represent a system failure that should be worked around by reasking. – Ben Voigt Nov 7 '14 at 14:30

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .