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Since May 2014 users having the gold badge for a specific tag have been able to close questions as duplicates with a single close vote - the dupehammer.
Back then, when asked if that feature would be extended to close a question not only as duplicate but for all close reasons, a community manager said that more data would have to be collected to see how this new feature would work out.
Now, almost a year later I'd like to hear if the dupehammer will be extended?
The reason I was able to get it implemented (a lot of thinking internally was that the idea was completely crazypants) is that you have to have a plausible duplicate in order to use it. Folks can't go around just closing everything they don't like. That's a measure of power that the community must trust you with quite deliberately, as in through you winning a moderator election.
On the other hand, the hammer has been used quite judiciously, proving my assertion that most people that could use it are pretty sane and generally helpful folks.
To be considered, this would need to be much, much, much more narrowly-scoped. E.g: (This is just a brain dump, you might not need some of these, you might think of different things - just my ideas on it):
IOW - make it hard to do terribad things with the hammer if this is implemented.
The third item scares me, because I know people in chat that would totally abuse this. We're finally able to at least see the goal of closing less while editing more, and I'm afraid this would be a huge step backwards in that process. At the same time, if you want to clean up even more litter, I'm damn well going to try to find a broom that fits.
I'll take it, and try to push it through if the possible abuse cases can be sufficiently addressed in a way that doesn't horribly complicate the implementation.
