No more concensus about what is on and off topic

Question

This is becoming a joke. Exactly what is happening with our policy. This is the second time that @toscho leaves 95% of questions open that we close vote. (Those of you with 10K+ reputation can check out the stats). This questions is third party plugin related and in most cases low quality woocommerce related questions.

Are woocommerce questions now on topic. Have the policy changed without informing any other users. What is really going on behind closed doors. What have the moderators (or a particular moderator) decided without involving other members of the site.

I'm honest in saying that I'm sick and tired of this review queue as it has become nothing more than a circus. We have closed so much questions last year with the summer cleanup as we decided third party plugins and themes will be off topic, now the same type of questions now that we closed last year for being off topic, such question's close votes are now being rejected by @toscho and get left open.

We all gave inputs on @kaiser last meta discussion on what we should do with third party questions from which has came nothing from, no concensus was ever reached as far as I know. The discussion is still also open in my opinion.

I can now understand why 3K+ reputation users don't want to get involved in review queue doing close votes and also why the guys who use to do close votes don't want to do it any more.

To conclude, we all (including moderators) decided to make the decision to make at least low quality third party plugin and themes off topic. What happened since then. What happened with moderator transparency. We as a community can't moderate a site if the moderators decide to go against the community when they are the ones to have made decisions with the community to moderate the site in a particular manner. You are feeding us to the wolves now.

C'mon guys, sort yourselves out, make a decision on what our policies should be regarding third party plugins and themes, come back to us and tell us how we should moderate such questions and update our site policies accordingly as it really seems that our decisions aren't taken into account. Until then, you as moderators can moderate the site as I'm not interested anymore in helping out, it is a waste of time. Sorry, but this is how I feel and I don't think I speak for myself here alone

Answer 1

Votes are just votes. Nobody is forced to cast a specific vote. Usually, I just leave the close vote queue alone until it piles up to the point that nobody won’t touch it anymore. Then I reduce it a little bit.

I do cast close votes on third-party questions when I think they cannot be salvaged and answered on our site. My leave open votes do not clear the existing close votes, they remove the question just from the queue. Questions without answers and upvotes are removed automatically after a while, so no harm is done.

There is no change in policy. When a question is closed by the community as off-topic, I leave it closed.

Answer 2

This is becoming a joke. Exactly what is happening with our policy. This is the second time that @toscho leaves 95% of questions open that we close vote. (Those of you with 10K+ reputation can check out the stats).

What stats? It is clear that some situation got you going, but you are not making clear what the situation is. Please take a breath and elaborate.

Are woocommerce questions now on topic. Have the policy changed without informing any other users.

1. No, they are not.
2. The policy is what currently captured in writing.

What is really going on behind closed doors.

Nothing much. No, really, we have a private room and it barely sees couple messages a month. Mostly it's when we pass situation to other moderator to deal with.

What have the moderators (or a particular moderator) decided without involving other members of the site.

I think toscho does have opinions on scope, I am not going to speak for him on that.

such question's close votes are now being rejected by @toscho and get left open

Again, could you elaborate on what's happening? Mechanically? Do you mean that toscho's binding vote is cancelling out close votes?

Again, please speak in terms of specific situation, that is most productive frame for meta discussion.

I can now understand why 3K+ reputation users don't want to get involved in review queue doing close votes and also why the guys who use to do close votes don't want to do it any more.

I think you are presuming to think for other people here. Again, please let's start with specific situation and your opinion of it. Then we can move on to larger impact.

What happened with moderator transparency.

I don't feel anything happened whatsoever, but hey I am the moderator, so... Please make your concerns more clear, I will be sure to hear it. If you want administration to get involved to help with situation as you see it, we will make that happen too.

C'mon guys, sort yourselves out, make a decision on what our policies should be regarding third party plugins and themes, come back to us and tell us how we should moderate such questions

As you well know, moderators are not telling site what to do. That is not our function.

The scope is being set and refined by community of the site.

Clearly you feel there is some ongoing issue with a scope and moderator or moderators (what did I do? :) handling of it. Let's start there. In detail.