How do I use the Close votes queue?

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The Close votes queue includes questions that other users have flagged as needing to be closed. Before reviewing questions in this queue, you should be familiar with what sorts of questions should and should not be closed. To find that information, see the following two pages:

• The Help Center articleWhat does it mean if a question is "closed"? is a network-wide guide about the primary reasons questions should be closed. This generally happens when a question:

  • is aduplicate of an existing question on the site
  • needs additional details or clarity to be answered
  • needs to be more focused, as the existing question is too broad
  • is an opinion-based question that doesn’t have an objectively correct answer

• The Help Center articleWhat topics can I ask about here? is a site-specific guide to what types of questions are allowed and disallowed on this site. The contents of this page will differ on each site on the Stack Exchange network.

Basic workflow

At the top of the review task page, you’ll find the reasons others flagged or voted the question to be closed, but if you disagree, you may choose a different option. The close reason that gets the most votes will be displayed above the post if it is closed. Review the question content completely and then make a decision from one of the options:

• Close the question if it is a duplicate, lacks sufficient detail, needs to be narrowed in scope, is opinion based, is off-topic, or if it meets one of the other community-specific reasons to close. Choose the applicable close reason based on your assessment. You also have the option to enter a custom reason if none of the existing ones apply.
• Leave open if none of the above is the case.
• TheEdit option should be reserved for when the question is close-worthy as written, but when you believe you can rescue the question to make it allowable for the site. This may mean adding in details that the asker left in comments or making slight adjustments to an opinion-based question so that it's objective. Don’t make minor edits if the question would be closed even with these changes, as it will remove the question from review.
• Skip any time you’re not certain. Focus on reviewing posts that you’re certain about, rather than ones you need to guess how to handle.

Tip: You may want to restrict which questions you see in this queue to subjects you are familiar with by filtering reviews by tags you have experience in. You can do this by clicking “Filter” in the top section of a review task. (When in doubt, choose Skip.)

Note: If you choose more than one tag to filter by, it will not restrict your queue only to reviews for questions that have both tags – you will be shown all reviews for questions that have at least one of the specified tags.

Some of the content of this page is adapted from information in ourMeta Stack Exchange FAQ, which also contains more in-depth guidance if you are interested in reading more about this queue.