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I can close my own question by myself, but not reopen it
I was surprised to find that ordinary user privileges allow me to close my own posts unilaterally. It does seem useful; just now I posted something on Linux Systems and realized it needed some fixes to be answerable, and thought that I might not be able to get to it for a while, so I opted to use this option.
It turned out that fixing the issues was not as hard as I feared, and I ended up plowing right into it. But then I was more surprised to find that the "Vote on Holds" ability is needed to reopen the post - and, presumably, even then I would only be casting a vote for it.
Of course, people shouldn't be able to reopen their question if others closed it, since that defeats the purpose of closure. But if I'm allowed to close my own post unilaterally - if that's intended to be a meaningful operation - surely I should have an undo for that?
2 answers
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If we let authors close their own questions, it should only be allowed if there are no answers. I wouldn't want to spend time on an answer to have it stuck in a closed question because the OP is planning on changing the question. Once an answer has been written, the question shouldn't change in meaning.
There is another problem with this whole mechanism, though. We don't want posting and then closing questions to be used in place of drafts. Each close and reopen will bump the question. We don't really want to see it until the author is ready to present it to the world. Allowing authors to close their own questions encourages developing questions "in public" instead of making sure they are ready before posting.
All the above considered, I think it's better not to let authors unilaterally close their own questions.
I agree that we probably do want people to be able to self-close,[1] as a way to signal "I know this needs work" that's less destructive than deletion. If we allow that, though, then we should do one of the following:
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In the close modal where you choose a reason, if you are the author and you do not have the Vote on Holds ability, insert a warning (suggest flagging for mod review when you think it's ready).
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Allow reopening without the Vote on Holds ability IFF you are the author and yours was the only close vote. (Right now we close on a single vote but we hope to have voting in the future, so plan for that.)
Which of these would be the better approach from the user perspective?
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Another answer rightly points out that closing and reworking a question that has answers can invalidate those answers. I agree that we shouldn't allow authors to short-circuit the usual processes in that case. ↩︎
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