No suitable option to select for closing question in scenario of no answer and bug reported

No suitable option to select for closing question in scenario of no answer and bug reported as in this case where bug is reported and story is over. This type of scenario occurs many times. No option fits as a suitable reason to close the question. Or should the question not be closed?

There has been a discussion in the past year (or the year before) about question closing. @mikekaganski, if I remember right, suggested not to close questions as this prevents further improvements. Sometimes questions find a good and correct answer months or even years after.

In case of pending questions with an open bug, it is of great interest to be able to “answer” it as having been fixed. This can be done by the fixing developer if the bug report contains a link to the question, by the OP when he notices that the problem no longer exists after an update or by anybody improving the question or answer.

This is only possible if the question is not closed.

Only pinpoint questions are candidate for closing. General questions must remain open to leave possibility of improvement, all the most as LO evolves and a solution can become invalid in a newer release.

The policy about closing questions changed over time. The present one is as exposed above.

In your case, the story is not over: the bug report is neither dismissed nor fixed at the date of this writing. I recommend you reopen the question, at least to allow to comment on bug handling progress. If your karma doesn’t allow you to reopen the question, tell me in a comment and I’ll try to do it.

EDIT 2020-07-17

Closing a question is legitimate under special circumstances:

  • A duplicate has been detected

    Contributors may answer on any instance and thus OP will have a hard time making a synthesis of all answers or even noticing possible contradictions. In this case, I use to close the oldest occurrence to block answers and comment both with a cross-link. I also ask the OP to delete the closed instance, eventually checking that some information is not missing from kept-alive question.

    Here closing is only a temporary state before clarification (and deletion).

  • A question is off topic

    Clearly the question is not related to LO istself nor to its usage environment. Border-line questions are sometimes accepted, though they’d be better asked on some OS or third-party application forums.

  • A “question” is overtly offensive

    It is offensive and doesn’t really ask a question. There is no official censor here because there is no known moderator. It is difficult to decide whether or not a question should be removed (after all, “libre” also extends to freedom of expression). The simplest way to stop a dead-end debate is to close the question and … keep the question as a not-to-be-followed example.

    I take this opportunity to remind readers that politeness and respect are two basic requirements. We are all volunteers offering for free part of our time. Most of us are not native English speakers, just like askers are. Our (askers and contributors) English skill is not perfect and this is no reason to be aggressive. Also be humble enough to accept that our writing may not be understood at once. Comments are there to ask for more explanations.

  • Spam, advertisement, …

    When this category is clearly identified as such, the question or answer is not closed but deleted by those who have enough karma. When in doubt, it is closed with a special comment so that others may have a look and decide.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer) or comment the relevant answer.

Yes. For the site audience, including the author of the question, those who answer it, and those who later see it when looking for a solution for their similar problems, the closed status is meaningless. What matters is answered status; and even more - if there’s a correct and accepted answer (so that people know if reading the question is worth the effort, just looking at the search result list).

This, by the way, implies that marking an answer as correct is an important thing requiring responsibility; it should never be done just to express “thanks for trying to answer”, or “to keep our list free of unresolved questions”. The marked answer should really be the one that helped to resolve the problem.

Thanks a lot, I think my following questions must be reopened, I request you to open them if appropriate:

Done, questions reopened

An offtopic coment regarding “…offering for free part of our time”: I wonder how you people donate so much time here and for years! People like you have so much technical knowledge but still somehow manage here. Linux community is outstading. I think of people who donated their lifes for Linux but are not alive today to see how matured it has become, it would have made them cry. And we should be passing on the legend to future generations. Thinking about the big picture is so spritual.

@sid: Thanks for this empathic thought

When it turns out to be a bug, it is not a real question, can be closed with such an option.