Are there are rules for closing questions?

Question

I searched the help index but couldn't see any anywhere.  I searched G2g some discussion came up but it was mostly about best answer, unanswered questions and archiving of closed question. I want to know when I should close a question.  If I think one answer is the best and it was my question I could close it, but who am I to know there isn't a better answer!  Some earlier discussion was also around how long does one wait for a best answer.  

Should I be periodically looking at my questions and closing them?  Is there a way for me to view just my questions?

Answer 1

It's never occurred to me. Why would I want to close a question? Is ther any point? I recently saw a perfectly valid response to a question that was over a year old.

Answer 2

There are times when the answers given are clearly the only answer there could be, usually to a technical question, genealogy questions tend to be more open ended.

There are also cases where a question has split discussion into different threads which have then been asked as new questions, the old on should be closed to transfer further discussion to the new thread.

Your G2G profile page will give you an overview of questions you have participated in recently, but I have not found an easy way to search for just my questions.

Answer 3

I don't know what happens to "closed" questions. If they disappear from search results, and the answer is something that can be used again for other people, then they shouldn't be closed (IMHO).

I do close questions that are not useful to others. For example, I recently closed a question requesting that two PPPs needed to be merged, but they were locked. Someone came along, unlocked and completed the merge. That type of question is not something that necessarily needs to stick around.

Now, if the question had been something like "What do we do when two duplicates are both protected?" then I would have not closed it.

Comments

I recently closed a question when I realised there was already an answer on G2G.  Someone thanked me for it.  It then made me wonder whether I should be closing others?

It would be nice to know what happens to closed questions.  If they are archived and still in search results it could be Ok to close more. 

If open questions are constantly monitored by someone in wikitree then it is a unnecessary resource cost if they have really been finalised.