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In the old notices, on questions closed as off-topic, the notice would not only indicate all of the close voters who closed the question, but also the specific users who voted for specific canned reasons.

As an example:

closed as off-topic by User1, User2, User3, User4, User5

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

  • "Questions about [foo] are off-topic. Follow [bar] instead." - User2, User3, User5

In the above example, five users voted to close, but only User2, User3, and User5 voted for the specific "questions about [foo]" canned off-topic sub-reason; User1 and User4 voted for different close reasons.

You could also have the following case:

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave these specific reasons:

  • "Questions about [foo] are off-topic. Follow [bar] instead." - User2, User3, User5

  • "This question is [baz], which is off-topic." - User1, User4

This is the same as the first case, except User1 and User4 voted for a different (but same) canned reason. (Provided the winning top-level close reason is off-topic, only two votes are required for a given canned reason to show.)

However, in the new notices, it just shows the canned reason itself and the overall voters, and doesn't show which specific voters voted for which specific canned reasons. As far as I can tell, there is no longer a way to determine that on the site.

Why was this information removed? (I'm not requesting that it be added back here; I just want to know why it was removed. I occasionally found it useful to know in some cases if a specific canned reason, sometimes the sole one on a question, was there as a result of a minority of voters.)

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    In physics SE, as far as I'm aware this was always how the feature worked. You could never see what reason each user chose, just the "top" reason as selected by the system.
    – JMac
    Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 21:50
  • @JohnOmielan Does it list the alternate reason that you've chosen though? I guess I just don't really see a big problem with this change because the wording no longer implies that the voters actually chose those reasons. It says who voted to close but it doesn't even try to directly associate it with the quote.
    – JMac
    Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 22:43
  • @JMac I suggest you read the previous (pre-new notice) version of my post where I list how the system determines which close reason is shown based on the composition of close votes. Specifically, revision 5 of the answer. Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 22:45
  • @JMac Sorry, I misread your comment. As I recall, you're correct that it didn't previously list any alternate reasons. As such, I've deleted my earlier comment. Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 22:47
  • @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I don't recall ever seeing that behaviour on physics SE. Do you have examples of two off-topic reasons being shown?
    – JMac
    Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 22:52
  • @JMac I've been thinking about this some more and, actually, there were a few cases where alternate reasons were given, with the appropriate name(s) attached to them, but I haven't seen any for quite a while. Although the text was somewhat different when it occurred, the basic display was like the second screen shot in this answer from over 4 years ago. I only recall this happening with the off-topic reasons, but not other cases (e.g., different possible duplicate questions chosen by various people). However, I'm not sure about this. Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 23:08

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