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Lately, I have noticed that whereas previously the exact reason a question was closed alongside who casted close votes was shown, a more generic "Off-Topic" or similar reason is shown without the people who casted close votes. Why was this change made?

Personally, I preferred the old way because I could see exactly the reason a post was closed. Being closed because a question didn't provide a MVCE (on Stack Overflow) for instance is a much different reason from being closed due to asking for software recommendations (again example pulled from Stack Overflow). I think it is helpful to show the precise close reasons to help train new members and reviewers how to flag (and later close) questions correctly.

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    Having to ask a 3k+ user for the specific close reason is a huge pain, especially as one who mostly participates by curating existing content rather than adding new content, who doesn't have the required reputation to vote to close. I can imagine some users being cagey to disclose the reason, since they might think it's private information that shouldn't be disclosed, etc.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Mar 14, 2020 at 1:10

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The close reason is now only shown to the question author and users with the ability to vote to close (usually unlocked at 3k rep).

I prefer the old way, so I brought this up when the change was first made and it’s for this reason:

Declined: there are legitimate reasons to show close reasons for the public view. However, we are not going to do so at this time. The vast majority of users who will view these (without privileges to reopen) are not going to be acting on it. And we have plans to change the close workflow very soon in ways that will hopefully be more effective in achieving our objectives than this change will. We will be concentrating our efforts there.

Yaakov Ellis♦︎

Will this be revisited if it gets enough support? I don’t know. I brought up the same point you did. All I know is that it’s been making things harder for me in ways I never thought of before, such as when using the app to view reviews (not being logged into the in app browser).

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    The secrecy in these close messages is also a deviation from the general approach on this platform, where usually almost everything is published and searchable in one form or another (except who voted for whom).
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Mar 16, 2020 at 8:00
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    I feel knowing close reasons will help people - especially new people - to improve question quality. If you don't know what goes wrong, how do you improve?
    – Gloweye
    Commented Mar 16, 2020 at 23:03

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