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This question, for example, is currently being reviewed for close. Its chances are good, I think, in that it has already received 2 leave open votes, but there doesn't appear to be any clear-cut reason it was nominated in the first place. Definitely, at least, it doesn't appear that the asker has been alerted to this fact, or that the asker has been given any chance or incentive to edit the question. The same is true of this question.

I don't think we should be in the business of closing bad questions (though I don't consider this question falls into that category, or that they shouldn't be closed as appropriate), but should rather be trying to procure good questions. And so it seems to me that the least that can be done is to alert the asker that their question is currently undergoing review, and to provide them some list of possibly correctable deficiencies.

Am I mistaken somehow, or are these flukes?

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  • 2
    "Holding" a question is a way of procuring good questions. Questioners who aren't motivated by having their question closed are unlikely to be motivated by an alert that their question might be closed -- although sometimes we do see this with dupes, etc. Another way of looking at this problem is (hypothesis) that people bother more with the "close" queue than the "reopen", and often don't bother with either and never come back to questions they voted to close. So another good alert might be to close voters that the question was edited!
    – goldilocks
    Dec 6, 2015 at 16:17
  • @goldilocks - youve been missed.
    – mikeserv
    Dec 6, 2015 at 17:37
  • I've been busy :)
    – goldilocks
    Dec 6, 2015 at 18:05
  • @goldilocks - milquetoast sounds nasty.
    – mikeserv
    Dec 6, 2015 at 18:10
  • I like to think of myself as having a Rorschach profile. At this point no doubt also a bit of an anti-fan club.
    – goldilocks
    Dec 6, 2015 at 18:18
  • @goldilocks - did you just psychoanalyze me?!?
    – mikeserv
    Dec 6, 2015 at 18:21
  • 1
    No. Is that what you think I'm doing? :P
    – goldilocks
    Dec 6, 2015 at 18:22
  • 1
    It has been asked many times on meta, but this issue has never been fixed.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Dec 8, 2015 at 22:06
  • Feature request: Send authors an inbox message if their question gets closed
    – 200_success
    Dec 11, 2015 at 18:18

2 Answers 2

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To answer the question in your title, no, the OP is not notified of close votes. The exceptions are votes to close as a duplicate or with a custom reason since those trigger automatic comments. All other close votes go unnoticed by the OP unless they have enough rep to see close votes and happen to check. And yes, this is a problem.

At the moment, the only way around this is to always leave the OP a comment explaining why you voted and how the post can be improved. When unclear, let them know what information is needed to make it clear, for example.

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    i agree with you - it seems the least we might do is nudge, you know? thanks for the answer though. it does answer the question, but @slm's is equally good, i think. so i'm still wavering.
    – mikeserv
    Dec 1, 2015 at 16:49
  • 1
    @mikeserv toss a coin; it's only meta, after all.
    – terdon Mod
    Dec 1, 2015 at 18:07
  • well, i like the underdog.
    – mikeserv
    Dec 1, 2015 at 19:19
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A question such as this is often times closed until it's improved. Don't confuse closed with something that's finite. I would encourage you (or anyone) to improve it by editing it, so that it's more detailed, if possible.

In its current form it's a little light and if I were to come across it, I'd need additional info such as what version of Calibre along with a sample of the offending files. Without either of those it's difficult to debug these types of questions further, which is often at the heart of what's wrong with them in the first place.

Closing is a broadly used term where sometimes questions are closed (permanently) but in other cases are closed until their deficiencies can be addressed. I would categorize this question as the latter.

As to notifications, I don't believe OP's are notified as to the state of their questions through any SE mechanisms, rather it's their responsibility to steward their questions any address any issues that may come up with it. The U&L SE community's responsibility is to help in this endeavor, where possible.

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  • FYI: That link in the question is appears to be a link to the offending file.
    – derobert
    Dec 1, 2015 at 14:31
  • i do get the difference between closed and on hold, which, as i think, is a lot less distinct than is the difference between open and on hold. you can see this.
    – mikeserv
    Dec 1, 2015 at 16:51
  • @derobert - yeah when I tried to click the link it didn't work.
    – slm Mod
    Dec 1, 2015 at 18:40
  • sorry, slm. i was thinking about it, and i realized there's a fundamental difference between these two answers - the question isnt about whether the linked questions could be improved, its about why the askers arent alerted that they could be. i think @terdon actually hit that nail harder here, and so, underdog or no, i switched my checkmark. but, hey
    – mikeserv
    Dec 5, 2015 at 9:49

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