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Here's an alternative proposal for the stackoverflow.com close queue. Two queues.

Queue #1 shows only questions that are no more than 24 hours old. The site would use this queue to get attention onto the most important area: the front page. Make it a way to gather community attention onto incoming crud.

Queue #2: older stuff. With an important twist: if you want to have humans slog through 80k of crap, try presenting it to them in batches that they can complete. This queue will never have more than 1000 things in it. The system will only dump the next 1000 things into it when we finish dealing with the previous 1000 things.

Net result: reviewers can visit queue #1 and have real impact on the state of the first page. They can visit queue #2, and have enough positive feedback in the form of progress to motivate them to come back.

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  • ..or lower the votes required to close something.
    – Josh Crozier
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 19:16
  • 12
    Or increase limit on number of votes per day based on previous activities; just like flagging.
    – hjpotter92
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 19:17
  • I think motivating people to visit (and return to) queue #2 will be hard/ nigh on impossible.
    – Matt
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 19:21
  • @Matt being able to see the number go down might help.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 19:21
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    @Josh - I've been thinking that for some time. Motivated me to throw this over the fence
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 19:34
  • I like this idea, but with a badge for the user who completes each 1000th review (the "5th Caller" badge, or something)
    – Ben Collins Mod
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 3:05
  • wonder how is this a duplicate?
    – gnat
    Commented Dec 3, 2013 at 16:33

2 Answers 2

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+1 I like these suggestions, gamification ftw.

Keeping recent questions clean is a great start, and a great "objective". Gamification on the older questions would make it more fun for me to help get through the various "stages" of the old-close-votes-queue.

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I think your idea is interesting (as do 22 others) and could be beneficial, but there is a potential trip hazard with it.
With a separation like this, a lot of people may just end up doing queue#1 more than queue#2, so while queue#1 is always clean and front page is too, the back log remains forever as is, or gets worse.

Also, the mentality on queue#2 is slightly off, as is your approach.
People can work better and especially slog on if they see progress being made - the pile of ironing going down, the paperwork slowly going from "in" tray to "done".

So with your idea, there always being 1,000 reviews to look at is not going to do this. Seeing the 80K go down will, however, make them feel something is being accomplished.

But +1 for your idea, as it does need a new idea to make it go down, as seemingly it's just not happening, or not quickly enough.

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  • Meh. Forget the backlog. Clearing the front page is more of a priority than backlog.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 2:57
  • Only marginally more important in the grand scheme of things. The longer the backlog is left, the less important the oldest reviews become. ie one from 4 months ago probs doesn't matter anymore, and so less point in doing them, however as they are still being worked through it becomes a potential waste of time. So it's all important.. but I agree front page has slightly higher priority.
    – James
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 3:05
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    If people are always clearing queue #1, then queue #2 won't be getting worse.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 3:10
  • @jadarnel27: yes, of course. But the suggestion was queue#1 is last 24 hours. If X wasn't actioned within 24hrs then it's moved into queue#2
    – James
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 3:15
  • @James but seeing how much less there would be compared to the current queue will help some people like me. I sometimes have to force myself to review the Close Vote queue because the number doesn't change when I do 40 reviews. I check back later and it goes up. That's discouraging.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Oct 2, 2013 at 16:35

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