Friends, how could a question about an idea with its own article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy be closed as off-topic?

Question

1) Why was the following post closed?

What does "disposition" mean in a philosophical context?

It's clearly a question of analytic philosophy related to the philosophy of mind and indirectly philosophy of law. The infamous Gilbert Ryle has a whole chapter in his Concept of Mind devoted to defining the term. Mr. Kloecking claims it's a concern of Dennett (Should anyone be surprised, considering the lineage?). It has it's own entry in SEP, and is used in forsenic psychology in judicial proceedings. And lastly, it has a section devoted to it in WP's entry Belief.

2) Are there users at a certain level which can override this closing or is the vote the only way to reopen?

After doing some reading online, this issue of false closure seems to be a recurrent theme.

3) The current sysadmin Mr. Klöcking and some users it seems, to agree this is troublesome and needs to be fixed.

Has a fix been implemented, and if not, how can we bring about a fix?

I believe that many capable users would be off-put if asking/responding to questions only to find a faulty mechanism in place for regulating expertise on what constitutes a good question.

See: Would it be better to show some amount of humbleness considering close votes?

Added 2020-10-29

4) Are there currently community-recognized guidelines for refereeing disputes regarding general terminology and philosophy terminology, and if not by what mechanism of governance can they be proposed and ratified?

I would suggest being a veteran of online-communities, that part of the drive to membership and participation can be driven by providing conflict standardized resolution mechanisms which in philosophy is particularly important given that people's ideas have frameworks have frameworks have...

jd

Addendum

• SEP has an entry on this: SEP: Dispositions.
• PsyWikia has an entry on this which validates that philosophy of psychology uses the term - PSyWikia: Dispositional and occurrent belief
• WP has an entry categorized as hyponym of epistemology: Belief

Answer 1

Some people have figured out that closing questions is costless whereas downvoting has a cost albeit small. So it's come about that misuse of close-vote for down-vote is rampant.

Since down-voting costs a reputation point I prefer flagging questions and answers or voting to close questions. This action sends the post to a review queue or to a moderator. I have no preference who resolves the issue.
Relevant para from above stacker

The natural next step is "closer-cabals" even if formed informally

I'd suggest that if regular participators (with close-vote rep) are of of the order of 500 whereas active close-voters are more like 10-15 we have clear evidence of a cabal in action.

It's appropriate that the answer quoted above by "Frank Hubeny" is from the frankest of the lot!

---

Added later

To just give you a whiff of the cognitive dissonance I'm suffering from your posts

You're getting highly exercised over the treatment of this one question of this one individual. And remain blissfully unconcerned that she's been banned. And for a year. And so have many others with vastly higher rep/contribs to this site. Who cares???

In short since you do not distinguish wood from trees I reiterate my wish to withdraw by deleting this answer. Kindly cooperate by unaccepting this answer.

Until then let me reiterate : Frank Hubeny whose answer I've quoted is IMHO much honest-er in expressing what others are/were brazenly practising.

And is one of the many who've stopped participating post the last year havoc that Chris Sunami alluded to

Answer 2

It's entirely possible to reopen questions that have been closed. Just vote to reopen. I've done it successfully for many closed questions. When I cast a reopen vote on the question referenced here, it was the first such vote, suggesting that others are complaining but not voting --a problem not unique to here.

It's problematic if there's a moderator who is overreaching on closing items, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Users being allowed to cast open and close votes is a core part of the SE methodology, and it typically balances out in a healthy community.

Answer 3

Perhaps it shouldn't be possible to vote to close a question unless its net vote is -5 or worse (or some such number).

At -10 (or whatever) the question could be automatically flagged for review or moderator attention.

If people in general aren't down-voting a question, then why is it worthy of closing by a few individuals?

Answer 4

It's an obvious error, why and how this particular question can be fixed, but of much more importance is the question of how can it be prevented in the general case. I like to believe as someone with software engineering experience that information and information systems can be improved, and the better questions are 'Is it worth it?' and 'How?'.

1. Chris Sunami has suggested that the post can be reopened. Of course, it can be reopened, but it is of little concern whether or not the specific post can be opened because the intention of asking the question is how do we in the sake of quality of this knowledge base prevent these 'normal accidents' (from Charles Perrow in his book, Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies).
2. Rusi-packing-up has called the ultimate cause of this closure for what is. There is a group of users who have a methodology of using a hair-trigger to close questions such as these which obviously shouldn't be closed, but much more concerning, who refuse to do the work to bring a good question in the rough up to standards.
3. Ray Butterworth Given his long-standing experience with computers understands that ultimately, this isn't a problem solvable by asking people to behave in a certain way, but rather can be solved by fixing the rules of the game. As such, it is clear that Ray understands that technology-practice is balancing the techne against psyche.

This then is the crux of the drive to improve the quality of our knowledge base. First, let us make some assumptions:

1. Everyone who contributes here is well-intentioned, but not entirely unencumbered by an ego and emotions. This forum, like all electronic fora, is stripped of the more important part of communication, the presence of the person communicating, whose effects might best be understood by Poe's Law and Hanlon's Razor. So, directly to Rusi-packing-up, I do believe there is a group of people who are routinely closing posts some of which shouldn't be closed for a variety of reasons, but I do not think that one can stand behind the claim it is a cabal in the technical sense. That requires a coordinated conspiracy, and if there's anything way to characterize this organization, and yes, we are an organization in the dictionary sense, there is far too little communication and coordination that occurs here. I believe that by having a feature-request honored and changing the mechanism for closure and opening, a lot of grief and lost energy can be saved.

2. Everyone who contributes here has their own agenda, and let's be honest. Some people don't come here to exercise their abilities to wield subject-matter editorial skills to build a high quality knowledge base of Q&A, and many of those that once did are either gone or apathetic probably because they don't believe it's possible. There's an entire range of contributors from our walking encyclopedias like Conifold to high school students who are trying to understand what philosohy is/does.

3. Another major cause of the emphasis on closure over the quality of Q&A comes from the overwhelming number of contributions and the attempt to maintain their quality. So, it's easier just to throw out the baby with the bath water than it is to clean the water. I'm sympathetic. For the last couple weeks, I have tried to sustain a daily regimine of doing so, and it's not possible for any single person to do so. Thus, the ability to do so is engaged collectively with little coordination. In fact, the issue with closures is the better of two evils, the alternative being a stream of horrendously poor content to be created. This is exactly why the mechanism for closure needs to be modified after debate on the best way to do so while not letting poor quality posts be allowed to remain in the knowledge base. That's no easy task, but it can be done, both technically and politically.

Appendix

Rusi-packing-up's Answer:

Some people have figured out that closing questions is costless whereas downvoting has a cost albeit small. So it's come about that misuse of close-vote for down-vote is rampant.

Since down-voting costs a reputation point I prefer flagging questions and answers or voting to close questions. This action sends the post to a review queue or to a moderator. I have no preference who resolves the issue. Relevant para from above stacker

The natural next step is "closer-cabals" even if formed informally

I'd suggest that if regular participators (with close-vote rep) are of of the order of 500 whereas active close-voters are more like 10-15 we have clear evidence of a cabal in action.

It's appropriate that the answer quoted above by "Frank Hubeny" is from the frankest of the lot!