My question is motivated by this related post, which questions the practices for closing [homework-and-exercises] questions. My own question is about older posts that remain closed and about the process for reopening them. My understanding is that recently closed posts have a time window for users with enough reputation points to vote to reopen. After this window passes a closed question comes for review only if the OP (or perhaps anyone else?) makes an edit to it.
These mechanisms keep some worthy questions closed indefinitely. Here are two examples and I'm sure there are more:
Case 1 The question was downvoted (I have upvoted it since), but has an accepted answer with 6 upvotes (none of them mine). The discussion apparently was useful –to some users at least, including the OP. It remains closed as a Homework-like and check-my-work question.
Case 2 This question has received 46 upvotes and has 8 answers with a combined 82 upvotes. It remains closed since 2010 because "is not a good fit for our Q&A format".
Shouldn't the community's feedback, as demonstrated in the activity generated by a question, the number of answer and total votes, count as an endorsement for reopening closed questions? I am thinking of some automated process that periodically checks closed questions for activity and decides whether to reopen them. There will be gray areas of course, but it seems to me that Case 2 is an excellent candidate for reopening, and personally I would argue in favor of Case 1 as well.
