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Recently users with the ability to Vote to Close were able to access the /review/close page. I thought this was awesome, and over at Super User, was able to help close questions faster than ever. I was also able to see questions that had 3-4 votes, and then find others to help finish it off. It removed the need for out "Vote to Close" chat room, for the most part.

But then it was restricted back to 10k+. Why was this? Can we have it back? I think it is fantastic for 3k+ users.

Edit: Upon reading some comments, perhaps we need to make this for 4-5k+ users, not 3k, to avoid abuse of it.

Also, if you are down voting this suggestion, I would like you to state why, if possible. It's much appreciated.

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    10k users see the posts that have been recently voted to be closed in the tools page too. It would make sense to let 3k users (or 5k users) see /review/close. (Well, it makes sense in my mind.)
    – avpaderno
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:43
  • @kiamlaluno Well previously we could, and it was great. For some reason it was removed though, and I don't see any benefit to removing it.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:45
  • I must be blind: I noticed the "close" tab in the review page only recently, in sites where I am a 10k user. :-) Still, I think that 5k users should be able to see that tab. If they can flag a post from the review page, I don't see why they should not be able to vote to close a question from that page.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:50
  • @kiamlaluno I think 3k+ users should see this even.. Since they have that ability.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:52
  • OK, that is fine for me. :-)
    – avpaderno
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:53
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    -1 No, this will just encourage overzealous closers to close questions without looking. IMO the ability to close questions should be removed from the /review pages altogether.
    – NullUserException อ_อ
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:30
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    @NullUserExceptionஇ_இ: That assumes we have a problem of overzealous closures. Yet I believe the problem of duplicate questions is a far bigger monster.
    – surfasb
    Commented Nov 12, 2011 at 2:55
  • There's already a permissions setpoint at 5k (Approve tag wiki edits), this could be dropped to that level, affording 2k of rep to learn what to close and what not to close. That's much more achievable than the current 7k rep difference.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 16:37
  • @surfasb we do have a problem with overzealous closers. Users on Stack Overflow love to "pile on" the close votes, and often don't think twice before clicking whatever the first person clicked (since it shows previous close votes in the dialog). We on Super User get a lot of terrible questions from Stack Overflow because one person chooses to migrate and everyone else blindly follows suit. That being said, I do think the VTC list should be available to users with less rep... 5K seems like a reasonable cut off to me.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 17:35
  • @nhinkle: I'd have to run a query to see how many closed questions we have a day. Anytime I see suggestions for raising the requirements for a feature, I often ask myself "Does it solve the problem or merely tackle the symptom?" IMO, this does not tackle the problem, but rather, introduces a feature creep. Or more like a requirements creep. Overzealous closers may have no idea they are being overzealous. I've probably voted to close valid questions. But the only reason why I assume I have committed this mistake is because I assume all humans make mistakes, not due to feedback.
    – surfasb
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 19:40
  • IMO, I feel the issue isn't so much overzealous closures or even overzealous users. It is rather the nature of not having black and white lines laid out. It is both a blessing and a curse. I don't see this having any improvement unless you can herd all the voting users under one single ruleset.
    – surfasb
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 19:42
  • @surfasb I'm not saying that this should or should not be changed, I'm just saying that your claim that there aren't overzealous close voters is untrue, that is all.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 19:55
  • @nhinkle: Sorry, that last comment wasn't directed specifically towards you. I'm commenting on the decision to move the requirement up to 10K in the first place. BTW, I must say your reign as a mod is a fine example for anyone in any community.
    – surfasb
    Commented Nov 23, 2011 at 6:19

3 Answers 3

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The close queue was revamped and made available to anyone with the close questions privilege in early July of 2012. While I respect waffle's desire to avoid too much pile-on closing, we've taken other steps to mitigate that: specifically, "known good" and "known bad" audits that attempt to teach reviewers to recognize the sorts of questions we'd like to see closed and left open.

There's still a down-side of tying this to an existing privilege, however: it... just doesn't seem like as much of a privilege. As waffles noted, there aren't a lot of privileges to earn between 3K and 10K on a graduated site - bumping this up to 4K might be a good idea at some point just to help make folks more aware of it.

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I'm generally agreeing with you. I think it's a great way to show posts that need attention or cleaning up. On Super User, some questions – especially those with duplicates – stay at two or three votes, because there are hardly any 10k users who regularly check the /tools.

Having /review changed this a bit, and and for example, I consider you a person who uses their vote to close privilege wisely.

However, for some people who have recently acquired that privilege, we need to think about preventing them from abusing it. Imagine you have this new ability and go about voting to close everything that's listed under /review, just because you can. If you have 24 votes, you can spend them quite easily when you have a list of posts to cast them on.

It's the same for /tools, actually. I have the close privilege before, but there is the assumption that with 10k reputation, I've already earned 7k with this VTC privilege and therefore know how to use it.

So, in any way, I think with this new review system, we should somehow monitor if there are users who are a bit over-zealous when it comes to closing.

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    I agree with this totally. But remember - we need 5 votes to close. If someone is mindlessly using their votes, what are the chances 3-4 others will also vote? I think for people who actually use VTC, they are familiar with the usage of it. Thats my general feel for it anyway - people who just want to get rep probably don't even know what it is.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:11
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    @SimonSheehan That can happen even if you restrict it to 10k+. The idea is to minimize the probability. I'd support this at maybe 6k or higher, but not at 3k -- there needs to be some period where you're only voting to close on questions you understand, so you can learn how the community makes close decisions.
    – agf
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:19
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    @agf Reading slhcks answer, I think I agree with you... perhaps 4-5k then. Question revised
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:20
  • @SimonSheehan -1 to +0 then; It would probably be better than having it at 10k but I think that threshold is a bit low. Will watch this thread for further developments :)
    – agf
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:24
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    @agf Indeed, we shall see what happens :) It just helps for smaller sites too. Super User doesn't even have that many 10k+ users, so its nice for people like me who don't earn rep quite as fast.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:26
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    I totally agree with @agf (and the others) that this should be a 5-6k+ privilege. Let 3k get used to close voting for 2-3k, then give this before 10k.
    – chown
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:30
  • @chown I can agree with that completely.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 21:35
  • Aren't we already doing review/close manually with the SU chat room set up for this purpose? I agree in any case, officially reviewing close should wait a while, but another 7K seems a bit long - there is so much cleaning up to do on SU.
    – Paul
    Commented Nov 13, 2011 at 12:58
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+100

I pulled it out cause I was concerned this may introduce overzealous closing. I am not strictly against adding this in at 5-6k (after you learn how to close stuff properly) but still, worry that this may cause trouble.

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  • Based on what has been discussed here and the support for it (+28/-2), do you think you will implement this again?
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 1:37
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    at the moment we have a "hole" between 5k rep and 10k rep. I think we could add a new priv at 7.5k rep that includes this and perhaps a subset of tools.
    – waffles
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 1:39
  • I think that sounds quite reasonable, and would work well.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 1:41
  • I quite like the idea of adding this as a new privilege level. It seems that 7.5k is enough to trust that someone knows how closing works. And nothing too bad can happen, since it does require 4 others to agree with them.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 2:05
  • With the new /review page we can close things now. So technically this request has been completed.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Dec 6, 2012 at 1:31

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