0

I noticed a closed question received upvotes (after its being closed) and I'm wondering if there is any policy regarding that.

A question is closed for a reason - in this case, that there is an extant duplicate. Even if the question is a good one, it is just reasking what has already been asked. And if it is a bad question, it seems to me that it should either be closed or downvoted, but not both.

Shouldn't voting be closed for closed questions?

| |
7

For questions that were closed due to an issue in the question (like being too broad), people can take the closure reason into account when voting. I think many such questions don't gain new upvotes after being closed, though we do need to consider the case where people disagree with the closure and think the question is fine.

Duplicates, however, are special. There can be several ways to ask a question, and we should not penalize someone for not guessing the way it was originally asked and therefore not finding it on a search. We have differences in vocabulary, level of jargon, assumptions about background, even specificity and framing of the question... it's quite possible for somebody to ask a good question, one worthy of upvotes, that is also a duplicate. This is why the algorithms that delete (some) closed questions don't delete duplicates -- the duplicates serve as additional way-finding, so now there are two ways for somebody searching the site to get to the answers.

| |
  • 1
    +1. Re "differences in vocabulary, level of jargon, assumptions about background, even specificity and framing of the question", once more common difference especially for this particular SE site is in transliteration. – msh210♦ May 2 '19 at 6:23
  • A follow up thought, though: what are we upvoting? Is it the particular framing and wording or the underlying question? I would think we are voting for the question and not for the innovative use of language. If the question is good, then the votes should somehow be transferred to the original question. I don't think that it is proper (though it might be useful) to find all earlier questions that had items in Hebrew and make new questions with the same point, just with transliterations (or to find earlier questions and reframe them). – rosends May 2 '19 at 12:54
  • @rosends upvote if the question is useful. In the case of a duplicate, that means a well-framed question sufficiently different from the original that this question helps in wayfinding. I've seen a lot of cases across the network where a well-asked question is closed as a dupe of a poorly-asked one, and in such cases one might even upvote the dupe and downvote the original. Transferring upvotes from the dupe to the original wouldn't be appropriate; people should evaluate each question individually. – Monica Cellio May 2 '19 at 13:19
  • @MonicaCellio It seems (IMHO) that there should be a way to reconcile the two questions, using the better framed (later) one to improve the original - filling the gaps left by a first asking. Otherwise, why make it impossible to answer a better worded, more effective (and, as you say, "sufficiently different") question because it is closed as a dupe? – rosends May 2 '19 at 13:26
  • 1
    @rosends in cases where they're exact duplicates -- every answer to one is also an answer to the other -- it is possible for moderators to merge the questions, putting all the answers with the better question and leaving the other question as a pointer. This is a destructive operation (we can't undo it if we err), and usually there are nuances that make duplicates not exact. But if you see a case of this -- good question closed as a dupe of a weak one and they're complete duplicates -- then please flag or raise on meta. – Monica Cellio May 2 '19 at 13:53

You must log in to answer this question.

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