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How do I use the Triage queue?

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Potentially-problematic questions get added to this queue in order to be quickly categorized and routed for further review. Before reviewing in this queue, you should be familiar with what sorts of questions should and should not be closed. To find that information, see the following two pages:

  • The Help Center article What does it mean if a question is "closed"? is a network-wide guide about the primary reasons questions should be closed. This generally happens when a question:

    • is a duplicate of an existing question on the site

    • needs additional details or clarity to be answered

    • needs to be more focused, as the existing question is too broad

    • is an opinion-based question that doesn’t have an objectively correct answer

  • The Help Center article What topics can I ask about here? is a site-specific guide to what types of questions are allowed and disallowed on this site. The contents of this page will differ on each site on the Stack Exchange network.

Basic workflow

  • Choose Looks OK if the question is answerable as-is and does not need to be edited, closed, or deleted. Read the comments for any context.

  • Choose Needs community edit if the question is clear and on-topic, but could use some editing help to improve grammar, spelling, or formatting.

  • Flag questions that cannot or should not be answered due to being spam or needing to be closed.

  • Choose Needs author edit if the question is incomplete or requires clarification from the post author; this will flag the post for closure.

  • Skip the task if you’re uncertain. This is the default action in this queue. There is no penalty to skipping a task. When you skip the task, the question immediately becomes available for others to review.


Some of the content of this page is adapted from information in our Meta Stack Overflow FAQ, which also contains more in-depth guidance if you are interested in reading more about this queue.