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Follow up to http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/8374/whats-wrong-ask-ubuntu-closures

In the closure queue I just was presented with Gimp too complicated; Pinta/GnuPaint/etc. too simple from May 2012 with 4 answers - supposedly "opinion-based".

I don't see the benefit for the site in such closures, I'd prefer not to have it in the closure queue at all. I'd vote "leave open" without too much thinking but as it is one of several similar in the past I wanted to ask the community.

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I disagree with Braiam slightly in the closing paragraph:

closing questions is not bad for anyone

Pushing antique questions into the close queue means you're using another four votes from the active reviewers to deal with something that isn't really an issue any more.

If we had infinite numbers of reviewers, I wouldn't care as much but we get more new questions every day than we deal with. A number of these aren't even getting the review they need. This suggests that too many people are loitering in review and not on the /questions/ page.

If that carries on too long, we stop being a viable site.


PS. The reason for your example entering the close queue was it gained a new answer (which was probably part of the first-post queue). In instances like that I can understand why something might get reviewed in full.

But that said, I don't see what's particularly evil about this question. With its edit, it practically meets even the softwarerecs.SE definition of a good software recomendation question. It's the answers that need improving.

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  • Oli, as I said many times before (but maybe with different words), quality of all open questions should be uniform. A bad question is a bad question old, new or in between. Actually, most of our popular questions would be closed if asked today and no duplicate available.
    – Braiam
    Feb 14, 2014 at 16:04
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    @Braiam I do agree that a bad question is a bad question but diverting time away from handling today's questions (that need answering and improving and closing) is counter-productive. In short, older questions deserve less attention.
    – Oli Mod
    Feb 14, 2014 at 17:28
  • One or two questions a day doesn't do any harm. Also, if the problem is the lack of reviewers then we should promote people to review stuff.
    – Braiam
    Feb 15, 2014 at 2:12
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The thing that you are not seeing is "that question is indeed primary opinion based". It doesn't matter age, votes, popularity. You are reviewing a question based in the face value of the question:

What tool can I use for light office/desktop work?

This is the cut up to the bone what the question is about. How would you answer such question?

The only upvoted answer is just 20 characters long! There are two more that go trough the same way. The most "extensive" is little less than 50 character long and just have a filler image to make it looks good.

I really don't like those kind of questions on the site and I would certainly not encouraging anything like that and it doesn't invite any good answer. Closure all the way in for all the questions that inherently attract bad/low quality answers.


You must be aware that closing questions is not bad for anyone. They can edit it into something answerable and get it reopened. The post you linked treat this. We need to close more as Unclear, OT, Opinion based, too broad, specially old questions.

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  • I think closing as unclear also encompasses only relevant at a specific point in time right? So, if it's no longer an issue or a really old release - there could have been significant UI changes making great answers with loads of screenshots inaccurate - specifically gimp questions in that regard. I'm agreeing, just thought it might be something else to drop in to an already pretty good answer. Feb 13, 2014 at 21:53

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