Questions closed too quickly on meta

Question

Specifically, the following two questions:

• Are the guidelines for asking questions too easily abused? should be downvoted but not closed. It's a bit ranty, but it is actually asking a real question - "are the canned close reasons too much subject to abuse for Lit.SE?" - which is relevant to this site, raises a reasonable topic of debate, and can be sensibly answered. Cf. this meta question by Hamlet, asking exactly the same thing but about POB specifically, which while unpopular was never closed.
• Is this question about Percy Shelley’s adulation for poetry now clear enough to be reopened? Honestly, why modhammer this closed rather than just editing it? It's obvious what the OP was trying to ask, even if they didn't say it explicitly - a simple edit (now done by me) would have sufficed to make it a reasonable meta question.

Both of these questions were modhammered closed 20 minutes after being asked, hardly allowing the community time to see, vote, or express opinions on them. Now there's nothing wrong with swift modhammers for clearly close-worthy questions, and claims that closing "stifles discussion" hold little water on main, where close-worthy questions should be closed quickly before they're answered. But on meta, which is mostly about discussion, swift closures really can stifle discussion.

Both of the above-linked posts raise clear questions relevant to our community: "are the canned close reasons being abused on this site" and "should this question be reopened after edits". Discussions like this are pretty much exactly what meta is for.

• Someone who wants to discuss the applicability of certain close reasons to this site should be allowed to do so. Even if the answer is "no, you're wrong, they work perfectly fine", meta exists precisely in order that such discussions can be had and conclusions reached.
• Someone who's asked a bad question, had it closed, and edited it to what they think is reopenability should be able to use meta to ask about the question - it's the only place they're likely to get more feedback than can fit in a comment.

On the ideal SE, people who don't agree with moderation decisions such as question closures get educated on why those decisions were correct (if they were). Closing such meta posts can give a really bad impression. Remember not only the OP but also the countless silent viewers of these questions. If they get the idea that anyone who queries a decision is promptly shut down, they're much less likely to feel welcome to join the site than if instead they see good convincing explanations for the decisions (and such explanations can be given for even the rantiest of meta questions).

I've voted to reopen these two meta questions, and would urge others to do the same.

Answer 1

I agree with you that the second one probably shouldn't have been closed.

With regards to the first question, I would've voted to close it as it's currently phrased, too. In its current state, it really isn't clear what the OP's asking - it's more of a rant than a legitimate question or proposal. One of the close reasons for Stack Overflow Meta is "This question does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail." This seems to apply here: what community input, discussion, or action is the OP seeking?

I'll say what I said in the comments on that post: a good Meta question should solicit community input on a specific issue or ask for something specific to happen in response to a clearly-defined problem. Even your post is asking for something specific to happen (reopen those two posts and don't be so quick to mod-hammer future Meta questions).

While I disagree with the Meta post by Hamlet that you link to, I don't think that it's really the same as the post you're asking about. To begin with, Hamlet's post doesn't rant about the subject at all. Also, Hamlet describes something he wants to happen (changing the wording of the Primarily Opinion-Based close reason). So, while I disagree with the proposal, it's not unclear.

With that said, if the post was, in fact, asking "are the canned close reasons too much subject to abuse for Lit.SE?" I'd be glad to vote to reopen, because that's something that's clearly discussable/answerable. If you think that that's what the OP is asking and that the post is salvageable, I'd encourage you to edit it to clarify that. If you did, I'd vote to reopen as well - I'd still like to see more evidence from the OP that he's describing a real problem, but that's more of a reason to downvote than a reason to close.