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I just got the close vote privilege on SO today. I received this question as an audit. I voted to close it (could be flagged as "too broad" or "more appropriate for programmers.stackexchange.com"), and apparently that was not the correct choice:

Screen Shot

This question would never fly here.

  1. Why did that happen? Should I expect more poor audit questions?
  2. Is there any consequence of failing these?
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    not too broad IMO. Wouldn't close. As for the audit selection criteria and the consequences, these are already documented on meta. Aug 16, 2013 at 21:55
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    At the very least "opinion based". His own reasoning even starts with "in my opinion...".
    – Jason C
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:04
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    Are you a robot, or a human? If you're a human: does this question ask for opinions, or facts? I'd say, it asks for facts (even if the asker has his own opinion) Aug 16, 2013 at 22:07
  • Are you asking me if "are you a robot or a human" asks for an opinion or... what? Can I vote to close a comment as "unclear what you are asking"?
    – Jason C
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:16
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    I am asking you two questions. The first question is "are you a robot or a human?". The second question is "[in your opinion,] does this question ask for opinions, or facts?". The first question is asked unconditionally. The second question is asked iff the response to the first question is "I'm a human". The next sentence is my response to the second question (presence of which does not imply that I don't expect your answer to the second question). Aug 16, 2013 at 22:26
  • and no, you cannot close (or close vote) a comment. Aug 16, 2013 at 22:29
  • I guess I don't follow. Whether I'm a robot or a human is not a matter of opinion. Those are two well defined concepts and there are concrete criteria that determine which one I am. Unless I'm a Cylon, I guess.
    – Jason C
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:30
  • @JanDvorak "and no, you cannot close (or close vote) a comment." Is that an opinion or a fact? Are you a robot? :P
    – Jason C
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:31
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    I've also been seeing more and more of these low-quality audits
    – Undo
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:34
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    I never claimed that you being a robot is a matter of opinion. Why do you think I did? Note that "this question" in my second question refers to the question of which the audit was concerned, not to the first question. It would be weird if I asked you "In your opinion, does "Are you a robot, or a human?" ask for opinions, or facts?" I am not asking that. Also note that "Are you a robot, or a human?" was primarily meant as a rhetorical question. Now, I am not so sure, so please answer this objective answer in accordance with the objective truth: Are you a robot, or a human? Aug 16, 2013 at 22:40
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    We're all unicorns. Either that or waffle-irons.
    – Bart
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:53
  • @JanDvorak I will answer it under one condition: Does my answer to your question affect my opinion on the audit I posted above? If not then I have to move on now and leave some room for other discussion.
    – Jason C
    Aug 16, 2013 at 22:53
  • I don't agree with "opinion-based". Although the OP declared his own opinion, there can be factual reasons for "why such as such is bad practice". As for "too broad", it doesn't seem to be those kind of questions that would need an extremely long answer. Partly because it's asking about a specific function and a specific option. So yeah, I don't think it should be closed. That being said, I don't know JS so I might be wrong about this. Aug 16, 2013 at 23:15
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    you don't migrate a question just because it's on-topic on some other site. You migrate a question because it's a high quality question that is offtopic where it was asked, and that should be asked somewhere else. Also, you don't migrate old questions. Aug 16, 2013 at 23:36
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    I think this is a perfectly valid question. Yes, you could contort some of the close reasons so that they apply to it, but I don't think you should. It is not the unanswerable type of opinion-based question. Like several commenters have pointed out, it is really asking for facts. I rather like that audits are catching those who tend to vote to close based on keywords or cursory evaluations of questions, rather than a thorough attempt to understand and evaluate its appropriateness. Aug 17, 2013 at 5:14

1 Answer 1

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To answer your three basic questions:

Why did this happen?

You voted to close a question that the system judged to be a good question.

Should I expect more poor audit questions?

Most likely yes, if by poor audit questions you mean audits that you're likely to disagree with.

Is there any consequence of failing these?

Yes, if you fail several in short period you will be temporarily booted from the close vote review. If you're paying attention this wont likely be a problem, most audits aren't that bad from what I've seen.

See Tim Post's answer here for more info on how audit questions are chosen and so on.

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