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Per this explanation, reopen votes should expire at a rate of 1 per day after 4 days of no new reopen votes, providing the question has over 100 views.

But I've seen at least two cases now where this has not appeared to happen. A question will get additional reopen votes, and the votes start to expire immediately on the next day.

Two example questions are this one which got its 3rd reopen vote 2 days ago and now has 1, and this one (now deleted) which had the votes start to expire 1 day after it's 4th reopen vote.

In both cases, I was watching to see if they got enough reopen votes and expected to see a 4-day period after the last reopen vote before they started to expire, but saw votes start to expire sooner. I think they started to expire 4 days after the 1st reopen vote, even though they had subsequent reopen votes a few days afterwards, but I can't be positive of that.

Both example questions are for The Workplace, which is a beta site, so I am not sure if this only affects beta sites or not.

Is this a bug? Or did the policy for how votes expire change? Or did I just misunderstand the original explanation of how vote expiring works? Or perhaps I'm just going crazy... I didn't ask about this the first time I saw it happen because I figured I was just remembering things incorrectly, but now it's happened a 2nd time

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  • 3
    I think re-open votes start expiring immediately after a few "keep closed" votes through /review.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:10
  • there is a chance that amount of views might impact expiration - if memory serves, I once was explained that was the case for close votes. though, if this is the case, I'd consider it a bug: I understand how amount of views expires close votes but doing the same for reopen votes somehow doesn't feel right
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:10
  • @gnat Close and reopen votes won't expire if the question has less than 100 views. That's the only view-related thing I know of that affects vote expiration.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:11
  • @Yannis I'd be interested in finding out if that is indeed the case. Do you know if subsequent reopen votes will put the post back in the Reopen queue after it's been kicked out?
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:13
  • According to this answer, close votes start ageing immediately after three "Do Not Close" review votes. Can't find a reference for the reverse, but I imagine it works the same way. No idea what happens if there are subsequent close / re-open votes.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:14
  • @Yannis That answer specifically states that "if someone visits the question directly and votes to close it, that'll both count toward the 5 votes needed to close it and stall the aging for another four days", so if that is the case than this is indeed a bug.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:15
  • @Rachel Except if three more people voted through review and restarted the ageing process.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:17
  • hey! "this one" has my reopen vote, I just can't remember if I cast after rev 3 or rev 6
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:19
  • @Yannis I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. A new reopen or close vote should stall the aging for 4 days, however in at least 2 cases now I have seen votes start to expire a day after the most recent vote
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:19
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    @gnat It tells me I already voted to reopen the question so I can't vote again, and Chad said in chat that it has his reopen vote, but all 3 of us don't show up in the Reopen vote history the last time it was reopened from being too-localized. Perhaps I can assume the 3 reopen votes it had were from you, me, and Chad?
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:21
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    @Yannis Yes, but per the answer you linked, subsequent votes after it's been kicked out of the queue should "stall the aging for another four days", not continue the aging process where it left off or stop it from resetting upon subsequent votes.
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 12:34
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    @BenBrocka The first example question got it's first reopen vote quite a few days ago, and I do not think it would have taken a few days for the question to get reviewed. The reopen queue is handled fairly quickly, even on smaller sites. Perhaps getting kicked out of the queue starts the 4-day timer which cannot get reset?
    – Rachel
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 13:46
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    I could swear I've seen reopen votes expire faster than 4 days on workplace in a similar situation but I could be wrong
    – Zelda
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 14:02
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    FYI: Review won't ever hasten aging - it'll just allow it to start happening at all.
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 18:23
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    I have seen this problem also, hope @Shog9 and the gang can solve this bug, I hate my reopen votes fading away.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 18:37

1 Answer 1

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Alright, two things.

  1. There was a recent bug which chose the latest close/reopen vote on a question that did have old, ageable votes - the developer will be chastised when he returns from his vacation.

  2. The original spec never worked the way it said - once the 100 page view requirement was met, any close/reopen vote older than 4 days was eligible to be aged, starting with the most recent ageable vote.

After the next build, the functionality will behave like the spec says; it will also choose the oldest vote to be aged.

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  • 3
    since bug affected Workplace, the developer should be slapped
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 22:07

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