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As a moderator on a site, I closed a question as duplicate of another question asked by the same user. It happened that the question was using a tag for which I have a gold tag badge. Since the user who asked the question has the same gold tag badge, the user was able to unilaterally re-open the question.

Is this working as expected? Should not a question closed by a moderator require another moderator, or more users to re-open?

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If someone else has a gold tag badge that works for that question, they can always override your duplicate decision with the click of a button, whether you also had the badge or not and regardless of your status as a moderator. That's what they're trusted to do - single-handedly close and/or reopen a question using that tag.

However, as a moderator, you do still have slightly more power than they do. You have the ability to close the question again if you truly feel the need to do so. As a regular user though, they are still limited to only casting one reopen vote in the lifetime of that question. They wouldn't be able to reopen it on their own again. The dupehammer may be a useful and powerful tool, but you can only wield it once per question (well, twice since technically you could use it for both a close and a reopen).

As far as a user being able to use the dupehammer on their own question, it has been discussed before but it's not seen as a pressing problem at the moment.

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  • I was more worried about users re-opening questions that are really duplicates. I thought that the dupehammer would allow to re-open the same question more than once.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 16:40
  • This is a helpful explanation, but I don't think the actual behavior is a good design choice. If I use a close vote as a moderator, whether or not it's a dupe vote, I do so sparingly and intend for it to "stick."
    – elixenide
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 22:11
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    @EdCottrell Normal users have always had the possibility of re-opening questions closed from moderators. That's different from what happens with questions locked by moderators. What I saw was not something I expected, but thinking more, if dupehammer is implemented to quickly close questions that are duplicates, it makes sense to use it also to quickly re-open questions. A moderator closing it should not make any difference. Then, moderators can close the same question more than once: that is something normal users cannot do.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Feb 2, 2017 at 16:05

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