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I find on Ask Ubuntu that I answer questions better than I ask them. No big issue, it is something that I am working on. So when I create a question I put a lot of thought into it, witness this Q&A effort here:

WinFF: Preset to convert to H.265/HEVC under Xenial Xerus?

For this question I found a gap in Xenial Xerus: FFmpeg can produce hevc files but WinFF cannot as it does not have a suitable preset. With a little research I produced a good preset, tested the installation and running of the preset and finally created the Q&A.

A couple of Close votes came in and this is fine, I am more than happy to listen and be guided by Community needs and I have altered my question to make it both clearer and less broad as suggested. A comment left after the question outlines this for the benefit of others looking through the Close review queue.

But what I am after with this question is this:

Consider leaving some constructive comments intended to guide a question along a better path along with your Close vote. This will be particularly effective with those question writers who have perhaps been with Ask Ubuntu for a while and who are probably keen to produce a good quality question which will enhance the site...

Such feedback in Comment form would certainly have guided me along in fine tuning my own question and I suspect that this is probably true of many other questions asked on Ask Ubuntu.

That is all :).

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  • I stupidly misread your question (close votes <> down votes, obviously too early in the morning). Be it very brief (a single line), the reason for close voting gives you some information though.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Jun 30, 2016 at 6:01
  • @JacobVlijm Indeed it does, and certainly in my own case this was enough. Mind you there is still a little guess work involved...
    – andrew.46 Mod
    Jun 30, 2016 at 6:10
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    edited my answer :)
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Jun 30, 2016 at 6:19
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    Don't worrie too much about a couple of close votes, bad votes are cast all the time. I add things I find in to Q&A here and it can be hard to reverse engineer an answer in to a question and do it clearly, within the scope of the site. FWIW I don't think your question is too broad, in fact it is quite specific, or unclear as you clearly want a WinFF preset. Even if it gets closed (I don't think it will) you can always vote to reopen.
    – Mark Kirby
    Jun 30, 2016 at 7:00
  • @MarkKirby I think that "bad votes" aren't cast all the time. I think that no votes are done all the time.
    – Braiam
    Jul 1, 2016 at 1:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The reasons for close voting gives you at least some information on why. I can understand you'd like to have more information, however:

Reviewing is quite a burden to the site. We already have a continuously growing stack of items in queue, until someone decides to do, or calls for, a clean up.
I really don't think it is realistic to ask people to write a constructive comment while reviewing. It may sound silly, but continuously switching from a "judging" mode to decide, into a communicative mode to comment and back, that simply is a too demanding process to go through, looking at the amounts that have to pass the review.

Having said that, of course it is always a good idea to give a constructive comment if you run into a question that can be "saved". It is better to edit into a good question then to close while a small edit could have made the difference.
In practice, this will be occasionally rather then part of the procedure however.

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  • A great balanced view, thanks @Jacob Vlijm :)
    – andrew.46 Mod
    Jun 30, 2016 at 11:35

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