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I just voted to close this question because it's off-topic for Ask Different. There were two pending close votes with one of the canned reasons we use: "Questions about software development are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow." but since this is not a software development question, I decided to go with the custom off-topic reason entered by @Tetsujin: "I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it does not appear to be about Apple hardware or software within the scope defined in the help centre.".

As a ♦ moderator, my close vote is binding, and I'd expect the reason I choose to end up in the banner; this would have happened if I had closed is as "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking". However, this is not the case:

enter image description here

This happens because the system internally treats votes for custom comment off-topic reasons as off-topic with no canned reason specified, and as at least two voters specified a canned reason, that's the one that gets shown in the notice.

Can the logic be adjusted that in this case, the 'default' reason is shown in the banner instead? I.e.

  • This question does not appear to be about Apple hardware or software within the scope defined in the help center.

This already happens when at least four users use the same custom off-topic reason.

The same issue happens when two regular close voters use a canned reason and three the same custom reason; as there are at least two votes for a canned reason, it's shown instead of the generic reason.

This is more relevant now that with the new post notices, the specific users who voted for specific sub-reasons are no longer shown, so unlike the previous notice which would only show the two users who voted for the canned reason, the current notice doesn't show the fact that only those two users voted for that reason.

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  • As a moderator, you can just reopen the question, then close it with whatever reason you choose.
    – Makyen
    Jan 3, 2021 at 23:52
  • @Makyen This question also covers the case where a majority of users choose a custom reason: as my answer in the third link says, the two canned reason votes will override the three custom reason votes. In that case, as none of the involved users are moderators, they'd have to all vote to reopen, then get other users to vote to close (as they can only vote once).
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    May 20, 2021 at 19:12

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Just reopen the question and then re-close it with the "correct" close reason. As you said, your vote is binding, so you don't need anyone else to help you with this.

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    Yeah, I realized that's a workaround (but I didn't want to spoil the example). If, as mentioned, the same issue would happen when two regular close voters use a canned reason and three the same custom reason, it's not an option in that case.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 13, 2019 at 14:17
  • The question has been edited to address the case where a majority of regular users vote for a custom reason, not a moderator.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 13, 2019 at 16:21
  • ... but I'm not sure if it happens in that case as well, I just expect it to. It shouldn't be too hard to find a suitable example in SEDE...
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 13, 2019 at 16:34
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    @Glorfindel It does happen in that case; I've tested it out.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 13, 2019 at 22:42
  • right, thanks for testing!
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 14, 2019 at 6:26

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