7

Is the automatic community downvote for closed "off topic" and "not a real question" reversed once the question is reopened?

I found this question and this question that seem to indicate that the downvote is not reversed. I also did a quick search on the Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange, and didn't see anything to indicate that changes were implemented to reverse the automatic downvote upon reopen.

However, my personal experience, and that of other mods, is that the community downvote is at least sometimes reversed.

So, what should be the correct behavior? If, the downvote is not reversed, then there is a bug that causes it to be reversed sometimes. If the downvote is reversed, then the questions I linked to above need to be updated to reflect that.

Update: I reopened this question days after closing it as NARQ, and the automatic downvote by Community that the question originally had was reversed. So, either the documentation on MSO is wrong, or there's a bug here. Which is it?

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    Zuly, those two questions you linked seem to be conclusive. There is an exception for questions that get closed, but immediately reopened; I've seen the downvote removed when I reopen a question I just closed.
    – user102937
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 19:24
  • @RobertHarvey Those questions seemed pretty conclusive to me too, but I got some push back when I mentioned this, so I want an official answer. My experience is that the -1 is sometimes reversed when a question is reopened (even after some time delay), and I think there is some confusion as to what the correct behavior should be. I think it's a bug; probably related to this problem.
    – Zuly Gonzalez
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 19:37

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

The downvote reversals you're seeing are because we reverse the community user's automated action after you (a mod, a human) clears the flags on that post. We trust that our moderators have taken whatever action is needed, and the need for automated triggers is gone at that point...so we remove the downvotes.

Improve this answer
1
  • 2
    I'm not sure you answered my question. Flags don't come into play at all in this scenario. The downvote ocurred because I (a human) made the decision to close a question. Let's say I manually close a question as NARQ > I have a discussion with the OP via comments > he edits the post and leaves me a comment > I reopen the question. No flags were used or cleared. What is the end result? Is the downvote reversed? My experience is that it is at least sometimes reversed. However, the documentation on MSO says it is not reversed. Hence the confusion.
    – Zuly Gonzalez
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 16:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .