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I saw some questions in my close votes review queue that were asked by new users and had 4 close votes (and eventually got closed) without any answer or comment at all and without any comment explaining to the asker why their question was being closed like this or this or this. (I didn't save other examples when I saw similar cases but when I saw this question in my close votes review queue I decided to ask this question and provide it as an example before community bot deletes it) and this.

In this cases I don't want to vote to close or leave open so I skip because I think we shouldn’t close or downvote questions before explaining (at least) in the comments why the question is doing bad on this site because I think this will be a bad experience for new users that will make them never use this site again.

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    $\begingroup$ Can't you open the question in another browser tab, and then after you skip it in the review queue switch over to that tab and add a comment? You can't prevent some other reviewer from closing it, but at least that lets you provide feedback. $\endgroup$
    – JonathanZ
    Commented Feb 18 at 2:18
  • $\begingroup$ @JonathanZ the problem is in many cases questions involves branches of mathematics that I haven't studied yet like topology or abstract algebra etc. $\endgroup$
    – pie
    Commented Feb 18 at 2:26
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    $\begingroup$ Even if you can't contribute anything from a mathematical point of view, you can warn them that their question is about to get closed, and you can direct them to math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9959/… where they might get some idea of what they ought to do. $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Commented Feb 18 at 5:08
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    $\begingroup$ What was the reason for the close votes in the question you linked? Looks perfectly fine to me. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan
    Commented Feb 18 at 17:15
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    $\begingroup$ @Stefan I don't really know why. $\endgroup$
    – pie
    Commented Feb 18 at 20:25
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    $\begingroup$ It's worth noting that the closure of a question does itself provide a closure reason visible to the asker, with a prompt to edit the question (I think). Closure isn't permanent; the asker is always free to edit their post to comply with the site rules, and ask for it to be reopened. $\endgroup$
    – Christian E. Ramirez
    Commented Feb 28 at 7:09

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Well, I am of the opinion that this site is too accommodating of bad/banal questions in the first place, and that whatever good deed we may be doing by helping someone with a not-so-good question, may be off-set in that we may be giving homework assistance [or even take-home exam assistance!] that the professor never intended for the student to get. And perhaps related to this, the least a new user can do when asking for homework help is to provide context and make an effort to present their question clearly--and so the guidelines "should be" just common sense and don't need to be spelled out. Maybe those who voted-to-close feel similarly as I do? In any event, that MSE should move away from its original intention of a repository of good questions/answers, to become a sort of online office hours to serve and tutor fledgling math students--that is not a universal viewpoint on here!

In addition here, in all three instances posted the questions were asked by users who apprear to be not new, and so it may be assumed that they have been here long enough to know better already. So whoever voted-to-close may have seen no need nor use in warning the offending posters further.

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A question that is simply not up to the standards expected should be closed as soon as possible, to prevent early or broad or shot-in-the-dark answers from being made irrelevant to the question after it is fixed. That nobody yet provided a comment, let alone answer, is entirely separate from whether, in its current state, the question is of sufficient quality and meets the site's standards to remain open.

This false dichotomy between closing a question and improving it is tiresome. They are separate actions, and nothing prevents any user from doing both, or from doing just the one they have time and energy and capability for. Some users are not able to add a comment at the time they encounter the question; that is not and will never be a reason they must not use their ability vote-to-close either.

If you are not willing to follow the process as designed, you are always going to be confused by the mismatch between what you are hoping for and what the process correctly achieves.

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    $\begingroup$ Your point of view is completely different from the philosophy of this site, I invite you to consider old posts from this site. Some old posts, formed of constructive cooperation between the questioner and the answerer, produce a strong library for study. Now, your approach has prevented achieving such posts in recent years. $\endgroup$
    – ALIN
    Commented Feb 25 at 9:25
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    $\begingroup$ Coming from someone who's been here not even half as long as myself and with almost no site or network interaction to speak of, I'll take your opinion exactly no further than this. $\endgroup$
    – Nij
    Commented Feb 25 at 10:07
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    $\begingroup$ Speaking as someone who has been here some >=1 multiple of the time that you have, I largely agree with ALIN here. It is worth keeping in mind that there is a person on the other end of the question; IMHO the ultimate goal is to bring better content to the site, and part of that is teaching new people to the site what makes for a better question. $\endgroup$
    – Steven Stadnicki
    Commented Feb 25 at 19:08
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    $\begingroup$ ALIN is trying to tell me what things used to be like, despite their having almost no experience on the site or network, and all of it occurring more recently than my own. If you were trying to tell me what happened prior to my joining, your own time would then be relevant. Not the same thing or a useful referential point. $\endgroup$
    – Nij
    Commented Feb 26 at 0:10
  • $\begingroup$ I agree with Nij. There are so many questions on this site that are clearly banal-do-my-homework for me $\endgroup$
    – Mike
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:26
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    $\begingroup$ I agree w Nij. Thing is, in many of these questions that end up closed, it usually takes at least 6 hours and in the meanwhile, there is still a whole string of clarification attempts, hint-comments leading to answer-comments etc. The resulting question with its patchwork updates may be good for the student themselves. But seeing how similar questions keep getting asked, it isn't something that is of interest to anyone else. And it appears to be leading to more and more students coming on here to do their homework. $\endgroup$
    – Mike
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:38
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    $\begingroup$ My point is that, bad questions have not stopped getting a lot of leeway/chances to improve. And that it is not improved the content on this site. The few questions that turned out great due to probing or that could have been great, are exceptions to the rule, IMO $\endgroup$
    – Mike
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:42
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Can't you open the question in another browser tab, and then after you skip it in the review queue switch over to that tab and add a comment? You can't prevent some other reviewer from closing it, but at least that lets you provide feedback

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