This week we rolled out a series of changes to improve parts of the question close workflow. Below are the changes and impacted sites.
Close & Flag screen updates
This change is live on Stack Overflow, international sites, and across the network. These updates are copy changes that aim to more accurately represent close reasons and reframes close flags more constructively. This update includes:
General styling improvements to all close screens (e.g. flag screen, mod close screen).
Renamed “off-topic” close reason to “A community-specific reason” on the primary close-reasons page. This addresses the pain point that many closed questions tagged as “off-topic” aren’t in fact off-topic.
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- Renamed title of ‘off-topic’ screen to ‘Why isn’t this question suited for [Community]?’’
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- Renamed ‘should be closed’ option to ‘needs improvement’ on the primary flag screen, focusing the language on the 'why' vs. 'what' behind the flag.
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- Renamed the title on ‘Should be closed’ screen to ‘Why should this be closed?’ and updated ‘off-topic’ within this screen to ‘A community-specific reason’
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- Styling improvements to “Manage [Community] specific close-reasons” (previously called “Manage off-topic close reasons”) screen for mods and the ability to define the post notice content so that it matches close reason more specifically, rather than being generic text.
Big thanks to SO/SE mods for feedback on renaming here.
Improved closed question editor
This change is live on Stack Overflow and International sites now and will roll out to network sites once we’ve resolved any glaring issues. This update borrows UI patterns from the new Ask a Question flow. The goal is to provide a richer, guided experience for users editing questions that are closed.
Post authors will know why their question was closed along with tips on how to improve it.
Tips modal example
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From there, users will see a similar editor and review step to the question flow experience where guidance is provided in the right rail.
Closed question editor example
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Email and Inbox notifications for closed questions
This is launching on Monday (April 20) on Stack Overflow as an A/B test. This update sends question authors an inbox notification when their question is closed. The idea is that the inbox notification will guide users to their closed question and the post notice displayed there will encourage them to edit the question to improve it.
If there are no edits, the question remains closed, and hasn't been deleted within an hour of closure, we'll also send a follow-up email with guidance about what to do next.
It’s running as an A/B test so that we can measure how effective these notifications are in guiding users to edit their questions.
(Update: The experiment has finished, and the closed post inbox notification has graduated and is live on all sites. There is now a new experiment that is live testing how effective the email is. Read more about it in the official announcement.)
Inbox notification example
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Email example
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There has already been some feedback around naming updates, thank you. We've flagged those and are reviewing them. Let us know if you have more feedback or questions.