Additional Closed Reason [Not enough details]

Question

In the interest of moving forward with making the close reasons more user-friendly, is it possible to add a whole new reason? The most prevalent reason I see for closing a question is because there simply aren't enough details. Unfortunately, it never fits quite right under unclear what you're asking, because it is clear what they're asking, they just haven't provided the necessary information for the community to build an educated answer.

Case in point: SCP lost connection.

This question didn't fall under any off-topic reason, so it sat and lingered for almost a year and a half. Finally after months of asking "Can you please provide more details?" and no response, it was finally closed. The sheer length of time and lack of an actual reason to close it was frustrating.

Is there a way to add a whole new reason for putting a question temporarily On Hold (similar to how unclear what you're asking works) under Not enough details?

I don't want to add anything unnecessary under the closed reasons, but this shows up around here enough to be a problem, not just a nuisance.

Answer 1

This question didn't fall under any off-topic reason, so it sat and lingered for almost a year and a half. Finally after months of asking "Can you please provide more details?" and no response, it was finally closed. The sheer length of time and lack of an actual reason to close it was frustrating.

I don't quite grok this reasoning. First, the descriptive assumption that the "lack of an actual close reason" seems to fail even a cursory review of the question.

It's marked "Too Broad", and in the description of too broad, it says to "add details to narrow down the answer set":

I'll elaborate a bit more below...

Custom close reasons should be site-specific

Is there a way to add a whole new reason for putting a question temporarily On Hold (similar to how unclear what you're asking works) under Not enough details?

We don't need another close reason for not enough details; the combination of your comment and the aforementioned close banner seems perfectly adequate for this task. Furthermore, Stack Exchange wants us to limit custom close reasons to site-specific issues. In case it's not already obvious, not enough details is perhaps the most common problem across the Stack Exchange network (assuming the question was on-topic to begin with).

If you want to give people general direction on what to document, we already have a huge post explaining what details people should add. BTW, we could use some good examples of how to document all those details; perhaps someone could start with "How to build a good network diagram" meta post.

Unfortunate realities

The sad reality is this... A lot of people just don't bother adding details. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we ask them. People also abandon questions.

In my opinion, this particular problem most likely comes down to not caring to update the question. We just need to close stuff that isn't asked well enough to answer; it's boringly-normal site maintenance.

Close Dialogue comparison

Finally, I'd point out that our cousin-site (ServerFault) spent quite a bit of time and energy tweaking custom close reasons (this is one example). Guess what SF's basic close dialogue looks like today...

ServerFault Close Dialogue

Now compare that to ours...

NetworkEngineering Close Dialogue

The differences in the Close Dialogue are... close to zero.

What is interesting is to compare how they tweaked their custom off-topic reasons...

ServerFault Off-Topic Reasons

Our off-topic reasons have not been tweaked yet; I'm personally undecided about whether there is a case to do so.

Answer 2

In Response to Mike:

Closed as 'Too Broad' in this instance is totally erroneous and was done so because there isn't any other close reason to pin to it. It isn't too broad, in fact, it's sufficiently narrow.

Rereading the question: does it actually look 'Too Broad' to you? In what way does that appear to be the case? That wasn't a loaded “look past the close reason and look at the description” type of question I'm asking. People should see the big lettering saying in bold saying “Closed as …something that makes sense… by whoever, whoever, whenever”.

the combination of your comment and the aforementioned close banner seems perfectly adequate for this task.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this statement and I think that sets a dangerous and difficult precedence. There is an entire close type (on-hold) that's automatically doing exactly what we've emulated in the comments section. It relays that the question doesn't quite meet the standards the community has outline and needs improvement. Having the onus fall onto the community to continually comment on the question every 4 - 6 months should not be the appropriate way forward.

If you want to give people general direction on what to document, we already have a huge post explaining what details people should add.

This proposal is not the replace that post, it's meant to direct people to it who don't know - or don't care - to read it. This is attempting to convey the same goal Craig is trying to convey with changing the default off-topic close reason. We're trying to make the statement stand out accurately so that newcomers who haven't been here before know what's wrong.

The sad reality is this... A lot of people just don't bother adding details. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we ask them. People also abandon questions.

Again, this is the entire purpose behind this new reason. The question should be place on-hold until they get the question up to par.

Close Dialogue comparison

I won't comment on each individual section under this title, but I will respond to it as a whole.

We are not ServerFault. We may have significant overlap, but we are a totally separate entity that has local needs. What fits their community may not fit ours; this is one of those times that I believe that may be occurring. Throwing questions into whatever reason suits our technical needs (too broad in this instance) isn't what I would call a 'good' thing; Nor would keeping manual tabs on a post to see if they update it.

We have the capability to add in a close reason that actually fits our needs and puts out a good, understanding message. So let's use it.