Should questions which aren't phrased well be closed?

Question

The question about GTD influence on PM work (Has GTD (Getting Things Done) changed your approach to project planning?) has been closed recently.

While I agree it phrased in a way which suggested more a discussion than responses to a question I actually think it was a good subject for a question - it would be enough to rephrase it to be less subjective, e.g. how GTD influence perceiving PM work/PM work itself?

We had kind of similar situation here - the question which used poor English (Should we vote down questions because of bad English?) and instead of having the question closed author improved it and as a result we have what I believe is a good piece of content.

Now, my concern here is: should we automatically close down questions which aren't phrased well or is it better idea to ask original poster to improve them pointing them what's wrong?

Answer 1

If these questions are worthy of saving, why can't you edit them yourself?

Otherwise, if:

• the post is awful, terrible, beyond saving -- vote to close and delete

• the post is unclear and you have to guess at the author's intentions -- leave a comment

• the post can be improved in some fairly clear ways -- click the edit link and edit it

Answer 2

I encourage everyone to clean up the questions using their edit privileges and then use those reopen votes if you think the question has been transformed into a good, on-topic, high quality question.

It's important that questions -- even if we like them -- follow the general Stack Exchange guidelines for being Good, Subjective Questions.

I have reopened this question since it now meets the guidelines of being a real question, and since there were 2 reopen votes already cast.

I encourage you to continue doing what you're doing and comment and cast close/reopen votes where appropriate.

I also want to encourage community members on the site to join the Project Management Chat Room and start an active discussion surrounding the direction of the site.

I would prefer to see more 500+ rep users participating in helping to make sure questions are cleaned up and on-topic, and this chat room is a great place to get discussions started on where we want to see the site head.