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I've been visiting the Close Votes review queue more lately, and while I like the recent improvements, I would like to see the breakdown of close votes to the right of the question below the "link" link.

For example, currently to the right of a question with close votes in the review queue is the following:

answers     0
accepted    no
asked       today
viewed      26 times
link

Below that, I think it would be useful to add the breakdown of close votes for the question, like:

exact duplicate      0
off topic            0
not constructive     1
not a real question  3
too localized        0

Currently, if you want to see how many close votes the question has received, or see the breakdown of the close votes, you have to click on the close button to bring up the dialog. I find myself frequently clicking the close button to see both the quantity and reason of close votes.

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    You should not be making your decision on closing a question based on others votes. The question could have since been edited and improved, and if you base solely on other close votes, you could be voting to close a good question.
    – Josh Mein
    Oct 7, 2012 at 2:50
  • I'm not making my decisions solely based on that, however I do take it into account sometimes.
    – j08691
    Oct 7, 2012 at 2:51

2 Answers 2

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Like you said, the breakdown is shown if you've made the decision to close the question and click the [Close] button.

This is by design since we'd rather you decide independently whether or not the question should be closed first.

Still, the breakdown is there if you need it.

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That people would use this feature the way you're suggesting you'd use it, probably means we should not have this feature.

Suppose a question that should not be closed has one close vote. Then if it gets another vote, that's not so bad--it's still not closed.

On the other hand, suppose a question that should not be closed has four close votes. Then if it gets another vote, it's closed. Now it will either remain wrongly closed, or people will have to hassle with reopening it.

The presence of the new review system for close votes makes it much easier to get questions closed than in the past, and since we don't yet have a system for reviewing reopen votes, the balance is already tipped somewhat against any question that is wrongly close voted.

Encouraging people to be more willing to vote to close when the question has lots of close votes would substantially magnify this problem, and there is really no benefit associated with it.

The closer a question is to being closed, the more reluctant we should be to vote to close it.

Furthermore, suppose a question has just one close vote, or zero (as I believe questions enter the close queue just by being flagged for closure by users with insufficient reputation to cast close votes). If (even a few) people were to see this and uncritically click Do not close, that would keep the new review system from getting low-visibility questions closed. Since that is the primary benefit of the new review system for close votes, that would be a bad thing.

In conclusion: The idea that more close votes means you should be more willing to cast a close vote is a widespread intuition, but it is incorrect. This feature, if implented, would magnify this wrong intuition and give it way more power than it currently has.

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