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Normally, as per the close vote aging policy on normal SE sites, the oldest close vote on a post is invalidated if no more close votes have been cast less than four days after it was cast.

The first action I take when I see an example question that doesn't belong is to vote to close it. However, four days later, most of the time I see that my close vote has disappeared. Not many people vote to close example questions, and I think so because we have no close vote review queue. I thus have to flag the question for moderator attention and say that it should be closed and that my close vote expired a while ago.

Additionally, in my opinion, most example questions that are closed are closed solely by moderator action and not by five users, save maybe for migration of off-topic votes to close votes.

Therefore, I propose that we should either lengthen the "aging" period of close votes on example questions or not age such close votes at all.

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  • There are good arguments posted around on why aging close votes is important on Area51. But I tend to agree that 4 days (or a week) is not long enough on Area51, most followers don't visit that often.
    – James Jenkins
    Oct 28, 2014 at 11:03
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    @JamesJenkins I'm pretty sure that the original rationale behind implementing aging is because on normal sites, close votes are reviewed by others and as a result are usually seen within hours after they're cast; whereas here, there is no such review queue and thus close votes aren't usually seen within four days of their being cast. I agree that the accrual of random close votes is a problem, but we need to give close votes enough time to be seen by others. Another way to fix the problems outlined here is to implement close vote review.
    – damryfbfnetsi
    Oct 28, 2014 at 15:16
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    And to complicate things with the current setting, if you vote close and it expires. You can't vote close again, so while you may have 5+ followers agreeing that something needs to close, if they don't all get there in the same time frame, it does not happen.
    – James Jenkins
    Oct 28, 2014 at 16:57
  • I believe this change was completed a year or more ago. I have not noticed close votes aging off, in a long time.
    – James Jenkins
    Dec 13, 2017 at 18:46

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I'm not sure that lengthening would really help the situation much. The level of activity of each proposal can vary and you don't want to have a situation where 5 people with close vote permissions close an example question despite broader community support.

Honestly, it really kind of seems that close votes don't make much sense in Area 51. Each site is going to be defined by the people who know that subject area. Previous Area 51 experience doesn't necessarily prepare someone for every possible community or recognizing what is or isn't a good question for that community, particularly as the amount of variation between communities has expanded.

I think, if anything, it would make more sense to remove close votes entirely on Area 51 and instead have a certain threshold negative score that would result in sample questions being closed due to broad community issues with the quality. There could be a flag for blatantly off topic or something to deal with questions that are obviously bad fits, but I'd expect such questions to rapidly accumulate down votes as well.

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  • What about examples of off-topic posts? Those would get upvoted because they're good examples, yet they need the "close" mark so that it is clear that they are off-topic and so that they don't get counted toward the 40 questions with 10+ net scores. Voting and closing are two different things. I myself sometimes upvote a subjective question for good effort and good question yet vote to close it as well.
    – damryfbfnetsi
    Dec 3, 2014 at 22:53
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    @damryfbfnetsi why would you upvote an example question that was off topic? No matter how well written on question on nuclear physics is, it will never be a good question pets.se. When you mouse over the up-vote button it says "I'd like to see this question on the proposed site (click again to undo)", I think you may have misunderstood the voting process on area 51 example questions.
    – James Jenkins
    Dec 5, 2014 at 11:54

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