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The problem, Willie, is that few people read the FAQ! A good system would be entirely self-explanatory.
I find it amusing that you can have so little faith in people reading the FAQ and so much faith on people following the scheme being laid out.
(Yes yes, people are unpredictable and hard to control. That's why I do maths and not sociology.)
I should also add that many people (e.g. myself) have already read the FAQ, and will not probably read them again, unless they are told that something new has been added in the first place. So the FAQ are not a very effective way to communicate a change in policy.
But ... but... if a person sees something he doesn't understands, he would have a question. And FAQ means "Frequently Asked Questions" afterall...
Also I'm pretty sure the Mods have the power to send e-mail to all users. A curt missive stating "some changes to voting policy has made. See the FAQ" is not out of the question.
Anyway, my point is that since it is impossible to make anything completely foolproof, why not just settle for something that is easy to implement?
Zee moderateurs do not have all of zee e-mail addresses of zee users who participate in zee website.
</fake french accent>
Harry is correct here. We have no mechanism to email everyone, and there is no obligation to provide an email address when you register. (Remember though our rule of thumb --- if you do something naughty and haven't provided a means to contact you, the moderators may well act entirely without regards to your interests!)
Hmmm. All the proposals so far both too complicated and too easy to break.
How do other SE sites manage this issue? StackOverflow has 87 pages of users who can vote to close, and MO has a mere 2.5 pages (two and a half!!!)... I have not looked, but I expect SO users do not end up in longuish debates about whether to close or not to close questions.
My guess is that SO naturally has a wider audience, so its bar is already set lower, so to speak. Questions also appear much more quickly than on MO, so a borderline question is just going to sink and not bother anybody.
I think Andrea's solution is the only real way to deal with this issue. It will also give us the power to add actual reasons for closure.
@Harry and Scott: I stand corrected. I've assumed incorrectly that the earlier email I got about spam on MO meant the Mods had the ability to e-mail everyone.
@Harry's most recent comment: do you mean the post about the URL and javascript? (Sorry, as this thread has gotten a bit long and hard to keep track of.)
Alexander: it's not clear to me what you interpret "community consensus" to mean. It is apparent from debates and discussion we've been having on meta for some time, that some of us would prefer MO to be more research-orientated and more geared towards a tool for the Working Mathematician; others want something more like Being Part of A Maths Club; and there are many other variants in between and around these positions.
Moreover, my impression is that MO started out with certain goals, not as a manifestation of "the community"...
Cf. "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" ;-)
The trouble with defining things in terms of a community, is deciding who is part of the community in the first place (cf. political philosophy). I don't think MO was intended to be "a voice for the people", even if such a thing could be desirable or productive or both.
That last comment no doubt sounded more patrician/snooty than it was meant to. I just feel that it's not so easy to work out what we mean by "what the community wants". In practice, I agree with the general thrust of what you were saying, which is to be a bit less gung ho about closing, and to ask what others would do. (Categorical imperative?)
I think what Alex Woo suggested has already been practiced more and more by the MO community, even by members who have been described as "extreme". Keep in mind that this whole thread originated from this thread, in which Harry Gindi started off the debate on whether to close certain question. To me, that is a convincing evidence that our community is dealing more maturely with controversial issues.
If the vote-trading practice is implemented at all, I would prefer not to have to write things like: "I vote to close, cancelling X vote". IMHO, it will make things more personal than necessary.
Like Hailong, I am personally happy with the way things are now. Unfortunately, some people here are not. I think that the only system that won't be "too complicated" is the high-tech solution that Andrea proposed (which was further improved by Scott (see the post after my idea that we use the MO login cookie to authenticate everything)). The advantages of this system are pretty straightforward assuming someone here has the knowhow to actually code it.
@Ryan but then, there would be (almost) no reputation threshold.
I think that there is a big difference between a policy and a convention.
Policies have to be formally decided upon by the "ruling class" and made clear in some obvious way, with a good way of notification of updates. No such method exists on MO (the FAQ certainly is not normative) so policies are hard to implement. This is fine by me as I don't want to have to click an EULA to use this site, and I like the ease of entry that these sites afford.
Conventions are simply things that a group of people agree to abide by. We have a convention that when downvoting, we leave a comment. Not all of us do it, it is unenforceable, and there are no penalties when you don't do it. But nonetheless, it was discussed here and thought to be a good idea, so those who are aware of it try to do it, and hope that by doing it then they make MO a better place (and that others will see it and do likewise).
A policy is imposed from on high and is a "you must". A convention is agreed by the masses and is an "I will".
This vote trading is a convention. There are no strictures saying that people have to abide by it, it is merely a way to avoid certain unpleasant situations and those who prefer to avoid them join in with the trade. But no-one has to abide by it. If someone puts a "I cast a virtual vote to stay open" and then the question is closed anyway, there is nothing to stop them making that virtual vote a reality by casting a reopen vote. This convention is here because there were some heated arguments about questions being closed early, and we prefer to work in a calmer environment. But if someone chooses to ignore it, that is their choice.
That said, there are a couple of things that I would change about this convention. I don't like the "pre-emptive" votes to stay open. If someone feels that a question is in danger of being closed, but no-one has actually voted to close yet then the right thing to do is start a meta thread and link to it.
I also think that those putting a "don't close this" vote should include their current reputation. Since reputation is not displayed on comments, one needs to click through to see that the person really does have enough reputation to participate in the close/open debate. We sometimes get copy-cat comments and those are annoying.
I don't think the vote trading convention is a very good one. It seems like even the really simple version is complicated enough that it causes confusion. Starting a thread on meta and posting a link in the comment thread of the question generates a pool of people willing to close/open a question, and it usually generates some discussion about why people are willing to close/open.
My subjective impression is that there is less outrage about questions being closed than there used to be. I feel like the main function of vote trading was to mitigate this outrage. If this function is no longer necessary (or is less important), the method of starting a meta thread is strictly better than posting a "vote to keep open" comment.
If nothing else, the sooner you vote to close a question, the sooner somebody else has the opportunity to vote to reopen it. Of course, I'm not suggesting you vote to close/reopen willy-nilly. As always, you should be able to defend your vote to close/reopen. Preferably, you should defend it in the comments or on meta before you are even asked to do so.