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This is a feature request to increase the number of close votes in /review, and somewhat similar to close votes daily limit increase.

I know the concern is robo reviewers in search of a badge, but it seems odd to me that I have only 40 close votes per day, but 54 moderator flags. If the community trusts me enough to give me that much ammunition to throw up to the mods, then why is there not enough trust to spend more time in /review?

Why not increase daily close votes in a way that reflects the community's trust in you? Something like 

Math.max(40, NumberFlags)

or even 

Math.max(40, NumberFlags + (~~(UserRep / 10000) * 10)) //(+ 10 votes per 10K rep)

or maybe

Math.max(40, NumberFlags) + (~~(UserRep / 10000) * 10) //(+ 10 votes per 10K rep)
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  • 2
    You probably have 50 close votes per day, but can only do 40 close vote reviews
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 15:29
  • On a side note, the number of users this will affect is probably vanishingly small. Your formulae would both give me 58 votes, an increase of only 8 on the current. If I had less than 10k I would have 50 still.
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 15:32
  • @ben - that's correct. I could get done with the /review votes, then cast 10 more in the 10K /tools page.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 15:48
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    @Ben - 58 votes in the /review queue is 18 more than what you current have (in the review queue). Sure, 10K users like us can go over to the /tools page and help out a bit more, but a) that division seems silly, and b) not all responsible users helping out in /review are 10K
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 16:13
  • wonder how does it happen that 300 golden badges laying in front of about 10,000 eligible users can't help to attract more reviewers to work in this queue. "300 freaking easy golden badges that could drain 40,000 items from the queue in less than a month, and so little interest in these among 10,000 eligible users - why?"
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 17:52
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    @gnat - isn't it good that we don't have swarms of people coming to /review just for a badge? I'd much rather have a small cadre of dedicated users working the queue because they care about the community. This feature request would go a step in that direction.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 1:55
  • @AdamRackis it sure would be good if this was stated explicitly, as a reason to keep it slow; I would sure understand that (and that by the way would make a perfectly sensible answer to all these closequeuetooslow) questions. Thing is though, they keep saying nothing is done just because it's good enough already
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 4:59
  • @gnat maybe I misunderstood you. As I see it, these are separate issues. I think it's good that hoards of 3K users don't seem to be burning through the queue just to earn a badge. But my feature request wouldn't really change that. I'm talking about increasing the limit for users who have already proven they can be trusted by the community.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 15:08
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    agree - these issues can be treated separately. It would be interesting to see if increasing vote limit for "trusted reviewers" could help to avoid involving "hoardes" of uneducated close-voters with all the nasty side effects of mass production we've seen so far in other queues. As I said I wouldn't mind if this was presented as a main reason to decline usability improvements in CV-queue. :)
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 15:43
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    Doing close votes is tedious and boring. VERY boring. Even if you filter it to one type of votes as I'm doing.
    – SztupY
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 14:38
  • yes adding # of close votes is nice :[ too many things to close so few votes
    – ledino
    Commented Aug 3, 2013 at 23:56
  • I gave it on more try... meta.stackexchange.com/questions/195352/…
    – Sergio
    Commented Sep 1, 2013 at 8:54

5 Answers 5

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You're right, an increase in the number of close votes is definitely necessary.

That backlog is huge and it's been this way for months now. Actually, in the last few weeks, it got bigger (from 45K to 50K).

Even if a new fancy formula won't be used for it, increasing the number of votes from 40 to 60 or 80 or even 100 will have a positive effect: the backlog will start to shrink and it's possible to completely get rid of it in 2 months or so.

I don't know what new formula would be correct for this. But we need more than 40 votes / day, because clearly what you're doing now is NOT working.

As a side note: after we get rid of the backlog, we can safely return to the magic number 40.

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  • 1
    I just read a post from 2012 when people stated that "we don't need more close votes". This is wrong. The number is not decreasing. Clearly, logic dictates that we up the close votes? I would do it without incentive, just let us do it. We're now at 57k.
    – James
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 9:26
  • I gave it on more try... meta.stackexchange.com/questions/195352/…
    – Sergio
    Commented Sep 1, 2013 at 8:55
  • @Sergio Awesome. Maybe it will push through this time.
    – Radu Murzea
    Commented Sep 1, 2013 at 15:49
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I became active little over a month ago, and seen the close queue grow from approximately 51.2k to over 53k during that time. That means the queue structurally grows faster than it can be emptied, at a rate of over 300 questions per week, or some 40 per day. Each of those 40 questions needs 5 votes to close, or 200 votes total. Giving a relative handful of users 10 extra votes per day, that they will only use "when on a roll" to quote comments and answers in this very topic, just isn't going to cut it, people are just not on a roll frequently enough or the growth wouldn't be this continuous, structural and have such a sustained constant rate.

The only ways to reverse the exponential growth of the queue are to:

  • Get more people in, lower the Close Votes requirement from 3k to 2k for example (there are many newly active users in the 2000 to 3000 range)
  • Require less votes to close a topic (4 instead of 5 should increase close rate by 20%)
  • Require significantly less votes to close old topics (I sometimes see topics from 2009 pop up in the close queue, why bother 5 people with that when the recent questions are stacking up too fast)

Either one of these 3 separately should at least halt the growth, a combination should definitely reverse it.

I also definitely think the psychological element shouldn't be underestimated. I seriously prefer to review other queues first when I have a few minutes to spare, because there's that sense of satisfaction when you see "no more questions to review" popping up at the end, making you feel good about a job well done. Processing the close queue is just endless moronic drone work for the biggest part, that always ends with "You are not allowed to review more today" while you know there are still 53200 questions awaiting attention. Reversing or at least stopping the continous growth should definitely be made a priority, even if only with a temporary measure, since when it's actually empty or controllably small people will be more motivated to keep working on it. Even if it would be visibly shrinking as a result of the work it would be more motivating than knowing you're fighting an uphill battle as it is now.

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5

I agree, but in order to combat the ever-increasing backlog of Close Votes, the calculation should allow for more. Something like:

Math.max(40, NumberFlags + (~~(UserRep / 10000) * 50)) //(+ 50 votes per 10K rep)
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2
  • Indeed - lots of cool possibilities for Nick and crowd. Or have each 10K rep add an arithmetically increasing number of votes :)
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 17:16
  • I would say Math.max(40, NumberFlags) + (~~(UserRep / 10000) * 50) because otherwise there is still a maximum of 40 per day in which case it won't really solve anything.
    – Donald Duck
    Commented Feb 18, 2017 at 13:04
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I don't think this will work, as most people who are doing reviews have less than 10k reputation. Just check the rep of the top reviewers (yes, it includes me, and yes I don't have 10k rep). And increasing the limit doesn't essentially means more work, as doing close votes are tedious and boring. Even Bill the Lizard, who has relaxed limits (as a moderator) doesn't do much more than 40 every day (It might be because he still ha a limit of 50 close votes per day, or for other reasons, I don't know)

On the other hand increasing limits should work, but we should simply abolish the points gained with reviews above the 40 (or the original 20) limit. I've already posted about it on the other topic. This way robo-reviewers will have less reason to do the close votes, while others can do more.

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  • Interesting. Speaking anecdotally, sometimes I'll get on a roll on my iPad and run up against the 40 limit pretty quickly. For me at least this could make a big difference sometimes. Not sure how typical that is though.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 14:45
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    to me it takes 10-20 minutes to complete 40 reviews (typically closer to 10). 80 reviews would be about as easy to me as 40, at least while queue is large and I skip anything that feels difficult
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 15:15
  • Yes, but I always feel if I'd do more, the quality of my reviews would plummet. For example for off-topic questions I like to put a comment for good (but off topic) questions that it should've been asked on X.SE but after a few of those comments It gets tedious and I just hit Close/Off-Topic. Probably the whole close revew stuff needs to be redone (for SO) if we want to encourage more people to do it, because being the second easiest badge to get doesn't seems to be enough. And by "redone" I mean massive changes for the UI to both improve quality and quantity
    – SztupY
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 15:36
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I agree that limits need to be increased. I don't get a lot of time to do reviews, but when I do I tend to have a block of time, get on a roll, and hit the limit fairly quickly.

I'm willing to do reviews but cannot do small numbers on a regular basis. When I have the time I'd like to be able to knock out more than 40. A limit of 100 sounds about right.

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  • 100 you say? You might be interested in my proposal to give you just that (assuming Adam's suggestion doesn't get implemented)! </shameless plug>
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 23:06
  • Interesting proposal. "Rollover" close vote credits with expiration, just like the cell-phone companies :-)
    – Ex Umbris
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 23:10
  • That last depends on the country you're in... they're downright mean about it in France for instance... :-).
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 23:11

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