Mods do not always exercise perfect judgement, how is a user supposed to deal with a bad close?
1095
To reopen a closed question,  must agree that the question is suitable for the site and cast votes to reopen the question. But:  How does one actually vote to reopen? Is there a reputation level that you must have before you can see this function? Or do I just leave a comment along the lines of, &quot;I vote to reopen&quot;? What happens if someone with less than 3000 reputation leaves a comment that they wish to vote to reopen? How can one draw attention to their closed questions? Is it done via a posting new question? Or do you edit the closed question?   Related:  For more information, see &quot;&quot; in the .
1497
I've observed several incidents where users inadvertently posted detailed, sensitive information. For example, a Server Fault user who posted a question with working login credentials to his actual production server, or the Stack Overflow user who posted actual medical records as example data for his question.   What should be the procedure for handling such cases?
40164
Before you disagree with me with a downvote, or just want to be funny, please hear me out. From the :  The upvote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Downvoting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.  I have honestly never seen a downvote reserved for an extreme case. The process is usually 1) downvote post if it's bad and don't comment. (Not much of a process, is it?) As you stay on the site longer and longer, you develop a carelessness towards downvotes (as I have), but for new users, it's really discouraging.  question inspired me to [ask balpha to] make , which is a list of users with 1 rep who have the  badge. That's the closest I could get to new users who deleted their own posts after downvotes came in. Don't get me wrong, I know the argument about being nice to new users very well, but I still believe it to be an issue. And since , users are much more inclined to go the lazy route and downvote bad questions. No alternative measures (see below) are taken, for the most part. Personally, I leave a comment and don't downvote until the asker shows no interest in fixing their post. The only other measure taken to discourage downvotes (on answers) is the -1 rep punishment to the downvoter, which is absolutely meaningless and inconsequential anyways. How are we supposed to educate new users when we don't teach them what to do, don't direct them to the FAQ, and discourage them with downvotes right off the bat?  Instead of voting down: If the post is spammy or offensive — flag it. If the question is duplicate or off-topic — flag it for moderator attention. If something is wrong, please leave a comment or edit the post to correct it.  We claim to discourage downvoting, yet I see answers like  that encourage us to downvote first and ask questions later when a question is simply unclear or effortless. It's just an awful chain reaction. A new user comes to the site asking a question, but that doesn't work out too well, so they get downvotes, delete the question in shame, and don't get the help they deserve as a fellow writer of code and programmer. Strip away the quality of the site for a moment: the core functionality of this site, and the only reason I and a lot of other users are (still) on it, is to receive and give help to/from others. I enjoy making sure fellow programmers get the answer they need, because this site has helped me get mine when I needed them. Quality can still be maintained if content is fixed rather than downvoted more often. So can we stop discouraging new users from continuing to use this site and actually start to discourage downvoting? I think we need to encourage effort towards teaching and helping new users understand the system and why their post is bad rather than slapping them in the face with downvotes that they don't know how to interpret anyways. I'm leaving ways we can do this up to others. My first thought was to increase the punishment for downvoting answers and to no longer make question downvotes free, but those wouldn't be well-received, judging by the history of similar suggestions. .
112019
There are many answers that are well-formed and well-formatted but are simply plain wrong or misleading. When reviewing, I often have a hard time deciding which action to take, as:   Looks Good: is OK per se but I would never say "good" (would work if the wording was changed slightly), Edit: The question is formatted well and editing it to be right would go against the intent of the author, Recommend deletion: this looks like the most reasonable choice, but I wouldn't flag it if I were browsing the site in normal mode, Not sure: I am quite sure what is wrong but I end up clicking this because the other three options do not seem fitting.   My proposal is to add a fifth option - Downvote that would make it easier to choose in case of such answers.
112103
If a question receives n (say, 5) rollbacks within a hour, raise a moderator flag and lock the post.  Alternatively, if an edit by a new user (say, no edit approving privs) drops the post quality score of a post "too much" (say, by more than 100), it must go through the edit approval process.
101450
There are numerous posts on meta about editing questions with    Thank you. Thanks in advance Thank you, Sean Please help me!! im such a noob sorry for takin ur time   and many of them seem to conflict each other.  In my opinion, these edits are not too minor, even if that is the only thing wrong with the post. We shouldn't have a conditional policy "If there's nothing else worth editing, it's better to leave it alone" because then it sets an example to new users that it is OK to add such lines to their posts, and propagates confusion about what edits to allow and reject. I do agree if the post needs help in other areas, then simply removing "thanks" is too minor.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about whether these edits are acceptable, because I am continually rejected when making such edits. Of course, I edit the rest of the post if it needs it, but if the post is otherwise acceptable in its current form, then that is the only edit I make.  There needs to be some concrete and clear answer as to when these edits are acceptable.   See also:   My conflicting and confused experiences:           Note also: There are even scripts implemented to get rid of this garbage, but they are not perfect, and editors should be able to finish the job.
16422
Since high rep users gain some pretty powerful privileges I wonder what checks and balances are in place to prevent them from abusing their privileges.  I am not near these privileges on any SE site, but a particular user that I think might abuse them is. , demonstrates one way that misuse can be highlighted.  Is that the only thing that prevents bad behavior for high rep users? You have to 'report' them on meta? What if you try to stop them but they 'punish' you, and you can't do anything about it because you are low rep? It would be nice if all their actions were public record; maybe some where on their profile page.  Things that might be done that abuses privileges in my opinion:   Someone may edit questions so they favor his own answer, or disfavor yours because your he does not like your answer. Delete votes on questions (I don't even know what this means) for subjective reasons. Dismiss flags that are valid.   Also, I am a bit confused between a moderator and a trusted user. I know that mods have more power but I would like to see a side-by-side comparison.
62601
I've occasionally noticed an OP who will edit their own question and destroy it completely, always leaving some kind of graffiti-like scrawl in its place.  This seems to happen on low-quality questions by low-rep users, and the moment of self destruction tends to occur after the question is closed or otherwise devolves into a communication breakdown between the poster and the community.  Here are some examples:        It seems like the poster usually does this in anger (1st and 3rd example), or else is just confused about how to delete their question (2nd example).  My question is about how this should be handled. In the past I wasn't sure, so I always flagged for mod attention. However I notice the solution on all of these was to just do a rollback (I did this myself on the 2nd example after nothing happened). Is this a good enough approach, or should a flag be used?  What about with particularly obnoxious users like in the third example, where the guy came back to do it again?
8379
I recently had a  which attracted 1 close vote. I don't know why this vote was cast. If I have not conformed to the site's protocol in any way I am left 'none the wiser'.    Should it be made mandatory for a user to comment on why they are voting to close a question?  If this site is to remain 'clean', part of this will be achieved incorporating processes that educate users.
11131
It came up in chat that a spammer's account needed destroyed; their posts had been deleted but their name (which was offensive) still showed up on the front page as updates to posts and their user account hadn't been deleted.   Someone in chat wanted this fixed but there "wasn't anything to flag" so they complained in chat rather than flagging, which would have directly notified moderators. For future reference how should I tell users to handle a situation like this? Just flag a related post with the "Other" flag reason and explain the situation? What if there's no "related" post?
78462
I think moderators should have the ability to cast a normal, non binding close and open vote like they were a normal user (while of course retaining their ability to cast a binding vote where necessary). This can be used in &quot;grey areas&quot; where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion, but not make a decision alone; a good example of this is . This also helps in areas not so grey (questions that everyone would agree should be closed) since the OP has the time to see close (1) and possibly edit his or her question. The moderator can then optionally come back after a few minutes and close it for real if it's not improved (or maybe during that time other 4 people voted to close it). This would also fit perfectly in :  Since we’re about to add community moderators on both Stack Overflow and Server Fault, I need to document what it is, exactly, we expect moderators to do. The short answer is, as little as possible!
20579
Let's say that there is a question asked in a bad manner, in a way that the question is missing. For example the user shows the code and doesn't explain very well which is the problem.    Usually someone starts digging in the OP mind posting comments and asking him for details. It may happen that the question gets edited and the OP edits it to a valid question.    Do you usually give the OP time to edit the question or you immediately vote to close it?
3417
Some users on Stack Overflow have been spending a bit of time  that really need to be closed. This is working out very well, I'm hoping we can cut out some noise for them when they execute these types of searches.  Suppose we have the query:    And we want to refine it so that we only see open questions. Adding closed:0 to that seems like it should filter out questions that have already been closed, but in reality it doesn't because answers can't be closed.  This seems easy to fix if closed:[0-1] applies to the parent question when is:answer is toggled.
15248
A guest at my house over the weekend stood puzzled next to my driveway. &quot;What is that for?&quot; she asked, pointing to a framework of 2x4s and hardware cloth perched on an old tire amid piles of sand. &quot;Sifter.&quot; I said. &quot;For what?&quot; &quot;For sifting gravel.&quot; &quot;Why?&quot; &quot;To line walking paths, such as the one you're standing on...&quot; Spend enough time working with something, and it's easy to forget how strange and unnatural your makeshift tooling can appear to those unfamiliar with it.  Such is the nature of these meta sites. For 5 years, we've been directing folks to them for discussion and feedback, to commune with their community, hash out misunderstandings, propose changes and document the current state of things. And... We haven't always been good about helping them get past the initial shock and confusion of dealing with this system. This has manifested in several unfortunate behaviors:  Downvoting of legitimate support questions - those that are not duplicates and reflect an actual bug or honest misunderstanding of how the system operates. Folks who are acting in good faith should be treated as such - , not shutting them down.  Closing questions that seek input and discussion from the community - in hindsight, adding &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; as a close reason on meta sites was... a terrible idea. The old &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason made some sense for rants and so on, but for a discussion site closing down questions that solicit opinions is just silly. Here on MSE, we prefer the following off-topic reason instead:  This question does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail. See also:    The perception that Stack Exchange is disrupting the normal operation of the site by talking about future plans - even when those plans involve the community. I talked about this a bit more on , but seeing this kind of backlash toward folks at the company who were trying to be open and receptive to discussion about what they were doing was kinda disheartening - we need to be doing more of that, not less.  A reluctance to ask questions about asking questions - which is about as meta as you can get, and yet we probably get more of these via email than we see on meta, while being the least-qualified to answer them well.   After an increasing number of complaints from both core users and moderators on a number of sites, we're taking a hard look at how we can improve this situation... Starting with a change to :  Meta is for...  ...$SiteName users to communicate with each other about $SiteName (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions) ...$SiteName  users to communicate with Stack Exchange the company (posting bugs, suggesting improvements, or proposing new features), and ...Stack Exchange to communicate with the community (soliciting feedback on new ideas or features, or discussing policies that affect the whole network)  Lots of topics are fair game, as long as they are about the Stack Exchange family of Q&amp;A sites in some way. Any issue that concerns the core Stack Exchange engine that runs all Stack Exchange websites is welcome here.  This replaces the previous bullet list of specific topics, and aims to outline broad purposes with examples for clarification rather than constraining the scope to those examples. So... that's a start. But a documentation change isn't going to change misconceptions that've already built up among newer users. So I'm asking y'all for help: What do you think meta should be used for, and how can we better communicate this intent to new users?
64480
I joined a site in private beta and posted an answer citing one source. One user made some edits which I did not agree with, so, I rolled back the changes. Some of the proposed changes were grammatical in nature while others converted a definitive statement I made to an ambiguous one which I didn't like at all.  Then I notified the user in comments why I rolled back the changes. The person did not agree &amp; downvoted my answer. Fair enough. I didn't mind.  Then User-2 tried to re-apply User-1's changes which I rolled back again. User-2 tries to argue in comments why I should allow the edit, I then explained why didn't like the suggested edits because my sources say otherwise and changing it the way they wanted conflicts with my sources.  A moderator appears out of the blue and has permanently locked my answer after rolling it back to User-1's edit.   Is such an action by a moderator justified? What is the official policy on when should a moderator get involved in an edit war? What authority or role does OP have when his or her post is messed around by other users which includes a moderator, conflicting with OP's intent?
104562
seems to be making edits to his own questions and saying that he's flagging them for deletion (not sure about the flagging part though since I don't have enough rep for that, but that's according to his newly edited questions. However according to his reputation - 10 currently - he shouldn't even have flagging privileges yet).  I stumbled upon one of his questions in the close queue, it had an accepted answer so I reverted the question back one step, and having seen that he's done the same thing to multiple questions I'm not sure about how this should be handled. I am not sure about if he has access to the delete button on his own questions or not.  As I'm not sure how to handle this I wanted to bring it to the community's attention and ask for support for how to handle future cases like this. Should all questions be reverted back? Should they be closed (possibly with the motivation "user seems to want this question gone")?
109128
I'm going to ask this, even though it has some resemblance to other questions, but I think it's important to ask this question in this manner, because it has some semantic meaning that the other questions allude to but do not come out and say.  Should moderators close questions for reasons other than obvious violation of the rules?    I've been noticing a lot of closed questions by moderators lately, with only a single vote.  For example,   I did not ask the question, and i don't know the author, but something bugs me about moderators heavy handedly bypassing the community process of choosing what is and isn't a good question to ask.    True, the community can re-open a closed question, but that's a little bit like being presumed guilty until proven innocent.  I think far fewer people look at closed questions and think "that should be re-opened" than people that look at open questions and think "that should be closed".  I'm not trying to suggest that moderators should have this power taken away, just that they should voluntarily leave questions to the community unless they are obviously violating the rules.  Even good intentions can go bad because someone was in a hurry, or didn't read the question well enough.    I'm also not trying to suggest some kind of recourse for closed questions by moderators.  I think that issue goes away if moderators don't close non-violating questions solely by themselves.  I think, by default, moderators should merely be one vote to close (or migrate) questions, with an option to force close if necessary... but SOP should that moderators votes do not (normally) carry any more weight than anyone elses (again, unless it's an obvious violation of the rules).  Moderators have a purpose, and an important one at that.. but I don't think that purpose is to decide for the community that questions are duplicates or not a real question.  That's the communities job and moderators should not take it away from them.  EDIT:  I think people are missing the point.  I am not making any judgement call as to whether the actions taken by mods in any given circumstance was correct or not.  Even if the community would have done the exact same thing, it's still the communities place to make those decisions by consensus, not a single person unilaterally deciding.  Comments?