<p>I think that the basic StackOverflow process - discussion in comments with votes to close - works well for the most part.  The current Meta process we're using is useful at this point because we're still hashing out what the closing criteria are and because relatively few people have hit 500 reputation (and so are able to vote to close), but I think it will be too burdensome as the volume of questions increases.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, it seems to me that your desires for greater transparency and to minimize clutter on the question page are a bit in conflict with each other - moving things to Meta inherently makes them less visible, especially to people who aren't yet familiar with the Stack system.  Once we have more of a consensus about what to close, I think the comment discussions will become less... voluminous, so the clutter problem will hopefully diminish.</p>

<p>In short, I propose that we stick to the Meta system for now; once we have better agreement on what should be closed, we should switch to StackOverflow-style comments and vote-to-close on the question page.</p>
