Allow another close vote after retraction

Question

tl;dr

Users that have retracted a close vote should be able to vote again on that same question.

I don't believe there is any danger in allowing this, provided some controls are in place (see below).

Long Version

As a 3k+ user, I want to look at a question at any point in time and determine whether it belongs on this site and, if not, state exactly why it doesn't in a close vote.

People who write questions are free to edit them at any time. As a result, close votes can become invalid and the new close vote retraction feature was introduced as a response to this.

While I welcome the new feature, I wonder why we have stuck with the "you can only vote once" paradigm. If I'm monitoring a question to the extent that I withdraw my close vote, why shouldn't I be allowed to vote again if subsequent edits render the question unsuitable? I propose that if you retract your close vote on a question, you should be allowed to vote again.

Note that by implementing this feature, one would also be able to change a close vote (by retracting and then selecting a different close reason). To combat willy-nilly vote changing (which may confuse other users), I propose one of the following defences:

1. An edit must occur between retraction and re-voting. This ensures something has changed in order to make the user want to vote to close again.

2. A time limit ensures that X minutes must pass between retraction and re-voting.

3. No specific restrictions are enforced, but the reputation required to re-vote is raised to something higher than 3k. The idea being that more experienced close voters are unlikely to change close reasons lightly. Perhaps this could be a tantalising rep target at 7.5k (to fill the void between 5-10k).

A similar question was asked previously, but I'm hoping some of my defences listed above will negate the fears listed in the accepted answer.

Example Use Case #1

A poor question is raised and the OP receives several close votes and comments. Being a good user, the OP then adjusts the question to meet the quality standards of the site. One or more close-voters retract their vote now that the question is good enough.

But wait! A duplicate has now been found, which wasn't spotted originally due to the poor quality of the question. None of the retracting close-voters can vote to close as a duplicate and are forced to leave a comment. Hopefully passing 3K+ users will spot the comment and act accordingly, but unnecessary time is wasted. This question should be on the close queue and heading for death.

Example Use Case #2

Commonly on Stack Overflow, a user will present insufficient information to diagnose a problem. Perhaps their code example doesn't compile or they haven't provided definitions of all the referenced methods. I will leave a comment to indicate this and, after a small grace period, will vote to close with "This question appears to be off-topic because it lacks sufficient information to diagnose the problem.".

If the user edits their question and adds the info, I retract my close vote. But I often realise the question should be closed for another reason, e.g. a duplicate or the new(ish) reason: "This question was caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced or a simple typographical error.".

Example Use Case #3

Perhaps the most common: you find a reasonable duplicate and vote to close. But then... you find the most wonderful, exact duplicate you could imagine. Too late, your vote is cast. You can retract it, but you can't then easily kick the ball rolling on a new closure with the real duplicate. Sure, a comment might cause things to start, but often it doesn't. Flagging for diamond attention isn't appropriate.

This can also happen when the OP refutes the original duplicate and provides some extra information that steers you towards a related but different duplicate.

Answer 1

In theory this sounds useful, and quite consistent. What you're proposing is that we treat close voting as we do normal voting, where you can change your vote one way or the other once a post has been edited, as many times as you want for however many edits it receives.

I worry about the following things, however, and the thought of them leaves me sufficiently concerned that I'm willing to say this might be a bad idea.

Consider:

• Easy to just edit a post so you can vote to close it again
• The same group of users hovering over a question to decide its ultimate fate, now consider this group at odds with each other. The system would have to allow this only on substantive edits.
• Suggested edits approved by people other than the author seem really weird here, even if substantive.
• How often do you really think this is necessary?

Now, we could work around the potential for abuse, but that leads me to my last point:

• This would not be easy to implement

I'm not marking this as declined because you've tickled my consistency bone and I want to see input from more folks. In other words, this is just my opinion on the feature, and not an official response to it.

In the meantime, if you see a question flip-flopping like the scenario you describe, it's probably time to have a moderator take a look at it; they aren't limited on the number of times they can close or reopen a question with a single vote - and there may be other oddities they should have a look at.

Answer 2

"if subsequent edits render the question unsuitable" you should roll back to the version that was suitable, not vote to close.

On the other hand, changing a close vote reason without retracting it would help in the situations when question turns from "unclear what you are asking" to "off topic" or "too broad". And I see it happen pretty often.

Allowing close vote change would help to close question with a proper reason, as Duncan wanted, but without flaws Tim Post♦ mentioned. No option to cast another vote prevents "hovering" and constant re-closing by the same group, and edit-to-close approach, at the same time allowing questions to be closed with the reason most proper at the moment of actual closure, if the reason changed.

Answer 3

@TimPost makes some strong arguments against treating close voting like regular voting (i.e. clearing the 'I haz voted' flag after each edit). But I think the real issue is a subset of this, and is that retracting a close vote ought to allow another close-vote. There are many reasons for this. In my personal experience, I have experienced at least the following reasons, in addition to the excellent reasons in the original question above:

1. I VtCed as duplicate to the wrong question, and I want to change the duplicate link.

2. I VtCed, then the question was edited, to make a different close reason more appropriate (from Off-Topic to Too Broad, for instance)

3. I VtCed, the question was edited to bring it within scope, I retracted my VtC, then the OP rolled back the edit. Now I want to VtC again.

Even if nothing else is changed in the VtC/Retraction system, a voluntary retraction (as opposed to the question being closed and reopened, for instance) ought to clear the 'I haz voted' flag.

---

EDIT Feb 9, 2015

Another case I happend upon today:

1. OP asks a question.
2. Question gets closed as Too Broad
3. OP re-asks question.
4. Users VtC new question as a duplicate of the old.
5. OP deletes the old question.
6. Dupe VtCs are deleted, and now these users can't VtC as 'Too Broad' on the remaining question

Answer 4

If you want to prevent hovering, then change the vote mechanic so that rather than forgetting the vote after reaching 5 and changing the status of the question, the votes, both to close, and to reopen, remain in place and the status changes when one exceeds the other by 5.

In other words, if 5 people vote to close, and later 5 people vote to reopen, then the question is reopened, but those first 5 people's votes are still recorded so they can't add a second close vote to close it again. If 5 other people vote to close, then it is closed again. Unless one or two more people vote to keep it open first, which you should be able to do before the question is actually closed.

Either way, retracting your vote should not prevent you from changing your mind again later.

Answer 5

This question and its status tag as of writing this answer (status-completed) seems to have caused much confusion over the years. As such, I'm removing the tag because... while it might be completed in some cases, the actual request here is not. Whether we would change this feature, I don't know at this point - like Tim, I do appreciate the limitation of requiring an edit or, in particular, an edit by someone else - but I also see room for gaming this and I'm uncertain how frequently the hypothetical in the question occurs.

Before I dig into that any more, for those who want to know when we actually allow recasting close votes, read this paragraph... if a question that you cast close votes on doesn't get closed, you can cast a new close vote 14 days after the vote aged away (for the full details read this giant post). This change occurred in March 2015, just a few months before animuson tagged this as completed.

You can not recast a close vote if:

• You retract it.
• The post is closed using your vote to close and then reopened.

The heart of this question is the retraction feature and aged away close votes aren't retracted by definition. While I'd say that it's relatively common for a question to need a different close reason, I don't know that it's particularly common for a question to follow the pattern as described in the question:

1. Get a close vote
2. Get edited to improve it thus making it a good question
3. The close voter becomes aware of the edit, agrees that the question is in scope and then retracts the vote to close
4. The question gets another edit (or more likely a rollback) that makes it again out of scope for the site
5. The same close voter is aware of the edit and wants to recast the vote to close.

I could probably just pull data on retraction counts and get a very low number without even looking into the other steps... but I have no clue how to query SEDE for retractions. 🤣

For use case 1 (Close votes are cast and then retracted after an edit and then a duplicate is found), there's not really a solution here other than finding other people to vote to close and leaving a comment pointing at the duplicate. That said, this example doesn't meet the question's own requirements - if the retraction happened after an edit and a duplicate was found - there wouldn't necessarily be an edit between the retraction and wanting to close as a duplicate.

For use case 2 (edits cause close voters to identify a different reason the post should be closed). While this could be addressed by allowing retracting and allowing voting for a new reason, this has the same problem as the last example - there's not an edit occurring between retracting the vote and wanting to cast a new vote to close. Also, I'd say the better way to address this situation is to allow a close voter to change their close reason - no retraction needed, no second close vote required.

For use case 3 (a better duplicate is found and user wants to change duplicate target), this could be solved with the same change for use case 2 (allow changing close reason) but it is also at least partially addressed by the 2017 feature allowing gold badge holders and moderators to edit duplicate targets.

So, I guess, in the end, even if we opted to build something like this, I think that other changes would meet the needs better than this specific request and some features released since this question was created actually address some of what it was trying to solve.

Answer 6

I have a recent example where I think it's very frustrating that I can't retract my original close vote, and cast another (or simply change my close reason, in order to make the site working as intended).

This is the post: Ubuntu 22.04 Bluetooth does not work

I originally voted to close, because the post lacked detail. Now the user has edited the post with more detail - and in the meantime I have found out that this is actually a bug, that should be reported, and thus isn't within the scope of Ask Ubuntu.

Now it would be completely natural for me to retract my first close vote (lack of detail) and replace this with another close vote (this is a bug).

But I can't do that. Can anyone explain why the above shouldn't be possible? Actually here I would rather have that I can change the reason for the close vote - so why isn't this possible then?

Answer 7

I would agree with this if it were limited to duplicates. If you find a better duplicate it makes sense to be able to update it. If, as you say, one finds a duplicate after closing it for another reason it makes sense to be able to update to help the OP more, however poor their question.

I don't really see that it's fair to the OP if it were done for any other close reason.