This has been tinkered with on SO and several SE sites. SO has now gone to 3 permanently and I noted this Shog9 comment
Other sites can have whatever threshold is most appropriate for them
We are "other sites".
There's only 6 or so regular reviewers in general (of the non-mod variety anyways), and closure tends to be a pain. Lowering the threshold to 3 would ensure faster community response time.
I support this proposal to lower close vote count to 3.
Some of you may have noticed the Meta Stack Exchange post - Testing three-vote close and reopen on 13 network sites (it's linked in the featured on meta sidebar) - we've finally got this project under way and DIY is one of the sites we'll be running the test on.
Starting tomorrow, I'll be changing the site setting and closing and reopening will require only three votes. This test will run for 45 days and will be turned back to five votes to close and reopen while I review the data from the 13 sites. After we've seen the impact, I'll be posting results and, if there aren't negative impacts, we will change the setting to three permanently.
A few weeks into this, I'll be posting a question here on meta to ask for your thoughts about this change, so you will have an opportunity to discuss the impact.
Thank you so much for your patience while we got this prioritized and scheduled. There's a lot more information in the MSE post, so please review it.
I can see that there's some concern about three being too low - and that's something that we'll hopefully find out through this test, hopefully. One thing that I'd encourage y'all to remember - whether your votes to close are at 5 or 3 - is that it's welcome to discuss reopening closed questions on meta for the purpose of understanding why they were closed or to get them reopened.
That's one of the big reasons why meta sites exist and an excellent way to help the engaged users on this site understand what is in scope and sufficiently detailed and what is not. And it's also a great way to boost engagement in community - the opportunity for people to discuss with each other how the site should be run and what content should be allowed is a great way to get to know fellow members.
Y'all have done a lot of work to determine what's in scope but one thing I've found is that that process never ends! New arguments and ways of thinking about the site and what does and doesn't work can always come up. Perhaps five years ago you thought something was not a good fit but now you realize that it may work well or in certain situations - and that's valid... or you may discover that something that you thought was a good fit, wasn't. Even if all you end up with is reaffirming the scope as-is, it's worth revisiting from time to time.
I tend to vote for closure fairly aggressively for a few reasons:
Many poorly-composed posts are abandoned even when the OP is prodded for information or clarity. Folks who aren't willing to write a good question tend to be less likely to follow up in any way.
Because even if the OP does come back and fix things up, I've set the process in motion. This prompts others to evaluate the question and whether it should be closed. I trust that they don't jump on my bandwagon, but evaluate independently.
Because I often revisit those questions and take followup action. If it sits a few days and no one else agrees with my vote, or if the OP has fixed it, or if useful discussion has resulted, I may retract.
I really don't know what the habits of most other active users are, but I think a reduction to three close votes would result in things being closed too hastily. I could be convinced to change my routine if the community decides otherwise, and I'd be less likely to preemptively vote to close. I'll roll with it.
Instead, how can we increase non-moderator moderation activity? There are plenty of higher-rep users who don't bother to vote for closure because either they don't know they can or lack the confidence to do so. We could probably help with that.
I was initially in favor of 3 votes. Seems logical on a small site. However, see Exhibit A:
Gas oven won't maintain temperature it is set on
As of right now, 2 close votes.
One close vote is "Needs details or clarity" - arguably it does need details or clarity. Debatable whether closing a question is a good way to get details or clarity, but that is a larger SE problem, being discussed on alternative sites under development like Codidact But it definitely "fits" within the StackExchange context.
The other close vote is "off-topic because operation of major appliances is listed as off-topic" The problem though is that if you read the question it should be fairly clear that the problem is the oven is not operating as expected - i.e., something is broken. So it isn't "operation" but rather "repair" or "troubleshooting".
Now anyone can make a mistake plus these definitions are often open to interpretation. But with only 3 votes to close, that would mean just one more quick click by someone and poof it is closed. And then we likely lose a new user. Hopefully OP would then go on to ask someplace else and hopefully get the right answer (whatever that may be, as we need details first to figure it out for them). But then again, they may end up someplace else and not get the right answer. And they likely won't come back when they have other questions (with more details and on-topic).
Bottom line: I think 3 votes is too few for our site.
Not sure why this popped up into the "hot meta topics" today but it did, so I'll throw in my 3¢.
My only concern in lowering the threshold to 3 votes is that there's a tendency to quickly VTC questions from new users - often within just hours of their asking. For some questions, this is perfectly valid, but for the most part, it seems quite reasonable to give someone, especially a new user, 24 hours to come back to edit their question. Often times, there are 3-5 comments asking for more details, pictures, etc. then 5 hours later the question has been closed.
If someone wrote up the question first thing in the morning, then headed off to work, he may not even be able to get back home to see, much less address, the requests for clarification, then when he does, he finds his question already closed and concludes that SE is "not welcoming to new people", bad mouths it, and wanders off someplace else. Remember, not everybody lives & dies by his smortphone, and some people who ask very reasonable questions but just didn't include enough detail aren't allowed access to their phones during the work day.
This is more of a VTC culture issue than it is VTC count issue, but reducing the count to 3 will, I'd think, make it happen more often.
Other than this one issue (and I have no stats to back up whether how often it actually happens, but there are so very, very few reopen votes in the queue, I'd imagine it does), I'm all for reducing the number of votes necessary.
Although I agree with the sentiment and reasoning I don't think 3 is a good number. There are a number of people who regularly answer questions that tend to close things that they didn't answer as "off-topic" when the question clearly isn't. We know who they are.
So if things can be closed easier there needs to be mechanisms to reopen quicker too.
Would this change be retroactive? E.g. if an existing question already has 3 votes to close, would this change suddenly close it?
Perhaps the people that gave those 3 votes wanted it to be more like a strong warning/suggestion to the author and wouldn't have cast a vote if they knew it would be the tipping point. (I know I personally would be hesitant to vote if an article needed only my single additional vote to force the close.)
If the change does go ahead, I'd suggest that an article that has "# more votes needed to close" retain that same "# more" after the change.
