27

Occasionally, there are questions for which one of the close voters is the Community ♦ user. When does this happen, and why? What is the difference between this and a deleted user?

For instance, one of the close-voters on this question is Community ♦.

question closed by Community ♦

This question was closed by "Mik" but his profile wasn't linked, which implies the user was deleted.

question closed by Mik

From this Meta question it is clear that Mik's profile is now deleted and hence his name is not linked to his profile.

Return to FAQ

5
  • 2
    Wild guess: If the account VTCs. Then gets deleted. Then the question gets closed.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 0:00
  • When high rep user choose to delete his/her account and got lots of activity, sometimes the team will transfer all his votes to the Community account so they are preserved. It's quite a recent thing, so my guess is that such user voted to close and the close vote was transferred along with upvotes and downvotes. :) Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 0:06
  • That's not quite how it works, @Shadow. See my answer.
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 0:27
  • Do you mind if I hijack this into an faq-proposed question?
    – user206222
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 18:29
  • @Emracool Go ahead :)
    – Aditya
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 19:36

1 Answer 1

19

Mysticial got it right: even though the question was just closed, the vote was cast over a year ago. Close votes are not deleted when the user who cast them is - instead, ownership is given to the Community user.

When a question is closed, the names of the voters who closed it are recorded in the post history. So questions closed after some voters have had their accounts removed will credit Community, while questions closed before voters have their accounts removed will attribute the original voters. This is the difference between the two examples you list.

Update 9th March 2015:

From now on, it may also appear that Community has voted to close a question as a duplicate to another. More information can be found here; rolling over the Community name will bring a tooltip saying that the OP agreed his/her question is a dupe.

12
  • 3
    If two or more closevoters get deleted before the question is closed, will Community be able to vote twice? Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 1:27
  • yes, @cheapeffectivedietpills
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 2:52
  • 2
    It is extremely complicated and most of it went over my head... Can you please clarify the 3rd and 4th paragraphs... Initially you mentioned that it was a Close-"vote" (and was cast before June 2013); but in 4th para you mention it as "vote-flag"... What was it - a vote or a flag. And are these flags treated differently than the "votes" cast before June 2013. I am completely confused..
    – Aditya
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 13:28
  • See edit, @Aditya.
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 17:23
  • @Shog9: You cheated there :-) ... I was asking you to clarify things and you removed all those confusing parts instead of clarifying... I had obviously understood the part that "User votes >> Question Closed >> User Removed >> results in name of user shown but not linked" and "User votes >> User Removed >> Question Closed >> results in shown as Community ♦ voted to close"... :)
    – Aditya
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 19:35
  • Complicated parts are complicated, @Aditya - if you're interested, ask a separate question and I'll try to elaborate.
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 19:39
  • Okay... Give me some time and I would try to ask a proper and hopefully sane and sensible question :)
    – Aditya
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 19:41
  • Very neat, I shouldn't have doubted what the person who wrote the highest voted answer in the history of Stack Overflow said. ;) Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 21:16
  • Wait... shouldn't close votes age away over time? If so, was there a bug? Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 21:17
  • Rules for close vote aging, @Shadow
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 21:44
  • consider editing to reflect recent change when Community additionally started closing as approval for asker's decision on dupe close
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 11:31
  • 1
    @gnat I suggested an edit just before you said that! meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/38516 Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 11:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .