Last year (2020) saw some changes to the question closure system across the SE network. One of the changes was to introduce audience-specific texts for custom close reasons, so that the OP, close voters, privileged users, and the general public can all get slightly different versions of the same essential explanation of why a question is unsuitable for the site. By default, all versions for existing close reasons are set to the same thing, since there didn't use to be any option to have different versions. Some sites already changed their close reasons by creating separate texts as the system now allows. Currently, here on Literature, we only have one custom close reason, so it's less work for us to customise the texts and we can take the time to discuss it on meta first.
The current text is:
Questions asking for list of works or reading recommendations are off-topic, as they generate opinion-based answers. Try to adapt your question to fit to our Q&A format, or feel free to ask for recommendations in chat or elsewhere.
The following image shows the different boxes that can be filled by mods/CMs with different text. The first two appear in the close/flag dialogue before the post is closed; the last three appear in post notices after the post is closed.
- The Brief description is the bold header for the close reason.
- The Usage guidance is what will appear in the close menu, advising people when to use the close reason.
- The Close description will be shown to everyone in the post notice and should be relatively short.
- The Post owner guidance appears in the post notice and is how the OP should fix the question (if possible).
- The Privileged user guidance is informative for the people with close privilege regarding what the close reason is.
Let's get a consensus on what we should put in each box.
We need CM help to edit an existing close reason, so a clear meta consensus is essential, then we can status-review it and get them to help us making the necessary changes. I'm going to post an answer below with my proposed texts; please vote and give feedback or suggested improvements if necessary.