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Recently in the Review queue for closures I found several seemingly perfectly on topic questions. Only when I opened them outside the queue I saw comments on answers that made clear that the question was probably about a (well-known) bug.

So I'd ask whoever initially votes to close a question (knowing facts that are not obvious from the question itself or comments on it) to add a comment as a hint.

As an example (the one that actually triggered this question) see: Why Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Down won't move a window one workspace down in 13.10.

It looks like a perfectly on topic question in my eyes. Only doug's answer (and comments on it) say it is/might be about a bug. As Braiam stated correctly our votes should evaluate the question only - then how did my fellow close-voters reach the conclusion of off-topicness?

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  • Additionally, if it's something the OP can remedy, a comment gives them a notification so they can get on and do something to fix it. They might also not recognise what the close (2) in their bar means. Good communication will save everybody a lot of blood, toil, tears and sweat.
    – Oli Mod
    Jan 31, 2014 at 17:11
  • Exactly which questions? I can't see anything that you left open in the review queue that was being closed as bug.
    – Braiam
    Jan 31, 2014 at 17:34
  • BTW, I don't think anyone should explain their close votes if the question is obviously outside the scope of AU. What we should do is close them fast™ so OP gets awareness.
    – Braiam
    Jan 31, 2014 at 17:47

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If the question were asked today and we found is a bug by all means close it. We are not evaluating the answer but the question. Remember that bugs are outside our scope and if we do not enforce our own rules that we consensued, and several times reaffirmed them on Meta then where are we heading? You are evaluating the question itself, not the answers.

Remember that when a Stack Exchange site change their scope moderators go around closing stuff to reflect the current status, we did too. So even if they are old answered questions, if it doesn't fit our current scope, if it's asked today and you would close it, if it's a bug, EOL, not about Ubuntu question close it.

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  • "Remember that when a Stack Exchange site change their scope moderators go around closing stuff to reflect the current status" It's important to be careful with this. This almost only applies to questions in the site's early history, and mostly applies to questions in the early history of an old site. In particular, we do not close questions just because they would be off-topic to ask today. For example, if a question was about a supported release when it was asked, we do not close it now just because the release has become EoL!
    – Eliah Kagan
    Mar 3, 2014 at 16:27

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