StackOverflow isn't emacs.SE. ;-) Attracting "enough views/votes/answers" might indicate a degree of usefulness, but IMHO it shouldn't be a criterion for closing or deleting a question. Maybe with the exception of "too local", as you suggest. But even there I don't think there's a problem with leaving the question - it just may never get answered. Either a question satisfies the overall criteria of being allowable (Emacs-related, clear, etc.) or it doesn't. If it does, I'd say let it be. Just one opinion.

And there's the particular problem of many bad questions from a few individuals. People resort to downvoting since Close votes aren't effective, and the individuals don't care about the downvotes (they sometimes just create a new user with a new name).

Can we please get a moderator to lower the threshold for this site? There are not that many people reviewing questions, and 3 Close votes should be enough. Currently, even 4 isn't enough. Or what about having a formula that takes into account (1) percentage of reviewers (measured somehow) and (2) length of time before closing? We have far too many questions that are zombies, in limbo, whose reviewers have voted to close, to no avail.

+1. Yes, link to Wikipedia. But also provide a short blurb such as the one you quoted or better, which can be found anywhere. E.g., the first line of the Emacs manual: "Emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor." But maybe "text editor" should be used.

Thanks; that likely explains the variable behavior I was wondering about.

My question is really about the number of people it takes to close a question. How is that number related to your answer about the strength of my close vote on the question being based on my score for a given tag? It sounds like your explanation is behind what I see, but I don't really understand how it works.

I see. When there are multiple tags on a question, is the criterion based on the existence of any tag for which I have a high score, or any tag for which I have a low score, or some average or sum across all tags, or...?