Flurry of question closing

Question

Similar to this question from two years ago, I've noticed a rapid sequence of close votes over the past little while, many of which I have disagreed with since the questions have a number of up-votes and answers. My questions:

1. Is somebody doing a systematic purge?
2. If so, what is your system?
3. It seems to me that it would be courteous to announce it on meta or at least in chat. Would others agree?

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Edited to add the reasons for my concern:

1. As I am not a moderator, the review software does not tell me who the traffic in the queue is coming from. Also, the review queue presents things one at a time and makes it difficult to go back once you have finished with a review, so it is difficult to consider a set of actions as a batch. I thus cannot readily tell the difference between a batch of curation work by an established user, trolling by a rep 15 user who has gotten annoyed about something, or a mixture of the two.
2. When there are a lot of items coming through for review, I run out of reviews that the software will allow me to make and cannot review any more items (this happened to me yesterday). Thus, if long-term curation work occurs at too high a rate, it can inhibit the ability of the community to deal with new questions.

I very much appreciate the work being put into curation: it's an extremely important function on this site, and one without a huge amount of reward. My request is simply that people give a heads up (either or meta or in chat, whichever seems most appropriate) when they are about to take a large number of closing or flagging actions, and that they limit such actions to ~10/day, so those of us reviewing can carry out our own portion of the tasks more effectively.

Answer 1

A user¹ has raised a large number of close flags². Posts on which close flags have been raised are pushed into the review queue.

Some other users tend to vote to close fairly aggressively in the review queue, so these posts typically accrue at least one or two close votes.

Anyone with sufficient rep (10k+) can see the vote history here. Feel free to review the review history and edit/cast reopen votes for questions that are worth saving. (Either because the question itself is good, or because the question itself can be made "good enough" and the answers are good.)

Regarding your point:

It seems to me that it would be courteous to announce it on meta or at least in chat. Would others agree?

Yes, I agree that large and/or systematic curation efforts should be announced on meta first.

These efforts - no matter how well intended - can often have unforseen and undesirable effects on the rest of the community. It's a good idea to get feedback first and make sure your specific efforts are actually helpful and wanted by the community.

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¹I'm not at liberty to say more (i.e. name names), although the user who raised the flags is welcome to out him/herself here and explain what's behind it.

² Possibly badge-hunting? Note that if even one reviewer agrees with the flag (which often happens whether it's warranted or not), the flag is marked helpful. Also, declined/unhelpful flags don't have any negative impact on site privileges or badge progress. So there's an incentive built into the platform for users to keep raising these flags, regardless of what the community does in response to them or whether they're actually helpful.

Answer 2

In answer to your sub-questions above, I should mention that from about three month ago, I went on the process of reviewing the older posts on the website. My edits include the following activities:

1. Edit on the title of the questions; some of the questions posted in the past had no clear title to help the user recognize what the content of the question is. As an example, I edit the title of the questions from something like On doing something to How should I do something in somewhere situation? to help the newer users find questions easier.

2. I Edit the tags of the questions to improve the searchability of the questions. My edits to the tags is systematic: I choose one tag and once in every 12 hours, I only edit 5 or 6 questions to avoid having many questions bumped to the top list. (At this edit level, I also edit the questions titles and content only if they need some edits.)

In the recent days, I have started to review the content of the older posts. By saying the older posts, I have sorted the display of questions from new to old; and I am checking the older questions one by one. On this process I check the following things:

1. I check whether the questions is on-topic or not.

2. I edit the question if it really needs it. To avoid bumping questions to the top-list, I only edit the questions on my tag edits, not at this review process.

3. I control and raise flags for un-useful comments such as +1 or Thank you comments. Also, for the comments which are obsolete, for instance the ones which are now part of answer to the question.

4. I raise flags for answers which I think they are not helping the questions.

These are the reasons which I think our older posts need curing:

1. Older posts should be reviewed sometimes. It is good for the website to dynamically check newly posted questions as well as the questions and answers which are posted in the past.

2. The users can see the older posts too and if they have something new and helping to the question; when they see those old questions, they will post their new points of view to the questions. So the answers will be updated.

3. Problematic parts of the posts will be reviewed. Off-topic questions will go for another review process and people again, think about the questions.

Based on the introduction above, in the recent days I have reviewed about 100 questions or more; and I raised some flags on the un-useful answers and comments. However, it was just due to making this website's questions in better shape and quality, not for badge-hunting or making trouble for the site. Also, as far as I am an ordinary user on the website and I really do not know whether another user/s have also raised any flags or not.