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Take a look at this question: The role of the Keystone pipeline in America's energy independence and relation to OPEC

Granted it had many problems with it. But can we please not vote to close so quickly for first time users? At least explain or ask clarifying questions before voting to close in comments if you can't edit it directly. It's just not plain inviting and the person may not know why the question was closed.

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    Similarly, downvoting an answer without commenting is also unfriendly and discouraging to new users. Was it a bad answer for objective reasons (e.g. opinion-based or not researched), or because the downvoter simply doesn't like you or what they perceive of your political biases? I get the impression that downvoting on this board occurs much more often for the latter reason.
    – J Doe
    Jan 26, 2017 at 20:55
  • @JDoe It wasn't my question. The question had some opinion based stuff, was poorly written and a little all over the place. You can check out the edit history. Don't think this question had much to do with ideology in any event.
    – user9790
    Jan 26, 2017 at 21:49
  • Its still a whats going to happen in the future question... we can never answer that.
    – SoylentGray
    Feb 3, 2017 at 20:19

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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not vote to close so quickly

Quickly is actually a feature, not a bug. It's a GOOD thing.

  1. If not closed quickly, a poor question is likely to attract answers before it's fixed, leading to problems. It needs to be closed before anyone answers, and fixed before anyone will.

    • In the best case scenario, those answers would be invalidated after the edits required to fix the question, meaning the people who answered wasted effort.

    • In the worse case scenario, the changes required are so extensive that they become invalid under "don't make changes that invalidate existing answers", meaning the question is permanently damaged.

    • In the worst case scenario, it will attract crap answers, get on VTC, and get both Q and crap answers upvoted to stratosphere.

  2. If closed quickly, it means there's a chance the user (especially first time user) is still around to see the problem, and clarify the question.

    If closed slowly, there's a risk the new user will drift off (or lose their login if they didn't finish registering) and will be unable and/or unwilling to clarify/fix.

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  • If not closed quickly, a poor question is likely to attract answers before it's fixed, -> Good example of that is this. Only reason I salvaged it is because it attracted a decent enough answer before it was closed/removed, and felt it would be a shame to let that go to waste.
    – user11249
    Jan 27, 2017 at 19:19
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The closed tag has been changed from "closed" to "on hold" for a reason.

Closed questions aren't permanently removed. They can often be reopened, usually after the OP makes sufficient changes to make the question more focused and clear.

Secondly, We prefer to judge questions by content, rather than who the user is. It's not executed perfectly, we are only human after-all, but in general, an question by a first-timer should be judged by the same standards as one from a more experienced user.

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    Adding to that, the on-hold message already ends with "If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.", giving users a path forward to salvage the question. I do tend to avoid downvoting new users unless it's truly bad. Unlike putting questions on hold, downvotes are often interpreted as "you suck" (which isn't how it's meant to be taken, but that doesn't change how users interpret it).
    – user11249
    Jan 26, 2017 at 18:23
  • Rel. Meta.Stackexchange post: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/…
    – indigochild
    Jan 26, 2017 at 21:28

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