Q:

Who is voting to close all these questions?

I just went though the closure review queue, consisting of a couple dozen questions with close votes. At least 75 percent of these questions were not even remotely closeable according to the guidelines we are supposed to be using. How in the world are 146234, 146638, 146500, 146576, and 146597 "off-topic"? (Most of the close votes use the "generally available reference" copout, yet these questions are mostly grammar questions that cannot be easily answered using dictionaries, thesauruses, text corpora, or widely available language references or style guides.) How are 146538 and 146612 "primarily opinion-based"? This is insanity.
Some of these will eventually be closed, which is unfortunate and should be reversed, but at least in those cases the users who voted to close will become known and can be held accountable. In a way, though, I'm more irritated about the ones that won't: frivolous close votes clog up the queue and make me waste my time wading through them. Without necessarily asking for names, I'd really like to know whether these close votes are getting anything approaching a broad consensus, or if there's just a handful of overzealous users running around voting to close any question that looks at them the wrong way.

A:

I'll give you specific statistics about the five questions you link, but there's no easy way that I can think of to get at data in general:
0 users voted to close 5 questions
0 users voted to close 4 questions
2 users voted to close 3 questions
1 user voted to close 2 questions
7 users voted to close 1 question
That at least seems suggestive that there is no secret cabal going about casting close votes. 

Most of the close votes use the "generally available reference" copout, yet these questions are mostly grammar questions that cannot be easily answered using dictionaries, thesauruses, text corpora, or widely available language references or style guides.)

Unfortunately, yes. Please vote to re-open any such questions if/when they get closed. I'm afraid this has been a problem for some time, and short of abolishing that close reason altogether, there does not seem to be an effective solution.

