Feature Request: Closing Questions

Question

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?

Comments

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.

Answer 1

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?

Comments

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.