Closing old, unanswered questions because they're old

Question

So this pops up in the review queue:

• Layered navigation with 3-tier product structure

It's a well-formed, well-considered question (esp. once OP responded to my request for clarification). It could be closed based on the lack of access to the third-party module. That said, the underlying question ("how to add additional attribute values to layered nav") is generally answerable without access.

Recently I'm seeing a lot of old, unanswered questions in the close queue. I get that we are trying to improve the answer rate of the site, and I get that we are fighting against a flood of bad questions, but I wonder if we are going a bit far. Thoughts?

Answer 1

Good point. I've been closing more and more questions and I try to do it for good reasons.

Couple of reasons why I flagged this one

• over a year old
• only 66 views so low Google value
• Magento EE so no easy way to reproduce
• Bit broad / vague. The chance of getting an answer was in my opinion low.

Answer 2

You have to admit that there are a lot of old questions, most of them badly written, that will never get an answer here.
These should be closed (in my opinion).
Because we neglected these questions when they were posted, now, while doing a cleanup most probably there will be some collateral victims in the process.
I don't have a bullet proof solution for this, but since a closed question can be opened any time I don't think this is really harmful. I also opened a few closed questions when the OP requested or when someone had an answer for them.

Also, closing valid but old questions might refresh the OP's memory that he has an old question to which he may already have got an answer and he can answer it himself.

In conclusion, we might be going too far with closing questions but the damage is not that big compared to the benefits.

Answer 3

How about asking, as a comment, the OP if there has been any progress? Active users will be alerted and be given a chance to update the question (possibly even an answer).

Even though I wasn't alerted, I just came across benmarks' question by chance, which prompted me to clean up a lot of my old questions. However, I understand that many users are indifferent about answer rates, so it may be a lost cause.

Answer 4

I'd like to add that when I stumble upon a question that is unanswered and vague/low quality/unclear/old and maybe, maybe after placing a comment the OP will come back to improve/answer it himself, I have forgotten completely about this question if he doesn't. I think for most of these questions the OP won't come back.

Closing it when you stumble upon them is the best way in my opinion.

Answer 5

I asked a similar question earlier regarding closing my own question. Ref: Delete or Vote to Close my own question

Though the questions are good in my opinion, i never found a solution of it and also didn't got the answer.

I was advised to be my own judge by @benmarks and i decided to keep them open hoping someone might stumble upon it sometime and can provide the solution to it.

I think closing a bad questions will be a good idea, but we should not delete the decent questions. We can make it come up the queue by either upvoting, editing or commenting on it.