I have seen some good questions on this site though some of them have been worded poorly. These questions are closed and, even though they are edited appropriately, they are never reopened. It seems a shame that certain questions are closed and not re-asked again just because of the way that they are worded.
One idea that came to mind was to go through all of the closed questions, reword them, and re-ask them. However, it seems that this would require me looking through ALL of the asked questions.
Are there better ways for me to search for and re-ask closed questions?
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2 Answers
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No, do not re-ask closed questions. If a question is fit for the site, then edit it to be so. It will then enter the queue to be reviewed for re-opening. It is then up to the community to decide whether it should be reopened or not.
Re-asked questions should and will be closed as duplicates.
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1$\begingroup$ It may not always be possible to closed as a duplicate if the first question doesn't have answers. It's a rule which rarely makes sense. $\endgroup$ Dec 8, 2014 at 15:13
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1$\begingroup$ I understand that, but, unfortunately, that only works in an ideal world. Once a question is closed, the default is to vote no to reopening. $\endgroup$ Dec 8, 2014 at 15:25
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1$\begingroup$ For example, look at economics.stackexchange.com/questions/1/… This question was marked as off-topic (perhaps rightly so). This was a good economics question, so I edited it to make it more clear and more narrow. After editing, this question still remained closed (despite no longer being off-topic). $\endgroup$ Dec 8, 2014 at 15:27
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1$\begingroup$ @Mathematician : I have some sympathy with your view (and am glad you want to try to improve these questions) but I think is right that re-posting is not a good solution. Having lots of duplicates of bad questions floating around is not going to be a good way to improve the site. If there is a question that you feel should be reopened after you have edited it then you can create a question on Meta to discuss the matter and rally support. Editing and improving bad questions is a really valuable activity for the community, but attempting to circumvent the voting mechanism is not. $\endgroup$ Dec 8, 2014 at 21:11
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$\begingroup$ @Ubiquitous I am not attempting to circumvent the voting mechanism. I am merely recognizing that people respond to incentives, and, once a question is closed, the incentive is to leave the question closed. By re-posting the question, I want the question to speak for itself, not some arbitrary label. As for posting the question on Meta and rallying support, what would be the best way to structure that? If we don't want to clutter the real site with "bad" questions, we aren't really solving the problem by just posting them onto Meta first. $\endgroup$ Dec 9, 2014 at 1:00
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1$\begingroup$ @Mathematician What I had in mind was not to post the question itself on meta, but rather to create a question on the meta of the form "Should question XX be reopened?" That would give a space to discuss the issue and let people explain why they still think it should be closed. If the problem is that people are inappropriately voting to keep good closed then the solution is to get them to change their voting behaviour rather than to re-post the question. $\endgroup$ Dec 9, 2014 at 7:53
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This url from Cross Validated, https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/searching has a lot of advanced search options, including your case.
In your case, just type closed:yes to the search box on the right part of the SE bar on the top of the screen.
answered Dec 7, 2014 at 22:07