Gold badge duplicate close and reopen vote invalidates existing votes

Question

I know this is how things should work now, and maybe not that much of a priority, but I wonder if there is an easy solution to this.

On a question (now deleted by its author), I voted to close as 'Unclear what you are asking'. Second, a gold tag badge holder voted to close as duplicate and instantly reopened again (obviously because he saw the duplicate didn't match the question):

In the process, all existing close votes were removed (in this case only mine, but potentially four).

What are your thoughts on this? Is this intended, and should this be kept this way, or should we preserve votes when a single user closes and reopens (like retracting does now)?

As clarification: this is NOT a feature request, it is an analysis of a situation that causes me to question what happened and I wonder if and, if so, what to do about it.

Answer 1

My thoughts about it:

Is this intentional?

Yes, kind of. The dupehammer gives the user power of a moderator, who can use this to clear pending close votes. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

It is a big problem?

Not really, for the same reasons described here, in short because the user is already trustworthy plus those actions can be easily seen in the Revisions, and Reopening a question bumps it up the Active Questions list, making it easy to catch.

Can it be misused?

Yes, a user who was never elected as moderator can cancel decision made by other four high rep users with a single vote. For example four high rep users decide a question is off topic because [reasons here], but the dupehammer bearer disagrees. Instead of waiting until it gets the last vote and casting ordinary reopen vote, he/she use the power of the hammer to simply clear those votes.

How to prevent this from being misused?

If a question got more than two non-duplicate close votes, duplicate close vote will not be binding even if coming from a gold badge user.

Answer 2

This is no different than a mod-closure. If the question gets closed all pending close votes are consumed. A tag-badge closer is really just a highly-localized moderator in this case (duplicates only, in specific tags only). For that matter, it's the same as a community closure -- but with the reopen requiring more people, which seems to be part of your point here.

In all closures, reasons that aren't the one that ultimately "won" get lost along the way along with their votes. If two people vote "too broad" and three vote "unclear", "unclear" wins and the "too broad" reason drops out. The votes contributed to the closure, but not for that reason.

Yes it's frustrating -- once you've voted to close a question you can never, ever vote to close it again, no matter what happens to it in the meantime, so if you voted to close and it got reopened (perhaps with edits you deem insufficient to fix the problem), there's nothing you can do directly. This is true no matter how the question got closed or what specific votes were cast.

Perhaps what you are looking for is an "oops" button -- I'm a mod or badge-holder and just unilaterally closed that and then realized I shouldn't have. This would mean retracting a close vote that has already taken effect. This would add complexity to the interface and confuse some people, so I doubt it would be considered without more evidence that this is a problem, but that's the approach I would take if I wanted to pursue a change here.

Alternatively, if the problem is that your vote is locked once consumed, attack that aspect (applying it to all closures). I expect that this has come up on MSE before.

Finally, remember that if you can't recast your own close vote, you still have meta and chat as tools to encourage others to vote.

Answer 3

I am going to throw an answer in myself, and see how it is received.

Is this intentional?

No. It isn't.

It is a big problem?

Currently not that much I think. There are not that many gold tag badge holders, and those are considered to be trustworthy (they have a considerable reputation, which gives them quite some power to vote to delete, undelete, etc.)

Can it be misused?

Yes. As pointed out, it can be an easy and effective mechanism to buy yourself some time before you answer, receive quite some upvotes before it is reclosed again. Have I seen this happen? No. But it is possible.

How to prevent this from being misused?

The change to keep the other votes when a gold tag badge holder retracts might be too much for this issue. The solution from Jan Dvorak as comment seems to be the easiest and more controllable solution:

make a hammer-close + hammer-reopen by the same user an auto-flag and have it bear dire consequences.

Answer 4

I don't understand why you'd want that. When a post is closed and reopened, the original votes to close have taken effect, they aren't reapplied.

Scenario 1:

1. Q1 is closed as a duplicate of Q2 by users A, B, C, D and E.
2. Q2 is reopened single-handedly by gold badge holder G.

Scenario 2:

1. Q1 is closed as a duplicate of Q2 by users A, B and G.
2. Q2 is reopened single-handedly by gold badge holder G.

In scenario 1, the gold badge power is used minimally: to reopen a question that was closed as a duplicate. In scenario 2, the gold badge power is used twice. In scenario 1, users A, B, C, D and E cannot vote to close that question again (but G still can). In scenario 2, users C, D, E and G are still free to vote to close the question, only A and B can no longer to it. So in scenario 2, G's reopen action leaves the question more closeable than in scenario 1.

I don't see how it could make sense to add more close votes on the post in scenario 2 than in scenario 1, when altogether fewer people voted to close.