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I'm new here but so far I've seen many times (inc myself) how questions are put on hold way too quick!

Without offending those who put them on hold, I think people are doing it too quickly and without much thought sometimes. There are many questions that are not perfect but are reasonable and understandable to more expert people or just those that understand them better.

Also - sometimes instead of letting a person to fix-edit his question, it it hold at once. This leads to questions being somewhat 'stuck' when they can be answered or edited quickly (with other's help sometimes)

I'm not you shouldn't use this option at all, or that there aren't questions that actually deserve that 'treatment' but i think that you should give a 12-24 hours for the community and original poster, to answer or edit the questions.

Does anyone else think so? Is it something that will be able to change?

EDITS

Alright so I was at fault, since on-hold questions can be commented it is far more reasonable. But Since my rep was low i wasn't even able to realize that >.<

So - I guess this Q can be closed/erased - whichever. It's a little too bad the line that answers that ^^ is the last line in the on-hold help page, which i did read just well - not to the last word apparently :/

I do recommend some sort of edit to the https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions page - too much text + not enough listing and use of typography = hard to read!!

  • 4
    A question that is on-hold can be edited. By anyone. Why do you think that's not the case? – Oded Oct 22 '15 at 19:16
  • I'm not sure if that's relevant since most on-hold cases are missing info of some sorts, which only the OP can give – Yar Oct 22 '15 at 20:07
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    Your point? The OP is one of those people who can edit. – Oded Oct 22 '15 at 20:16
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    If someone asks a question, why should it not be expected they hang around for a bit to respond to comments? Why should it be ok for someone to ask and run? – Oded Oct 22 '15 at 20:18
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    Yes, by anyone with 50 rep or more and by the OP. The question OP can always comment on their question and on answers to their question. – Oded Oct 22 '15 at 20:21
  • The whole point of closing questions is to prevent answers. Not being able to close questions would mean people could ask whatever they wanted, no matter how bad, and users wouldn't be able to do anything about cleaning them up. You couldn't ask for a faster way for experts to jump ship. – fbueckert Oct 23 '15 at 0:15
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I think that you should give a 12-24 hours for the community and original poster, to answer or edit the questions

No, if a question or answer is not okay, the author should work on it fixing it. You have as long as you want to, since a question put on hold can be reopened any time when it accumulates enough votes. In the meantime, OP and others can comment on it (if they have at least 50 reputation) or edit the question. Every edit will send the question into the reopen review queue, so it gets eyes on it.

If you force other users to wait until they can vote to close, the question is long gone and will probably never get closed, since no one sees them. This is bad for the quality of the site. We don't close questions to bully people, it is quality management tool.

If people (usually the 'Fast Gun in the West' kind) get the chance to answer questions without having any quality measures against it, the site is doomed.

  • OP is active on a low traffic site. Your argument about the question being long gone is probably only true for SO, SU and other high-traffic sites. – rene Oct 22 '15 at 19:28
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    @rene Although I somewhat agree, on those sites it will take days before a question gets closed. It often takes 8 hours on Seasoned Advice to get a suggested edit through... – Patrick Hofman Oct 22 '15 at 19:29
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    I somewhat agree in that case as well... just wanted to make sure if traffic did matter. – rene Oct 22 '15 at 19:32
  • I'm not saying don't put on-hold EVERY question, but some do deserve at least idk, 3 hours?, to become more constructive with the help of other commenters (bare in mind most cases are of newbies like myself who need those comments tips). Or also - within those X hours they can (and do) sometimes be answered. – Yar Oct 22 '15 at 20:10
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    Who should decide which get the extra time window? Also, the question isn't answerable or not according to the rules, it should be closed at that time. – Patrick Hofman Oct 22 '15 at 20:14
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    @Yar The whole point of closing questions is to provide an opportunity for the question author to fix the question without it attracting low quality answers in the mean time. The entire system works best when close-worthy questions are closed as soon as humanly possible. Artificially inhibiting the question from being closed just means that it's more likely to attract harmful answers until the question can be improved. – Servy Oct 22 '15 at 20:46
8

The very point of putting a question on hold is to prevent any answers from being added while the question is in a state of disarray. Until it's fixed, by commenting and/or editing (which are not stopped in any fashion), answers will do more harm than good. That's literally the only reason there is any such feature as on-hold/close in the first place.

Therefore, questions should be put on hold as fast as possible, and the occasional mistake dealt with by reopening, which is also the way to handle the more common case of salvaging the question through edits.

  • I'm not able to post all types of comments yet due to low rank - but does an on-hold question allow comments to be added? – Yar Oct 22 '15 at 20:12
  • Yes, comments, edits, etc. All is allowed besides answers. – Patrick Hofman Oct 22 '15 at 20:13
  • Gotcha. That changes a lot. – Yar Oct 22 '15 at 20:22

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