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+9 votes
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in Q2A Core by
I don't see how it is possible to close existing questions to prevent new answers from being posted. If this doesn't exist, can it be added in the next version?
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I prefer question is marked as DONE by question owner. That means he is satisfied with the answer, or this problem was solved.
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@tenkana that's what the Best Answer star is for.

1 Answer

+4 votes
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It's a good idea and is certainly a possibility, subject to sufficient demand.

Let me ask you how you think it should work, i.e. who can close a question and under what circumstances?
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I'd say the question asker and anyone with Moderator and up privileges (although perhaps this is configurable in the permissions admin tab) can vote to close a question (or close it directly). When a question has been closed, only users with with Moderator and up (again, possibly configured via permissions) can vote to reopen a question. If the question gets 3 (configurable) vote to be reopened then it gets reopened.

The main use cases I can think of are:
1) Question is a duplicate (provide original question URL and lock current question by closing it)
2) Question is off topic or spam (lock current question by closing it)
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Agree with this, it's pretty much what I had in mind when I mentioned this before as a feature request. There are a few additional things I think we can do, KS mentioned some.

- Close questions to protect from new answers/comments. Particularly useful for old mainstay questions. (Could perhaps only protect it from new members?)
- Close questions for spam - should probably be deleted instantly here.
- Close for duplicate. Here you'd need to specify the duplicate so that the user can go to the duplicate question.
- Close for off-topic or subjective or against whatever rules you have. Here I imagine the question would be scheduled for deletion, but kept briefly so when the user comes back they see it was closed and why. (Alternate: send the user a message on deletion.)

It would be useful to have a "flag" option so ordinary users can report spam/off-topic posts. And perhaps change that to "admin" for moderators, so they can actually do the actions.
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I agree. I am moderator at an online forum, and we're thinking about implementing this Q&A with our forum, and this feature is exactily as we need. :)
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I second this motion.

A boolean field in the posts table called "locked" and a small optional text field for describing the reason. Also, have an option to suffix all closed question titles with "[closed]". Allow permissions to be set appropriately. Definitely need this.
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