@Jenayah Furthermore it's not a one-person decision (ok, I mean, it can be) since most of the time this is done by vote. Call me naïve, but if it's a by the users, for the users thing, it falls in line with how I reckon SE works. Since the discussion was started on Meta, the question was reopened twice by a vote of 5 users (different each time, so 10 in total) and reclosed twice by solitary users.

Seriously though, don't go on comparing each combination of HP answers, you'll get a headache and will never see the light of day again, ahah :)

@Jenayah Harry Potter is the only area of this site that I've been involved in.

Ok so what's wrong, in your opinion, with the voting/reopening thingy?

Well that's still a good chunk of the questions, you'd have lots of work to do :)

You said that it's not a one person thing, and its by the users for the users, etc. But the question under discussion had a single user overrule a five person vote twice in a short span.

otoh, voting and evaluation on meta is ongoing

i realised for example i hadn't voted yet

i thought i had when i first saw it

@doppelgreener That's a good point that was made in the Meta discussion.

I mean, the question, yes. But the people got to discuss it, explain their thinking and all, and some of them could probably overthrow the first one or something.

But there seems to be some disagreement on voting during Meta.

Perhaps we need a discussion to clarify those rules.

Being able to freely tell what you think is still one of the most important things there is.

I am writing up a meta about that to post sometime this week

i think it was that i wasn't sure how to vote based purely on the answers that existed on the 15th or 16th, which was only TLC's

@Jenayah When 5 people overthrew the one person, they were themselves overthrown by one person within one hour.

Requestings migration to Politics.SE :p

There’s three options, have it open, have it closed, leave it in the state it was in

well, no, that's just two options, with that third option being one of the first two

Four of you count who cares about meta we’ll do what we want

@TheLethalCarrot I have no problem with a policy that says leave as is until Meta is finished. But is that the policy? At least 10 people didn't think so.

No the first two are always open or closed

And how do we know when the Meta is finished?

Oh, three options for what to do while something is under discussion on meta?

Well they didn’t necessarily see the meta and people ignore policy or are unaware of it anyway but I’m not sure if it is policy yet hence why I’m writing up a meta about it

Yeah three or four depending on how you think about it

In practice there won't be a one-size-fits-all available there

Some questions under analysis should be left open until decided otherwise, others left closed. If you're gonna insta-close everything just because it's under analysis, that's a problem! If you're gonna insta-open it because it's under analysis, also a huge problem.

I can get anything auto-reopened or auto-closed and keep it stuck that way for at least a week just by opening a meta Q.

And it is what I try to encourage others to do

Hence why I prefer option 3

Option 3 is not always appropriate either, it's a case by case thing

Sometimes a thing should obviously be reopened whilst it's under discussion and not left in whatever state it was in when the discusison started, sometimes it should obviously be left closed or left reopened or whatever

To be fair I don’t think it is, unless something is so obviously closed wrongly

Another point to consider is that the Meta votes and the close/reopen votes will not necessarily align with each other. Almost anyone can vote on Meta, but close/reopen has a much higher threshold.

I’m talking in the general here though ignoring the outlyers of the extremes

In the general it's case by case

Sure though we trust users who have gained a privelage to use it appropriateyl

Any option of always doing one specific way of handling it is going to have major problems in the cases where that one specific way of handling it doesn't work well

That's the case with almost any policy.

(Phones acting up again so ignore if messages come out of order or have “spelling mistakes”)

@TheLethalCarrot Not always, hence there also being other checks in the system, like questions being bumped by recent activity for peer review & the opportunity to contest it via our own controls or via meta discussion.

Well we still trust the users, that’s just a case of moderation and being able to correct mistake and or malicious usera

(Especially: sometimes people are new to a privilege and aren't sure how to use it well and might do inappropriate stuff with it, which means they need some checking and talking to when they wind up using it inappropriately.)

@Alex Looks like we finally agree on something at least :)

@TheLethalCarrot The system trusts the users, fellow users don't have to.

Don’t have to sure but I meant the system anyway

@doppelgreener The system trusts the users, fellow users don't have to. Dang, that's the opposite of what V for Vendetta taught us!

@Jenayah The system in this case is a dumb robot though :P

@doppelgreener The system in this case is a dumb robot though :P OR IS IT?

Are you suggesting the network's gone sentient? :O

@Alex FWIW the 1 user in both cases was following the consensus on the meta at the time of closure so it wasn’t really a problem. Just don’t want that sitting there looking like those users did wrong (though from the context of your message I get that wasn’t what you intended)

Wait the network isn’t sentient?

@TheLethalCarrot that's been the prevalent theory

I though Shog was a manifestation of it?

@doppelgreener Who knows? One day you're browsing peacefully, next thing you know the network launches nuclear missiles all around the world.

@TheLethalCarrot Well now we really need to clarify the policy for ongoing Metas.

Though I guess a sentient network originated on Stack Exchange will probably be better of spreading XKCD truth everywhere, isn't it?

@Jenayah tries to, but winds up trying to do it the day the network is in read-only mode for maintenance. the world is saved....

ahahah

@Alex Like I said I’m writing up a meta but from the brief chat here I don’t think it’ll go anywhere

Though I imagine there are five possibilities now 1) always have it open 2) always have it closed 3) keep it in the same state 4) who cares vote away 5) treat it on a case by case basis (no policy)

Again talking general everyday closure metas not extremes

Is this one considered extreme?

And with any policy using common sense is a must of course (if a consensus is reached of course after I post it)

No it’s considered either controversial or “dividing the community” depending on how you want to word it

It’s an everyday closure in my eyes though