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How do I use the Reopen votes queue?

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Any closed question that has received one reopen vote gets added to this queue, as well as any question with significant edits that address the close reason(s). Before reviewing 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 article What 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 a duplicate 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 article What 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

Evaluate the question as it is now. Review any edits that may have been made after the question was closed and any comments on the question. If edits were made but are insufficient to reopen the question, consider leaving a comment explaining why.

  • Leave closed if any close reason(s) still apply. Do not reopen if the specific reason for closure no longer applies but the question should still be closed. Consider leaving a comment to explain why the question should remain closed, particularly if the reason is different than what appears in the banner.
  • Edit and reopen if you can resolve issues with the question yourself, and these edits are sufficient for the post to be reopened. (Avoid making minor edits that don’t impact whether the post should be reopened.)
  • Reopen if issues with the question have been resolved, or if it was incorrectly closed.
  • Skip if you're not sure whether the question should be reopened.

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.)

Reopen votes filter

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 our Meta Stack Exchange FAQ, which also contains more in-depth guidance if you are interested in reading more about this queue.