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Comments on Closing Articles

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Closing Articles

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I noticed that there isn't a way to close Article type posts.

While some of the close reasons might not be very applicable to Articles, I think that at least the off-topic, outdated, and duplicate closures would be useful.

Could the ability to close Articles be added?

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Articles can be made closable in configuration (does not require a code change), but it's a global, network-wide change, so we'd need to make sure that doesn't have negative consequences for any of our communities.

The down-side is that currently there is one set of close reasons per community (not even per category -- per community). Some of the close reasons, which assume questions, don't make sense for articles. Some do. There'd be some user confusion unless we can rewrite the set of (default) close reasons so that the set makes sense in all places where one sees the list.

It seems like it would (eventually) be possible to configure close reasons per community per post type, and that would solve this problem. I have an idea for how that would work in the user interface, and if I understand the code correctly (I might not!) this seems possible to implement. But I don't know if it's that straightforward or how long it would take for somebody to make that change.

To summarize: we could make articles closable on the network today, and they'd have the same set of close reasons as questions do. Some day in the vague unspecified future, we might be able to have close reasons that apply to only one post type (question or article). Making articles closable affects all articles on all communities. Should we throw that switch now and hope to clean up the reasons later, or should we wait?

I am aware of one case where being able to close articles specifically as duplicates would be very helpful (the Code Golf sandbox).

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Personally I'd like to see the ability to close articles now (9 comments)
Personally I'd like to see the ability to close articles now
trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

In a ideal world, we would wait until close reasons can be per post type (or even better, per category) before switching on the ability to close articles.

However, in the real practical world, switching on the ability to close articles creates a pressure to implement per post type close reasons. Without that pressure there may be other things taking higher priority for a long time.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Here's the GitHub change request for per-post-type close reasons, with some proposed UI.

trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Looks good - and it makes sense to focus on per-post type first.

One potential confusion from the penultimate paragraph: I had previously thought of closing as duplicate in the sandbox as a way of including a link from the sandbox draft to the finished post, but perhaps it would be useful to have genuine duplicate closure too. So then the options would be:

Close as duplicate: for when the draft turns out to be too similar to an existing challenge (link to existing post in the challenges category)

Close as finalized: for when a draft is ready and has been posted to the challenges category (link to the draft's finished challenge)

Close as cancelled: for when a draft turns out to be unsuitable (no link required)

If either of the first two are not possible (due to requiring cross category links or because it would be like two different duplicate close reasons) I think it would still be useful to have close as finalized just for the ability to filter them out when that becomes possible

trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

(So "close as finalized" would not mean there is anything wrong with the draft, just that it has served its purpose and gone on to be posted as a finished challenge - the purpose of this close reason would just be to allow hiding them with a filter so only the drafts that still need feedback are showing)

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 1 year ago

trichoplax‭ I was imagining that Code Golf would define something like "completed" (requires link) and "done"; I'll edit the comment to make that clearer. The first one would use the duplicate mechanism, but it doesn't have to be called "duplicate".

The code already supports cross-category duplicates (not sure if that's deployed yet).

trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Being able to use the duplicate mechanism without the word duplicate sounds ideal.

trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

I'm not sure what "done" would mean in contrast with "completed" though.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 1 year ago

I assume the folks on Code Golf would have better ideas about what to call the two close reasons. Each community can edit close reasons to suit its needs; we just need to make it possible.

trichoplax‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Sounds great. Thanks Monica.