Why are mod-close rates so much higher for Super User than for other similar SE sites?

Question

Why are the mod-close rates here on Super User so much higher than on other similar Stack Exchange communities?

For comparison, I pulled the questions for the last (roughly) 11 days to analyze close-vote patterns from 4 different Stack Exchange communities.

• For comparison to Super User, I used Ask Ubuntu, Unix & Linux, and TeX - LaTeX since they are the only other non-programming, technology SE sites with at least 50 questions a day. Stack Overflow, of course, would not be a valid comparison as it only requires 3 community-close votes.

• For reference, I used the following API query:

  https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?pagesize=100&fromdate=1652400000&todate=1653350400&order=desc&sort=activity&site=tex&filter=!nKzQUR2*et
  

  ... with, of course, the site adjusted. And, of course, each page pulled in a loop.

• I limited it to the last 11 days since, beyond that, closed questions start getting Roomba'd. It's likely some of them already were deleted in that period if they were closed quickly.

• I limited my analysis to non-duplicate closures, since duplicates are often closed by gold-badge holders, not mods.

• I double-checked the data to confirm that every (non-duplicate) question that was closed with fewer than 5 votes was closed by a Mod-vote.

• If anyone would like the raw JSON results for validation (and I don't mind additional eyes on the data one bit), I'll try to put it on Github.

The results, honestly, showed what I already suspected. Questions are closed by Mods here on Super User at a much higher rate than the other sites.

	Super User	Ask Ubuntu	Unix & Linux	TeX - LaTeX	Total Non-SU
Total Questions (~11 days)	864	961	558	568	2087
Questions Closed	113	108	43	44	195
↪ Percent of total questions	13%	11%	8%	8%	9%
Non-duplicates Closed	96	55	26	25	106
↪ Percent of total questions	11%	6%	5%	4%	5%
↪ Percent of total closures	85%	51%	60%	57%	54%
Non-duplicates Closed with 5 votes (Community-close)	12	47	21	25	93
↪ Percent of non-duplicates	13%	85%	81%	100%	88%
Non-duplicates Closed with fewer than 5 votes (Mod-assisted)	84	8	5	0	13
↪ Percent of non-duplicates	88%	15%	19%	0%	12%
Non-duplicates Closed with 1 vote (Mod-only)	45	4	2	0	6
↪ Percent of non-duplicates	47%	7%	8%	0%	6%

I think the trends are apparent, but to point out the key stat -- 88% of non-duplicate (84:12) closures here were done with moderator involvement. The average for the other sites was 12%, making the SU mod-closures more than 7 times higher than the other sites.

Nearly half (47%) of non-duplicate closures were done with a sole moderator vote. That's almost 8x the rate of the other sites.

It doesn't seem to me that the quality of questions here is so much worse than the other sites that they need to be mod-closed rapidly without reaching community quorum. So what's the reason for this (very large) discrepancy between Super User closures and that of the other communities?

Answer 1

While pretty, statistics tend to hide disparities and assume "all things are equal."

One guess would be that other sites (such as those that are Linux based) have a certain kind of user that already knows that they are trying to solve a real problem and need to provide real information.

Super User has a simultaneously broader scope (all computers) and more focused rules (no phones/tablets/gadgets except where they connect to computers) which draws in a two crowds of people

1. Those who have no idea what they don't know and lack pretty much any usable information.
2. Those who are asking blatantly off topic questions, whether knowingly or not.

Result: there's more garbage for moderators to clean up on Super User than other more focused sites.

I would also argue that the quality of questions is not that much worse than other sites in part because the worse stuff is pretty much stamped out before it can become a problem.

There is also the argument that the longer obviously off topic questions are left open then the more chance that they will attract answers. At least a couple of times recently I have seen and had to ask well established users not to answer off topic questions.

My question for you would be what you want or would like to see.

1. Do you want moderators to close nothing?
2. Do you want moderators to continue closing egregiously off topic questions?
3. Should moderators relax on the borderline stuff?
4. Do you want moderators to only be clearing out spam? (We do see a solid flow)