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Now that we have a great UI for allowing people to close their own questions as duplicates, I think we should be able to offer that UI to people even if we are out of close votes.

Proposal: if out of close votes, if you click close, allow the user to choose the "duplicate" close reason. This will present the UI for users to close their own question unilaterally with the Community user.

Obviously, to prevent abuse, there would need to be some throttling on putting banners up for users. Perhaps, doing this would cost a flag?

What it should not do, of course, is actually put a close vote on the question. The question about whether this would put such questions in to the CV queue is one for a separate debate that we do not need to have in this question again

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  • The second bullet point there is key. While 'flag for close when out of close votes' is a classic "status-declined", this has changed with the changes to the self-close duplicates which can act on flags (which is unique to duplicates). Without a way for 3k+ users (who may be out of close votes at the time), part of the expediency of self closing a duplicate (and avoiding excess duplicate answers) is lost.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 20:43
  • 1
    I'm not sure If the unrestricted nature of that proposal will get the support of SE. Maybe you can add such an restriction by coupling it with the number of flags you have left? To prevent that it gets abused beyond daily limits.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 20:43
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    I don't support giving users unrestricted ability to put up distracting banners for question askers, anytime they wish.
    – user259867
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 20:45
  • I don't think this is necessary. In order to show it is worth the power increase, you somehow need to show that the community as a whole is unable to close questions that should be marked as duplicates. The sites generally have enough users to close questions; if a question truly needs to be closed as a duplicate, somebody will see it and close it, and if that somebody can't be you, then it will be somebody else. If your main interest is in helping the OP obtain an answer, and you find a duplicate, post the link in a comment. The OP will hopefully see it and best case somebody else marks dupe.
    – Jason C
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 20:53
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    @JasonC "unable" is a bit extreme. "Could use assistance" is certainly the case; duplicate cvs age away all the time.
    – durron597
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 20:55
  • @durron597 what site is this you are having difficulty on?
    – Tim
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:00
  • @durron597 Are the questions that they age off of truly duplicates? Also, re: aging, are you commenting on the fact that the UI is relatively new but the aged votes are old? The new UI has been around for about 40 days now. There are no CVs left aging that were originally cast before the UI was implemented, so nobody missed out on any of the recent "age away all the time" posts, if that's what you're getting at.
    – Jason C
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:03
  • @Tim it isn't uncommon on the smaller sites (~30 questions / day) to have a smaller pool of reviewers who can occasionally run out of close votes. And then you're sitting around waiting for a few hours for either votes to refresh or for someone else to cast a vote, or even to get a 50 rep user to cast a flag (and active <3k flaggers can have 100 flags - they can do 100 dup flags a day!)... while you sit there with your 25 votes that have been used up already.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:04
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    @MichaelT If smaller site communities are hitting their limits perhaps a more direct approach (after verifying this to be true) is to request the raising of normal vote limits on certain smaller sites, rather than providing an unlimited number of duplicate ... "baby" votes (or whatever you want to call these) network wide.
    – Jason C
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:06
  • @JasonC Be careful of the specious line of reasoning, "If the question's CVs expired, then they are not problematic and don't need closing". This was the justification behind CV aging to begin with, unfortunately, and it's faulty logic. We have many questions that are difficult to close because, frankly, users with CV powers "CBA"d to use them.
    – TylerH
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:15
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    @JasonC Raising the close vote count, while one of the ideals, isn't a viable long term solution. The key point of this proposal is that duplicates now have a different path through the process - they can get the "yes, that fixed it, OP community dup hammer proxy." And that works for close votes too. What this proposal is asking is a way to get a flag (because it works for flags from <3k users) for a 3k+ user into that flow. If the OP doesn't act on it - sure, we'll wait another few hours. But if it does fix it now, waiting a few hours for that means we get duplicate answers scattered.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:19
  • @MichaelT It seems to have a little more merit when you put it that way and frame it in terms of flags. I can't escape feeling like there's a more fundamental issue, but I can't put my finger on it.
    – Jason C
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 21:45
  • @JasonC Close votes were a 'pure' thing back long ago. With flags to close vote queue, things started getting a bit more complicated. Now we've got dup hammers for gold badge, community proxy dup hammer for the OP, migrations, custom reasons, etc. Much more has been added to the process without looking at readdressing how things flow - this may be the fundamental issue you feel is there. However, there is a problem - "out of close votes, have 100 flags, can't help the OP close the question as a duplicate". This is a band aid on that problem. It becomes a question "will this help?"
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 22:05

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