Is the explanation of “view close votes” misleading?

Question

https://askubuntu.com/privileges/view-close-votes states:

How do I view close votes and reasons?

Click on the close or reopen link under the question body.

And it seems that it requires 250 reputation to view the votes. I have 304 reputations at the moment, but can not view the close votes. (I checked against a question which should have at least one close vote, as told by the voter.)

Is the explanation misleading or is there something that I fail to see?

Answer 1

The "view close votes" privilege implies, through its name and page text, that you can see all close votes:

How do I view close votes and reasons?

Click on the "close" link under any question body. You may also cast a close or reopen vote on your own question.

However, that's not true. At this level, you can only see close votes on your questions, because the actual ability is "Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions".

This is either a bug in the privilege name & page, or it is a bug that the close reasons aren't displayed on other questions. Going by historical behavior, I'd say the privilege page is the bug and it was a slight oversight when creating the privileges en masse.

---

I've updated that page to be explicit, but the privilege name is still misleading, though that's a much smaller issue cleared up by actually reading the page. My understanding is community edits to privilege pages don't immediately take effect, so for now you can only see the edit in the history.

Answer 2

Technically speaking, you are allowed to view close votes once your reputation reaches 250. It's merely that the web interface only exposes this feature for your own questions. However, you can still run the following JavaScript code on any question (e.g. via a bookmarklet):

var id = $("#question").attr("data-questionid");
$("#flag-post-" + id).loadPopup({url: "/posts/popup/close/" + id});

This will bring up the "Vote to close" pop-up which shows the current close votes among other things. Feel free to decide which one is the bug here - the fact that this feature isn't exposed by default or the fact that you are allowed to view that pop-up even though your reputation is too low to cast close votes.

Edit: In fact, you can even show this pop-up (along with existing close votes) if you don't have the "view close votes" privilege yet. This makes the "bug or feature" decision easier.

Answer 3

Actually, with a reputation of 250 you can only see close reasons and vote on your own questions. You need 3000 to do so on other's posts.

You will see the close reasons and the number stating how many times a certain close reason has been selected by other users. When you select off-topic, you will be presented migration possibilities and the option just to vote for closing without a new home for the question.

When giving the reason `exact duplicate', you are presented a list of duplicates that have been chosen by other users that chose this close reason.

The total of close or reopen votes you can see right next to the link underneath the question. This link will only be presented to you if you have enough reputation.

Reopening won't need a reason.

I am positive that the text could be more clear about two aspects:

• it's most prominently the close reasons and not the votes you see (but you are presented with the number each close reason has so far been selected)
• it could state that at a reputation of 250 you only gained the right for your own questions.

Here an example with pending close votes: