Why the focus on CRUDE? What about the users posting in the reopen and undelete thread? What about all the reviewers?

Further, everybody that answers a question enforces their personal opinion that this type of question should be answered on the site.

I don't believe all that much in formulating detailed policies. The issue is that we then move to discussing what the policies mean in a specific case.

To wit, something that is added as a custom close reason ought to count as official. Thus, it's official that lack of context is a valid close reason.

Of course, now, we discuss when context is lacking and some say for some question it never lack for they don't need any.

It's pretty simple: lack of context is an existing close reason. Thus, if somebody can make a reasonable case that something lacks context they can vote to close it. And, that's that.

Still further, if it were such a minority position it just would not work.

My view on what actually plays out is this:

Many a user is occasional 'bitten' by a close or delete. Then when a discussion arises they possibly support a position for more restraint thinking of their great contribution that had been judged unfairly in the past. Yet, then in practice, what they mostly see is moderated against is other peoples post that at best are mediocre and for the most part worse. So, they are not much against it.

@quid Maybe it could help to emphasise that some collateral damage will occur in a group of people casting votes. And that these posts ought to be discussed in the relevant meta threads. Perhaps strengthened by sharing relevant statistics.

@user170039 I think de facto policies are the best we can muster. To have official policies we would need to first agree on the mechanisms of how to formulate and decide on those official policies. And even if we managed that many users might still feel dissatisfied about decisions made "before they joined in".

Another benefit is that de facto policies are easier to refine as a consequence of a meta discussion. True, having official policies posted somewhere new users can study them would be great. I have toyed with the idea of collecting links to de facto policies to a single meta thread. However, that could easily be turned into yet another place were the same old quarrels would be rehashed, thus defeating the purpose of informing new users.

But, Physics managed to formulate an official no homework -policy. I don't know if having an official policy stopped all the quarrelling there?

@Jyrki I think it's an illusion to think that the quarrelling will stop. However, the amount of legitimate attention that can be drawn to it will be more limited and will focus on new arguments, statistics, and/or other developments. That'd be a net gain compared to the current situation.

@quid I think your last point (about "bitten" users temporarily becoming active) is a good description.

@quid "Why the focus on CRUDE?" My guess is that CRUDE is simply more visible to those users who complain. Most of them aren't interested in meta affairs in general, and cannot be bothered to learn about the other tools.

@Lord_Farin That's a fair point. If we can formulate such policies, and post them in meta, that would help. May be that thread should be locked to stop it from getting cluttered? But that may have a downside as well.

@quid I haven't forgotten about the meta discussion on review bans that I once "promised" to initiate. However, I think your missive on review guidelines is more useful, so I'm undecided whether it is wise for me to do that. After all, the post would be about my private recollections and "policies". I was very cautious with review bans because I never found the time to discuss them with even Arthur or Daniel. I'm glad to see that the current team has talked it over to a significant extent.

So I guess, the things I listed in my response user170039 should be described as "possible concerns" or "misgivings" as opposed immovable obstacles. May be it is more about me not cherishing the prospect of having to rehash all the past arguments if we now decide to formulate an official policy. But, may be that would save energy in the long run?

@Lord_Farin yes, it could be useful if there was some discussion that is based on actual support for deletions and merely points out some things where they feel deletions went to far. That's pretty rare.

@JyrkiLahtonen thanks for the feedback.