The problem: Sometimes, an user begins acting adversarially and is unresponsive to improvement of their post. This is bad behaviour in general and part of the community feels urged to address it.
We know that, in practice, the close reason "off-topic because ... missing context or other details" is used as an umbrella reason for this question has some kind of defect. This can make a bad match when the user under scrutiny is argumentative: they feel that the question is not missing context/details and thus argue even more about it, sometimes bringing the issue to meta and together with it unneeded discussions. The problem is: they are, technically, not exactly "wrong" in general.
The close-voter could vote to close the question under a "Other" reason, and explain it further. But this has two severe downsides:
- It puts the close-voter up close an argumentative user, since voting under "Other" leaves a comment. This is also one of the reasons (I conjecture, at least) why the "off-topic because ... missing context or other details" ended up being the standard "this has issues" reason.
- It is a more involved procedure, thus not being exactly optimal regarding the efficiency and quickness of the vote queue.
So, as I see it, this problem brings annoyance for the user, for the close voters and for the community at large in meta (and also in main). This annoyance is also not a thought experiment: we have explicit examples along meta.
My proposal: Add a close vote reason which reads something as
unresponsiveness
The community has suggested considerable improvements to the question which would make it more aligned to the standards of MSE. Please consider addressing them.
Some counter-arguments to the proposal which I could think of, and the respective rebuttals:
This adds an overly-specific mechanic for no good reason.
As I said before, I think a lot of discussion which is, frankly, unnecessary for all parts involved happens precisely because of this issue. This is of course personal judgement, and if the community thinks that is not sufficient enough for this feature, that is fine.
Well, technically, any closure is due to the user not being responsive with respect to putting the question under the site's policies, so this is redundant.
Yes, that is true. But there is a difference between a question which gets immediately closed due to its overall lack of quality and a borderline case. This close reason would, in practice, be used in that borderline case, when the user simply doesn't want to push it to the other side of the line.
We should not close questions due to unresponsiveness
There has been previous discussion in meta regarding to closing questions due to unresponsiveness (for instance, see this link provided by @Martin Sleziak in the comments).
I don't have a rebuttal for this point (in fact, I consider this a pretty valid point: for instance, a quick argument in favor of this is the fact that responsiveness is related to the user and not the question), other than the fact that it seems that opinion regarding this has changed in the community (this is clear by relatively recent meta situations). If someone answers this question, feel free to elaborate on this topic.
I think this benefits everyone*: the user whose question is being closed (he has a more precise reason as to why), the close-voters (they do not need to engage directly with a potentially argumentative user, and can keep a relative distance) and the community at large, since we would dimish the number of discussions related to this issue.
*Assuming, of course, that closing questions due to unresponsiveness is something the community wants.
EDIT: I've been looking up some previous discussions. This looks like a rather polarizing subject. Oddly, though, I don't see many explicit discussion among the sides (at least, compared to the situation of PSQ's, say). I don't like quoting people, so I ask of the ones who are interested to look up about these issues, see the following links as examples (questions, answers and also comments) where this discussion ensues:
Voting to close due to OP's unresponsiveness
Is it okay to close a question due to bad/non-cooperative behaviour of OP?
Why do even high reputation users do not pay attention on close votes?
Why is the reason for the down and close vote for this question?
etc.
I'll allow myself an exception and quote just a part of an answer which I think is relevant:
Some people say "vote to close immediately, and leave a comment on how to improve it; once it is edited, it can be re-opened". But other people prefer "leave a comment and wait a day or two to give the poster a chance to edit first; if they don't improve the question, then vote to close".
For the latter people, as you can see, things a little more complex. In particular, if a poster posts a question that is off-topic/too-broad/unclear/etc. but is responsive to comments and immediately addresses any feedback, those people won't vote to close. On the other hand, if the poster posts a question that is off-topic/too-broad/unclear/etc. and is non-responsive -- doesn't respond to feedback in a timely fashion -- those people will eventually vote to close. That might look like they're voting to close because of non-responsiveness. They might even describe it as voting to close because of non-responsiveness. But, technically speaking, non-responsiveness is not the reason to vote to close. Instead, the reason to vote to close was the original problem with the post: that it was off-topic/too-broad/unclear/whatever. Because the poster was non-responsive, that original problem never got fixed, and it remains a valid reason to vote to close.
I ask that we do not enter a philosophical debate over causality, what is the "real" reason etc. The suggestion is intended to be of a practical nature to reduce unwarranted tension.
Also take note that "unresponsiveness" is not necessarily to be used in a strict literal sense. It can also be an euphemism for adversariality and disruptive behaviour.
