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This is something I’ve noticed a lot of recently in the review queue, and it’s not a problem unique to MY.

Going through the close votes, I’ve noticed that a large percentage of the recent votes simply vote to close without letting the owner know why. Not only does this not help the owner know what’s wrong with his/her post so that it can be fixed, but if the OP doesn’t have enough reputation, they won’t even know that their post has been voted against.

My personal feeling is that if anybody votes to close, they should post a comment explaining why, perhaps with a link to the relevant FAQ page. If there’s already a comment there, maybe you can get away with upvoting the comment.

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    If enough votes accumulate, the owner will get the appropriate system message. If it's just a few random voters who can't collect a quorum, then there clearly isn't that much need to fix things.
    – Double AA Mod
    Dec 21, 2017 at 1:04

1 Answer 1

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I think it depends on context. Here's what I try to do (anywhere on the network, not just here where my vote is binding):

  • If the user is new, leave a comment. The ask-hold-huh?-fix-reopen cycle can scare away people who don't yet understand how SE works. If I can ask for clarification or suggest narrowing scope or whatever, and the person can fix it before the question ever gets put on hold, we avoid that frustration. (Here my vote will put the question on hold, but I still try to comment in this case.)

  • If the question is old and only now attracting close votes, and I think it might be fixable, I leave a comment because the author won't get any notification otherwise.

  • If the question is new and the user is experienced, I comment if I have something specific to say (like a request for clarification). An experienced user knows about closing and it doesn't take that much reputation to see close votes on your own question, and if the question is new he's more likely to be watching.

  • But, if the question is part of a pattern from the same user and we've already tried to help, I might just (vote to) close it on the grounds that there's nothing new to say.

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