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Currently, when we vote to close a question as being a duplicate it provides a comment with a link to the duplicate question. The OP then has the option to follow that link to review the question.

As it stands, a question requires 5 votes to close (though I assume admins/mods can close as duplicate immediately?). The problem with requiring 5 votes is that a question might not always get all 5 votes.

Now, this is good from the point of view that we want multiple reputable people to agree it should be closed. But there are likely some instances (I would assume quite a few) where a question has been voted as duplicate, but not enough times to close. However, the OP may have already reviewed the possible duplicate, found it to be a match (and therefore solved their problem), but we are still stuck with an open, unanswered duplicate that the OP doesn't care about anymore.

So my proposition is to have a feature that allows the OP to say "I confirm this is a duplicate, my problem has been solved, this question can be closed". This could be an option that only becomes available once a duplicate vote has been logged. If multiple questions are identified as duplicates, then the OP should select which one was the one that solved their problem so the closed question can be correctly linked.

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  • Yes. If you want an example, try this question. It has received 3 close votes and been confirmed as a duplicate, but not enough to be closed. Still lost in the endless review queue somewhere. Aug 14, 2013 at 11:45
  • Oh the irony! :) Aug 14, 2013 at 11:46
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    I am waiting for the OP to confirm the dupe now.. Aug 14, 2013 at 11:46
  • hmm... seems I have to concede this as a dupe. At least I have bought some attention to the dupe (5 month ago, the really old one is irrelevant). I think a feature like this can help keep that close review queue down as I can't see us being able to keep that one near zero like the others.. actually I just voted on closing this one myself
    – musefan
    Aug 14, 2013 at 11:53
  • I don't know why you think the older question is "irrelevant". The answers are still quite relevant, and make points worthy of consideration. Nothing there is specific to the old close-vote UI. Aug 14, 2013 at 12:04
  • Only very few feature requests actually get implemented, sometimes years after being requested. Nothing we can do, and it's totally fine in my opinion. :) Aug 14, 2013 at 12:06

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