If you have sufficient reputation to see the tools (2000 rep), I invite you to check out this page. This is the close statistics page and it's really helpful to moderators and high-reputation users to see why questions are being closed.
We can use the information here to determine what we need to have as custom close reasons in the future. Right now, the default off-topic close reasons are all we have.
- This question does not appear to be about traditional artwork and handmade items, within the scope defined in the help center. Community
- This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network Community
- Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)
"Other" allows you to fill in your own explanation. Some examples we've used in the past are:
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about shopping recommendations, which are generally off-topic on Stack Exchange, as well as our stack. You can try asking in [chat] once you earn enough rep, or perhaps try asking a question about what to look for in low-cost materials to get started.
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a shopping question
- I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it relates to art history, not to applied art.
Right now there's only one question closed with each of these but (in the last 90 days) we've had ten questions closed with the generic reason: "This question does not appear to be about traditional artwork and handmade items, within the scope defined in the help center."
This close reason is not helpful in determining why we are closing questions. I strongly recommend you avoid using it unless it's something that is blatantly off topic and not even related to art at all. Part of Beta is determining what we want our custom close reasons to be but that's difficult if we have no data on why we're closing questions.
If you need help in figuring out how to format these close reasons, please let us know. Even though chat is pretty quiet, I'm nearly always in the room.
