Question: I plan to ask about how to restore some defunct human genes. The GULO pseudo gene is the first one I am going to ask about. Should the question maybe be split into several question? The intended question is as follows.

A lot of base pairs in the defunct GULO pseudo gene in humans are missing to make a functional enzyme. 

Should we take a whole gene from a close relative like a strepsirrhine, or maybe just fill in what is missing based on what? 

Which cells should be transfected/infected and how? 

Where should the working gene be put in the genome? Should the defunct gene be kept or replaced?

Transcription levels for the GULO pseudo gene are too low to make enough enzymes to increase ascorbate levels above levels achievable by consumption. How can that be increased?

I am not asking if this is beneficial or not nor about regulatory or ethical questions. Such questions are also meaningful but should be discussed in other questions.

Answer: 
**NO: we should stick to the current threshold of 5.**

I have noticed wayy too many circumstances in which a question was being voted to be closed by 2-3 users *inappropriately* (i.e., the close votes were unfounded/not supported or the wrong close reason was chosen). Reasons for these inappropriate VTCs range from novice voters, rushed voting, malicious voting, and difference of opinion. By reducing the close-vote requirement, we will undoubtedly close more questions that do not fit the description for being closed. 

We have two current problems on this SE site: (1) lack of review tasks being performed by current community members, and (2) decline in engaged users (+ an overall drop in visits overall!). I think this current VTC proposal is indirectly trying to account for these issues. 

* A 3rd issue is that the overall quality of posts has declined sharply in the last 2-3 years. I (among others) still hold posts to a higher standard based on older expectations of this community (i.e., one *for scientists*). Truthfully, the community has shifted much more toward consisting of novices and students here asking simple questions. At some point, our expectations just can't outweigh the masses asking the questions... [I digress...]

However, I don't think the close-vote proposal will have the intended effect. The root of our problem is community engagement. By changing the VCT threshold we would not be changing that engagement level. Instead, we would be allowing decisions for the whole community to be made by an [even fewer] select active individuals. 

In summary:

We have a community engagement problem on Bio.SE (perhaps an irreversible one), but I don't think the current proposal will fix that root issue. Instead, such a proposal will just give more closing power to the select individuals (<1% I'm sure of all users) who do vote. I'm afraid that such "power" would come off as a form of elitism as it does on some other SE sites, and may even result in a further decline in community engagement.
This answer is in the nature of a reflection, with a suggestion that we try to accumulate more information on which to make a decision. To provide a one-liner:

**We should determine how difficult it is to find 5 votes to close an off-topic question on SE Biology, and drop the requirement to 3 votes if the barrier is too high.**

We are scientists. We are used to taking decisions based on evidence, but at the moment I think there is insufficient to do so. I wonder whether there may be, on average, too few people who have enough privilege to vote to close that actually view most questions. But I don’t know. So,

* What proportion of questions are viewed by fewer than 100 people?
* How many of the viewers of such questions have the 3000 reputation needed to vote to close?
* Of the questions that are closed, how many are done without a moderator short-circuiting the closure procedure?
* What are the numbers like if you take out the obvious personal medical and spam questions?

It strikes me the only people likely to have any of this info are the mods. Looking at the users who have increased their reputation this year (as a surrogate for activity) I would estimate that not more than 20 have enough reputation to vote to close. Given that people have interests in different biological fields — I never look at natural history questions or those on physiology — this seems quite low, and is possibly the reason that, in my opinion, a lot of poor questions do not get winnowed out.