I know that this should better be on Meta.SO, but I don't have any SO reputation points(/account) and also I am not familiar with/interested in the politics of SO, so here we are.
Currently, when questions appear in the review queue for closing, we have only the question on-screen, regardless of the existence of any answers. We can click through to the full context of the question + answer thread, but this is both an unnecessary nuisance and takes us away from the review queue. Often I find myself visiting the question and casting my vote there directly after having seen the answers; probably this is not the intention, because there are various badges given for certain numbers of reviews, and one can have one's reviews fail to be counted towards them by reviewing outside of the review queue interface.
In my opinion, it is vitally important to show not just the question out-of-context, but the entire thread, including the answers (if any) that have been given to the question so far. This is so for several reasons:
For some questions, the interpretation is not absolutely unambiguous on the first reading. Sometimes, for example, it requires someone to run the given code; in other cases, the phrasing is not clear enough to be completely certain of what is being asked. To see other users' answers provides confidence that one's interpretation is correct (or not, as the case may be). To vote in a state of ignorance is irresponsible, but this is what is being encouraged.
The display in the queue almost seems set up to imply that there are no answers, which can lead to hasty decisions. One is not used to seeing questions separate from the answers, and showing them in this artificial (lack of) context produces a tendency toward floccinaucinihilipilification -- one sees that other users have deemed the question sufficiently valueless to close it, but not that yet others have valued it enough to spend their time writing an answer. Perhaps it is not part of the SE philosophy, but I think that sometimes the answers can justify a question. If not, then at least they can influence the action one takes from closing, towards merely editing a poor question. Do we know how many closed questions could be perfectly serviceable, yet are allowed to languish in endless mediocrity because, well, it's closed, so who cares?
To have some sort of second opinion (both ways) lessens the cognitive burden when deciding how to vote. In an ideal world, all votes would be completely unbiased on the balance of the evidence (except, we do not have the balance of the evidence, per the above point). But, to present the question in isolation leads (at least in my experience) to a large number of "skip" votes, because of a reluctance to pass overly-hasty judgment on essentially an unknown quantity. (I think we are also lucky on this site in that we don't get a large number of obviously horrible questions.) In any case, if we are to take democracy seriously, then we should suppose that there is some objective value in the opinions of other people. Seeing how other people have responded to the question helps us form our own judgments about it.
Closing the question is as much (in its effect) a judgment on the answers as the question. This clearly cannot be justified without so much as having seen the former.
Given the above, could I please request that the entire thread, including the answers, is shown in the review queue? As per usual, please vote up if you agree with this premise, and down if not. Arguments to the contrary welcomed as answers.
