What are the requirements for closing a discussion?
Asked by
AshlynM (
10684
)
August 25th, 2014
I have seen a couple of questions that have been closed and they’re not even that old.
Can a user request a question be closed?
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7 Answers
I always assumed they just faded away when people lost interest, I was not even aware that a discussion could be closed.
The user can ask or the mods might make the call when a discussion gets out of hand, either too heated or nasty personal attacks. Laughs, and yes I’ve have been in the middle of a bunch that got closed.
It appears to happen when the mods decide that people are getting “too” upset. Therefore, it mostly appears to happen in Meta.
I would be surprised to hear that there are literal “requirements”, though the standard line is that nothing “productive” is coming out of the thread any longer. Of course, all threads end with a drop-off in productivity, but very few end up being closed.
The most common reason for closing a question is that it has become a “spam magnet”. Some spammers will debark on Fluther’s shores and immediately start searching for old Qs about whatever crap they’re selling. If a Q is old and the only action it gets anymore is fly-by spam, it’ll get closed.
A Q won’t get closed just because it gets heated. If the actual topic of the discussion has been thoroughly hashed out and it devolves into a brawl, so that one post after another has to be removed and no new points pertaining to the Q are being made, then we may close it. The tipping point is usually that we’ve just gotten sick of cleaning up the pissing match. We’re a pretty patient bunch, but…
@thorninmud “The most common reason for closing a question is that it has become a “spam magnet”. ”
Yes, hence “appears to” in my above comment. I’ve noticed one or two discussions having been closed due to spam attacks, and have long suspected that this is something we can only see a tiny corner of, like a big spammy iceberg. Ew.
We also close questions when they get so many answers that they are very slow to load. We do this to keep people from adding more responses because those questions really stress the server. Then we encourage the users to ask a new edition of the question.
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