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We get a lot of questions on meta about closing or reopening specific questions. That's great -- meta is the right place to discuss these matters (and is way better than comments on the question).

We also get a lot of requests in flags to tag these questions when the goal has been reached (when the question that people wanted to reopen (or close) gets reopened (or closed)). We generally honor these requests, but it's not the best approach. Reopened (or closed) questions don't necessarily stay open (or closed), and only moderators can add or remove those tags, so using these tags for this purpose sets up a maintenance burden that only five people can handle. The status tags are intended, and used by SE, for bug reports and feature requests. Discussions usually shouldn't end in a status tag. (Matters of site policy could be an exception.)

So what should you do to indicate that the matter is resolved? Ideally, report the results in an answer and then accept it; an accepted answer is the usual signal for "no more help needed". Alternatively, you can edit the title of the post to add something like "[REOPENED]". If it changes again later, you can edit again.

Almost anybody can post an answer (and the OP always can), and many people can edit, so please prefer those methods over requests for moderator-only tags on these kinds of questions.

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    As a bonus, editing the status into the title and/or the body is actually a visible change and helps avoid wasting time for people who get to a thread late. Even the special tags are very easy to miss.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Commented Mar 26, 2017 at 22:07
  • Ok I think that was a mistake on my part then. It would be better if the moderators don't put those tags on any question to avoid confusing people. Since some moderators put those tags on some questions, I had assumed that that was the way to handle those questions. The alternative to add an answer and "accept" it requires to wait for the OP. The other alternative seems ok, but looks jarring since that "tag" in the title has nothing to do with the question being asked.
    – Masked Man
    Commented Mar 27, 2017 at 1:05
  • @MaskedMan don't worry about it or feel bad; it's been a chaotic process over time and I'm now trying to rein it in, so it's not going to be completely consistent.
    – Monica Cellio Mod
    Commented Mar 27, 2017 at 2:01
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    Could we tag this question Status-Complete?
    – IDrinkandIKnowThings
    Commented Mar 29, 2017 at 17:23
  • @IDrinkandIKnowThings, naw, status-deferred.
    – anonymous2
    Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 13:55
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    I think this is the only site where this standard tag is not used, and a meta "tag" is inserted into the question title (which is expressly discouraged at the end of the relevant help page).
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented May 13, 2017 at 21:44
  • @AndrewLeach could you point me to a few examples of other sites using the status tags for requests for community actions (close and reopen, especially)? I'm used to the status tags being used only or things that require an action from a moderator or SE, which are usually support or feature-request questions.
    – Monica Cellio Mod
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 2:41
  • Well, we do this in ELU. [status-] tags can be combined with other tags like [bug] or [feature-request], but there's no reason they cannot also stand alone or with a "non-pink" tag like [reopen-request]. Moderators are generally happy to respond to a Meta flag requesting such a tag, if they don't add it motu proprio.
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented Dec 9, 2017 at 10:15

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