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The Community user serves many purposes on Stack Exchange, some of which are surprising when first encountered. Could Community's profile be made to list its functions explicitly so that if a user, say, wonders how Community ended up voting to close a question as a duplicate, a search though old meta posts isn't needed to find the answer?

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  • It already does exactly that...
    – Servy
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:26
  • I'm looking for an explicit list, not an implicit handwaving list. E.g. "I do these things" instead of "I do things like".
    – Kyle Jones
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:33
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    @Servy There is no mention of duplicate-closing, nor a link to documentation on how it happens.
    – user259867
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:37
  • Related
    – Fish Below the Ice
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:39
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    The profile should probably just point to this answer.
    – Fish Below the Ice
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:40
  • @FishBelowtheIce although that doesn't mention OP dupe closure.
    – Tim
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:43
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    Ah, but that's easily rectified by the community here, while updating the Community User profile requires intervention by Stack Exchange employees.
    – Fish Below the Ice
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 19:00

1 Answer 1

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I suggest, instead, that the profile be simply updated to add a link to this Meta Stack Exchange answer.

That answer (especially since it's Community Wiki) can be easily updated and vetted by the members of the community. Changing the profile of Community ♦ requires the intervention of a Stack Exchange employee.

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    Employees are the people changing the code that changes Community's behavior, so changing the profile isn't much extra work, especially since new text can likely be paraphrased from a code commit message someone already wrote. Normal SE users don't see those changes as they happen; we only notice them later.
    – Kyle Jones
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 19:59
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    if the profile was kept up to date by the people who changed the code, then we wouldn't be dealing with the current situation, where the profile is out of date. I think that is good evidence for the need to either remind someone to update it (as the question did) or use a little indirection to point from the profile to something more people can keep up to date, as this answer does.
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 20:55

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