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When voting to close as a duplicate or as off-topic, there is a separate set of options. If you have already voted, you cannot see what those options are anymore. This makes reevaluating your close votes impossible to do. If you don't remember what you voted for at the time, there isn't even an indicator on what you voted.

If voting to close as a duplicate, sure a comment is automatically added but it's a comment, it can be deleted. Other people might agree with the duplicate votes or select a completely different question. It's impossible to view the vote counts on each option.

The questions and vote counts should be accessible in this dialog after you have voted.

voted as duplicate

Likewise, when voting to close as off-topic, it's impossible to see if there is a consensus on the voting. You can't see what reasons people voted for as off topic, not even your own.

We should be able to at least look at the off-topic reasons and see the vote counts.

voted as off-topic

And finally, it should be made obvious which reason you voted if you voted. Right now, it's impossible to tell.

There should be a clear indicator on what reason I voted to close.

what did I vote for?

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  • I was typing up the same feature request and found this. Would love to see this happen, it's always bothered me.
    – Jason C
    Mar 30, 2017 at 17:31

2 Answers 2

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Keep in mind that I might want to look at this information more than a few hours after voting to close. I'm not that young anymore - I may not remember which category I voted to close as, or which question I voted to close as a duplicate of.

I would favor this request, as it would largely involve reuse of the existing dialogs, just with the inputs in a "disabled" or "read-only" state.

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  • But existing dialogues, "easily reused or not" are for flagging and voting, not historical info. Isn't this just mixing things up for no logical reason? How many people go back there to see what they did vote? I'm sure most users will just move on.
    – James
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:24
  • @James: if everyone "just moved on", then this question wouldn't be here. Clearly, some of us, at least some times, want to look backwards.
    – John Saunders
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:27
  • "most users" is not "everyone".
    – James
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:28
  • @James: Oh there's plenty of people who go back. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91449/…
    – Jeff Mercado
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:29
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    @James: why only implement features which are useful to "everyone"? Why not implement features that are useful to "some of us"? The reason would be time, expense, etc. But we've already got the dialogs, and we've already got an example of how to take one of the existing dialogs and make a read-only version. Doesn't seem too hard to add the feature.
    – John Saunders
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:30
  • @JeffMercado Not sure why that linked post is relevant.
    – James
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:31
  • @JohnSaunders I personally have no issue at all with providing to the "minority" (although Stack might). I have an issue providing to maybe a few hundred out of millions when there are more useful things on todo lists. I also think the historical would be better suited with the rest of history - in our profiles. And leave "flag" dialogues for that specific function - flagging. But, each to their own, you are as free to battle for this as I am to state why I don't think it's worthwhile :)
    – James
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:35
  • @James: The point is, people do go back to posts they voted on, many of them are long time users of Stack Overflow. We should be encouraging better voting habits within reason. Changes like this makes it possible for people to go and reevaluate their votes. We shouldn't cut that off completely, especially when the dialogs are already there.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Jun 26, 2015 at 17:36
  • @JeffMercado Your want for site improvement is admirable, but this proposed functionality will not make people better reviewers. People who are bad will not care or even know this exists. Those who will, like yourself, will be good reviewers anyway because you consider your actions in the first place. I won't argue further, as we can clearly see our different opinions :)
    – James
    Jun 26, 2015 at 18:06
  • Bad memory or no, there are also situations where you want to verify that you really clicked what you thought you clicked - cat on keyboard and other distractions, and occasionally the odd comment asking if you are sure.
    – tripleee
    Aug 13 at 7:24
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I discovered recently that it's possible to use keyboard shortcuts to view what other sub-reasons (duplicate targets and specific community-specific reasons) that others have voted for.

Essentially, when you've already voted to close a question, the close dialog marks the radio buttons to choose a reason as disabled, which prevents users from using the mouse to select an option in the close dialog if they've already cast a close vote. However, there is no check for disabled radio buttons when using keyboard shortcuts to open the dialog and select a close reason, and the JS that implements the shortcuts will select the button even if it is disabled, enabling you to see sub-reasons.

This means that as long as you have keyboard shortcuts enabled in your profile settings, you can press M (moderation options) -> C (open close dialog) -> 1 (to see duplicate targets) or 2 (to see specific community-specific reasons). Note that this only works if you have closing privileges.

This doesn't address the other issue you've pointed out, in that you can't see which reason or sub-reason you've voted for, but as pointed out here, you can hover over the Close button to see which top-level reason (not sub-reason) you've voted for.

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