Adding a feature to prevent serial close vote from a particular user

Question

I think in a SE site, someone has picked on me by voting to close all my questions. This has been the case for more than one month. As a result many (not all) of my questions are closed. Flagging a post does not show serial voting and moderators may say anyone has the right to vote. But it seems unfair when someone picks on a user. When first close vote is given in many occasions other reviewers trust the first voter and close the question. This is because, when someone considers a question to find a reason to close it, they will find a justifiable reason in most occasions.

When the specific user sends the first close vote, almost half of the questions are closed. Then when I vote to reopen them, half of the closed questions are reopened. I think the vote of first voter is decisive. btw, it seems frustrating if some user picks on another one to close his questions, which is clearly personal. It is fair if there are different first voters for some user's questions. But if the first voter is the same for all of them over long time, is it normal?

I do want to consider my case. But what Can someone do in a similar situation? When the user sees the the first close voter to all of his questions is the same?

I think there must be a software limitation for serial close voting (as the first close voter to a particular user's questions), so that a particular user can send one or two close vote as the first voter to a specific user over a period of time. Or the first close vote be hidden until a second one is received normally. Or at least there should be a private message system so that one can talk with a moderator about it privately (flaging does not provide a discussion environment). It does not seem fair that someone can send a serial close votes to the same person, In my case every week a specific user opens my questions and sends a close to all of them.

I do not request to consider my case, so it does not help if I say which user did this in my case, I'm requesting to add some software feature which prevents this automatically, as is the case for serial downvotes (which are reversed automatically).

Answer 1

First an foremost you are confusing features and the purpose of those features. Voting and Close-Voting have nothing in common except that voting is part of the name.

• Voting is anonymous and used to reflect a person's opinion on the quality of the question or answer
• Close-voting is semi-public information and used to provide guidance and feedback to the user on the on-topicness of a specific question and how well it conforms to the scope of the site.

The serial voting script exists because of the very nature of voting on the SE sites. Since it is anonymous and based on someone's opinion, no-one (except for a dev who would have to go look in the database itself) can tell who you voted for. It is also impossible for anyone to invalidate votes (with exceptions of a dev who would actually have to modify the database). As a result, an automatic script is necessary to police and self-correct this kind of negative activity since neither moderators or the user community can do it themselves.

Close voting, on the other hand is 100% open and visible to "everyone". While normal users can't see directly who cast as a close vote until the post is closed, this information is actually public and available via DataExplorer. Plus, moderators can see who voted to close questions before they get closed. But the biggest difference is the community has the ability to self-correct misclosed questions. If there is a question that is wrongfully closed, it only takes 5 users to reopen it.

So in short, there is no need for such a script for close votes because the community can self-correct improper close voting. The only reason it is needed for voting (not close voting) is because the community can't undo voting that they feel are wrong, so self-correction is necessary for downvoting (or upvoting) that is contrary to the established rules of Stack Exchange.

Answer 2

Since this feature request resulted because of supposed behaviour on math.SE, I'll try to share some information about the matter as one of the moderators there. This is meant to illustrate how unnecessary this feature is.

At the first stage you have claimed that a particular user has been serially voting to close your questions. In making this claim, you have to first demonstrate that this user is constantly voting to close your questions without regard for their quality. Since you have posted a total of 64 questions on math.SE (53 of which are extant, all deletions being self-deletions), it would take a user just two days to go through and vote to close each and every one of your questions. Since this campaign has been going on for over one month, one would then expect that the vast majority of your questions would have receive a close vote from this one user.

I do find 21 instances of close votes from this user. Of these, 12 questions were eventually closed, 7 didn't (or haven't yet) received the five necessary close votes, and 2 others were deleted by yourself. Far from subsequent reviewers simply following a herd mentality, it appears as though users are making their own decision on these votes. (I will add that of the 12 that were closed, only 2 have been re-opened, though most received reopen votes at some point. Again, this speaks against your implication that the first vote determines future votes.)

While these close votes are mainly clustered on your newest questions, even here there are numerous question that have not received a close vote from anyone, let alone the one user you believe is serially voting to close your questions. This is hardly indicative of serial and malicious behaviour. As such there is great doubt that a feature you envision would prevent the actions of this user, the one case you have brought up as a possible example of behaviour to be stopped.

Also, as others have stated, the system appears to be working as intended. The checks-and-balances of requiring multiple users to close a question is not being overruled by lemmings simply voting as the first user had done. This makes serially voting to close questions unlikely to achieve any real goals. Until a question is closed, the votes themselves don't really do anything. The one thing they do do, placing questions in the appropriate review queue, does not come close to guaranteeing that the question becomes close/put on-hold. (Contrast this to downvotes, which immediately effect the targeted user.)

Even in cases where the question does become closed/put on-hold, this can be undone by other users (and if you have enough reputation, you only need four other users to agree to reopen). And we see that users are employing their reopen votes (albeit probably not to the level that you would desire on your own questions).

With all this in mind, there is little need for extra controls to prevent users from casting close votes (first or otherwise) against questions by another specific user.

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As an aside, your fixation on the actions of this one user can probably be summed up as confirmation bias. But there appears to be a larger group of users trying to tell you that your questions might need improvement.

Answer 3

But what Can someone do in a similar situation? When the user sees the the first close voter to all of his questions is the same?

There's a pretty simple procedure that you should follow in this scenario:

1. Fix your questions. By editing them. Most close reasons have some guidance associated with them that should enable you to correct whatever problems led them to be closed. While not all questions can be made appropriate, many require only a little bit of input or adjustment in order to be acceptable. You may also find useful information in the comments under your questions - make use of this when editing.

2. In case you skipped Step #1, go back and do Step #1. It's super-important.

3. Everything shiny? Good. Now, use what you've learned fixing your past questions to ask a new question, making sure that it doesn't suffer from the deficiencies of your past questions.

4. Is your new question still getting close votes? Even though there's nothing wrong with it? You did make sure there's nothing wrong with it, right? You didn't, say, ignore steps #1 and #2? Ok - then now you can flag your question for moderator attention and politely ask them to make sure no one is singling you out for personal reasons.

5. Go to Step #3.

You'll note that most of these steps have nothing to do with what other people are doing. That's because most of the time, there's nothing anyone but you can do - either to cause or to correct this situation. Just voting to close your questions won't have much of an effect unless multiple other people also agree that your questions are problematic - so the best way to make sure your questions can't be "serially closed" is for you to make sure your questions aren't problematic.

In very, very rare cases, someone will try to abuse close votes or flags to harass someone whose posts aren't problematic, usually without actually causing any harm. If the moderators find out about this - and they can, close votes aren't terribly private - then they'll likely face some repercussions.

Answer 4

The only way seems to be deleting the account and re-enter with an new user account so that the specific user does not know you. I hope there is a better way be added in the se software for solving such problems.