Our community-specific close reasons (off-topic sub-reasons) haven't changed much at all since they were defined in 2013.
Just last year, a massive revamp took place to the closing system. As part of those updates, the community-specific close reasons gained a new five-field format, which displays different text in different places so that close voters and flaggers are guided to correct use of the close reason, authors are instructed how to improve their question, and privileged users are given advice on how to fix the question.
In my opinion, I think it's a good idea to transition our current close reasons to the new format. Currently, questions closed with any off-topic sub-reason will simply show to other users who don't have closing privileges that they were closed as off-topic, with no explanation as to why the question is not a good fit for the site. On the other hand, the new format contains a description field that allows displaying more on-point text to others browsing questions.
We recently updated one of our close reasons over on the global meta to use the new format. That post has a good description as to how the new fields work, which I'll quote here:
I'm going to be rehashing, in less words, the format for close reasons that Catija explained in her aforementioned answer. The fields available to us are limited to 500 characters with the exception of the first field, so keep that in mind when proposing/making changes!
The format is as follows:
- Brief description (100 characters) - Visible in the close/flag dialog in bold. Should be very succinct, only spanning a couple of words.
- Usage guidance - Tells close voters when to use the close reason. Ideally, this is descriptive enough to cover edge cases, and that detail should inspire confidence in close voters that this reason is the right choice under specified circumstances.
- Post notice close description - Visible to all users, the post notice description should follow the format "This question was closed because it is ... It is not currently accepting answers."
- Post owner guidance - Visible only to the post author, this should explain to the OP why their question was closed, and give detailed information on how to improve their post to get it reopened. Helpful links to the help center would be nice to include.
- Privileged user guidance - Visible to users with the cast close votes privilege in the post notice on a post closed with this close reason. This should inform close voters on how best to guide the asker in improving their question or inform them when the question should be reopened.
Important Notes
- If accepted, the changes made to the close reason will be applied retroactively to all questions currently closed with this close reason. Post notices will be updated across the board. This requires a CM editing the existing close reason.
- If the changes are major enough, we can choose to retire the current close reason and have two diamond moderators or staff with moderator privileges create a new close reason for our proposal. This should only be done if the changes are too major or we in general feel that the changes should not apply retroactively.
- For clarity, these changes only affect [this specific close reason on this site]. This does not apply across the network.
Per the aforementioned answer from staff member Catija linked in the above quote, the team prefers an individual, separate discussion for each close reason. As such, I'm kicking this off with the "immigration or moving for extended periods of time" close reason, and once this discussion is over, I'll proceed to the next reason. Or, if you prefer, I can start discussions for the other two reasons ("constructing travel and tour itineraries" and "price-shopping for specific goods or services") right now.
I've posted my proposals for the fields' texts as an answer below. If you have any improvements to think of, or would like to discuss the proposed improvements, please post another answer. Once we reach an outcome, I'll accept the favored answer and a moderator can tag this post status-review so it can be implemented.
For context, the current wording of this close reason is as follows:
Questions about immigration or moving for extended periods of time (studies or employment, among others) are off-topic. Our sister site, Expatriates Stack Exchange might be a better place to ask. See also the meta post Is it OK to ask questions about immigration?.