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I've noticed that Programmers has a whole lot of [Closed] questions hanging around. It's better than it has been in the past (I'm seeing about 25% of the front page, as opposed to more like 40% a while back).

I'm not complaining about the number of closed questions, just the fact that they take up an annoying amount of the front page.

Is there some way that we can have the front page not show closed items? Or perhaps not allow them to get above the half way point on the page? I often hit programmers & SO during compiles, and it's not useful when 3 of the top 5 items are closed.

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    I sometimes like to see closed questions on the front page. It's kind of a reminder of "If I see a question like that, I should close it" or "Remember not to ask questions like that.". Also, I might be able to edit them and get them reopened.
    – Dynamic
    Jul 12, 2012 at 16:42
  • see also: So many bad questions
    – gnat
    Mar 20, 2015 at 10:13

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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There are three ways to get closed questions off the home page.

  1. Down-vote them. Once a question reaches a certain threshold score (-5 I think) they won't get shown on the home page. This is a double edged sword as without views there's no chance that the question will get improved by editing.
  2. Delete them. Deleted questions aren't shown (obviously). If the question is not salvageable then this is the only recourse.
  3. Edit them into shape and get them reopened. You can try to gather reopen votes by posting a link the question in chat (or perhaps here) or flagging the question. But you will have had to make significant improvement to the post for that.

Closed questions have to be visible so that one of the above actions can be taken on them by the community. They also serve as a visible marker to show people what kinds of questions shouldn't be asked on the site.

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    More people need to be reminded that Down Voting Questions does NOT cost Reputation! This is because people were not filtering questions aggressively enough, I don't think they still are!
    – user7519
    Jul 15, 2012 at 9:22
  • The treshold is -4 on main, -8 on meta
    – Ben Brocka
    Sep 10, 2012 at 19:32

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