Are we, perhaps, voting to close questions a little too enthusiastically due to giving undue weight to certain turns of phrase?

Question

How do you teach relative keys to new musicians? was close-voted as "Too Broad". A comment was made that:

a "how" question needs to set out some criteria, otherwise that's a purely subjective judgement.

I'd suggest that ignores the inferences that a human being would usually make - e.g. that the question is asking for good ways to teach that topic, and that there are certain somewhat common assumptions that we can make about what 'good' teaching methods are (because we make those same assumptions on other questions about how to teach!)

Another recent one was originally worded "What are the best pentatonic scales to play over a major chord progression?". This one has been close-voted as "Opinion based".

I can see that the phrase 'What are the best...' is always going to represent a somewhat Pavlovian stimulus to those aware of the "Opinion based" close reason, myself included! However, again, I think this is just a fairly natural human way of asking a common kind of "what scales fit" music theory question. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the information needed wasn found in answers to other questions, but at least if we'd voted to close as a duplicate, we'd have pointed the asker to at least one duplicate.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but in these cases, might we have judged the questions by rather 'inhuman' standards?

(I'm not trying to nit-pick unnecessarily based on just 2 questions; I think there are other similar examples that pop up now and again. The word 'recommendation' can often bring the close-vote vultures swooping too, for example, even when a question isn't necessarily looking for recommendations for specific equipment).

Answer 1

It would certainly be nice if we could assume that everyone who reads a question makes the same assumptions about what is wanted, and holds themselves to a high standard for answering, but that isn't the case. I don't think it makes sense to put the onus on everyone else when we can have the question writer ask something clear, on-topic, etc. that explains what they want.

Dr Mayhem's answer is completely on point. Putting a question on hold isn't permanent or a punishment. I will elaborate a little below in response to specific comments here.

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From Tim's comment:

would it not be prudent for the mods ( the only ones who are able, I guess) to make those simple edits, rather than merely, it would appear, close?

Anyone can edit. (And vote one way or another!)

One point of note is that no one should edit a question to ask something different. I will try to tweak where possible, but "How to teach X" and "What is X" are quite different, and so I left a comment leaving it up to Neil. From the editing sidebar (bold is mine):

How to Edit

► fix grammatical or spelling errors

► clarify meaning without changing it

► correct minor mistakes

► add related resources or links

► always respect the original author

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From topo morto's comment on Dr Mayhem's answer:

IIUC The route back from 'on hold' is in theory slightly easier (as edited on-hold questions go in the reopen queue), but on this site if it's true that there is not much activity around the review queue, is there really much practical difference between 'closed' and 'on hold'?

Absolutely agreed about the activity here. If the issue has been addressed, please feel free to flag the question or @comment me directly. I definitely want as quick a turnaround as possible in these cases. (I do catch a number of them in the "Reopen Votes" review queue, but you'd be surprised how many appear there after an edit that doesn't add anything in either direction.)

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From Keith John Hutchison's comment:

Putting a question 'on hold' and then closing as opinion based without giving any guidance as to why make the process of 'on hold' and 'closing' opinion based.

The panel that appears with the On Hold reason is usually pretty solid, and more importantly it links to the Help Center which goes into more detail. Is there anything you think should be added there?

In the other example I had a concrete recommendation and left a comment as such, but this case I didn't feel I could add anything beyond what the help center says.

Answer 2

The construction of "what is best..." is often correlated with a vague, poorly researched question. Though often closed as "Opinion Based" (possibly as a knee-jerk response to what clearly looks like soliciting opinion) there are often other problems with the question; possibly including a combination of

• Too broad, a vague "what is best" leaves open too many variables for the question to be answered
• Too localized, to some extent "what is best" requires reading the OP's mind as far as what he/she prioritizes

When the OP resorts to a general criterion of "best" it can be indicative that they either (a) don't have a specific practical problem for which they need an answer, or (b) haven't done enough rubber duck debugging to have clearly formulated the problem for themselves.

Answer 3

One thing everyone needs to be aware of is that these posts are not Closed. They are put on hold and guidance is given not only in the reason for them going on hold, but most times in an extra comment left by voters or the mod who closed it.

This wording explicitly asks the OP to sort the issues (whether they be scope, clarity or whatever)

"On Hold" is the preferred mechanism to deal with any question that doesn't work in its current form.

That said, everyone above a pretty low rep level can edit, and we quite often do make simple fixes to grammar, spelling and formatting, and in some cases to the question - if we are clear about what the OP is asking. If in doubt, though, we don't do that last, as we try not to second guess what they mean.

And on a comparative basis, Music.SE comes in 61st out of 164 sites for %age questions closed, and fully half of our closures (438) are Offtopic (with another 122 Unclear, 108 Too Broad and 104 Opinion Based) - which looks pretty good to me.