Are questions being closed too quickly?

Question

I check G&FH at least once day. This morning a new question (Getting birth certificate of German born in Romania in 1895) was already closed as a duplicate because it asked for birth records in a particular country. (The answer should address time-frame and region, not just the whole country; the accepted answer is too limited, in my opinion, to be used for all cases).

Last week, a question on World War 2 occupations (German Soldier in WWII) was already closed when I saw it, because it was assumed that it could be answered by the excellent answer on German military records.

In both cases, I think the moderators jumped the gun. I left comments, but I suspect the OPs won't be back after seeing the closures. I know comments are considered transitory, but they have been useful. That the question might be re-opened after edits is not well-explained.

Should there be a minimum time period before closure to allow other users, perhaps more familiar with the particular subject, to assess the question?

Answer 1

Yes.

I would tend to disagree with my fellow mods on this.

To get the community to engage and moderate the site, there needs to be content to moderate. And if we rush to closing questions, even if as simple as a duplicate, then users of the site don't tend to even look at the question, never mind vote or act on it.

It's no wonder that users don't vote on questions, or vote to close or reopen, if in general there is very little content to engage with.

For whatever reason, questions once closed are only rarely reopened on this site. So closure does seem to be a rather final action in most cases.

The stats from last year at 2019: a year in moderation:

• 95 questions closed by mods, 1 by the community
• 2 questions re-opened by mods, 0 by the community

That's not really the way it's supposed to be. The only way to get the community to take these actions is for the mods to step back a bit.

In general I would say to the mods: if its an obvious verbatim duplicate, then close it. If it's clearly off-topic, close it. If there's doubt, either confer with other mods or wait for the community to give their input. If the question is a few days old and the community has still done nothing, then close it.

Sometimes moderator action needs to be done swiftly. Closure of most questionable questions on this site is not one of them.

Answer 2

As moderators, we try to stick to @Shog9's advice to moderators when deciding whether to close/re-open vote:

When you see a post you think should be closed, close it. When you see a post you think should be re-opened, re-open it. If you're not sure, don't do either.

In the case of this question, the answer at https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/a/13077/6485 seemed totally appropriate.

However, if you disagree, you can vote to reopen. (A comment explaining why it's not a duplicate wold be helpful to others if you do so).

Answer 3

I echo @ColeValleyGirl's answer and would like to emphasize that quick closing works best when used hand-in-hand with quick re-opening.

If you ever see a question that you think is closed when it should be open (or open when you think it should be closed), and if you have the cast close and re-open votes privilege which comes at a reputation of 500, then be sure to vote the way you see fit.

If you do not have that privilege, or if you see waiting for 5 close/re-open votes being too slow on our site, then just flag a moderator, and explain your reasoning to get us to review for instant action.

If any experienced G&FH SE user flags me to re-open a question because they have an answer to provide, I usually re-open that question instantly.

If the actions above do not result in a particular question reaching the open/closed status that you think it should have, then be sure to ask about that particular question here on Meta G&FH SE because that is another way we can decide to change its status, and to help tune our site's scope.