$\begingroup$
Questions can be closed and reopened by the votes of a handful of users. Although a single user cannot exercise such a vote more than once, the number of oscillations that can occur is potentially unbounded, if the population of users with sufficient reputation grows. Close/open battles have gone on for several rounds (at least 4 on a recent question, and maybe a 5th is coming soon). In a related meta thread, a user suggested that this is a good feature because it gives some information to the uninformed user that a question is highly controversial. I would like to open the question here as to whether this is actually valuable.
A proper positive answer should probably collect a reasonably sized sample of oscillating questions and argue for some generalization about the value of their oscillation. A proper negative answer should probably also collect such a sample and argue that the oscillation instead reflected some social phenomenon and did not bring useful information about the question's content to the reader.
asked Mar 24 at 12:34
$\endgroup$
4
$\begingroup$
I don't really see any problem that is posed by oscillation specifically. I don't view this as a problem that needs solving.
Rather, to my way of thinking, the mechanism enables a certain compromise in community moderation in situations where compromise seems especially called for. When there are strongly held but divergent views on a question, then it will spend part of the time in the closed state, to the extent that people want it closed, and part of the time in the open state, to the extent people want it open.
I find that quite reasonable and this is probably just what we should want in these cases.
answered Mar 24 at 15:27
$\endgroup$
3
You must log in to answer this question.
Explore related questions
See similar questions with these tags.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.