Do more questions need to be closed?

Question

Am I the only one that thinks the site quality would be higher if more questions would be closed?

ps. I don't mean to offend the mods, it's a lot of work to manage, just wanted to get some input.

Answer 1

Yes.

We don't have enough users capable of voting to close and doing that actively. Takes 3000 rep to vote (a little over twenty users have that much) and 5 users to get it closed.

I think it was brought up more than once that SO-based requirements for some things don't quite work, but nothing came out of it.

It seems that access to close review queue is quite restrictive so here is current state of close flags for perspective:

As you see pretty much nothing reaches 5 close votes even closely.

Answer 2

I agree entirely. That said: I think the site/network mechanics should be allowed to work as intended. In other words: if you want more questions closed, then vote to close more questions.

Is this link available to all users, or only to those with moderator tools privileges and above? http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/review/close?s=1&pagesize=15&filter=day

If available to everyone, then I would encourage more frequent perusal of this list, and more concurring vote-casting.

Edit

Based on Rarst's comments below, I have an additional suggestion: unless/until either WPSE has enough users with close-vote privileges who exercise those privileges, or the SE network requirements change so as to facilitate community policing of questions in need of closing, why not just implement a de facto practice for WPSE, whereby moderators automatically close questions with 3 close votes?

(Or 4 votes. Or 2 votes. Including/not including the moderators' own vote. Whatever we think is reasonable for our given circumstances.)

Answer 3

To echo Chip, if you think something should be closed, vote to close it.

Moderators should not (and will not) unilaterally close posts unless they're so far off base there can be no argument made to keep them open. Even then, we'll usually leave a comment or note to that effect and encourage the OP to edit their question.

But if 2 or 3 people have already voted to close something before I come across it, I'll add my vote and immediately close it. Just flagging it for moderator attention isn't enough. You should also vote to close so that we know you're serious.

Ironically, I hear this complaint (that we don't close enough posts) most often from people with >3k rep ... who also aren't voting to close things on their own.