I tried to close a question as a duplicate today, and I got the following error message:
This question does not have an upvoted or accepted answer
In theory, there is nothing unusual here; this is a standard error that non-moderators get when trying to close questions that don't have an upvoted or accepted answer.
However, if you view the actual question, you can see that it most certainly does have an upvoted answer (with a score of +5 at the time of this writing). Why, then, does the system insist that there is no upvoted answer?
Possible factors to be aware of:
- The question is my own
- The question has a negative score
- The question has a self-answer with a negative score
- The issue persists whether I try to close as a gold tag badge holder, as a regular voter, or as a recommend closure flagger
- The upvoted answer was originally to a different question, which was later merged into the linked question
But I'm not sure why any of these factors would be relevant.
Additionally, (since it was my question) I just temporarily accepted an answer and was then able to use it for a duplicate. This worked whether I accepted my own answer (negative score) or the other answer (positive score).
What is going on here?
(I am aware of this question, but the answer from a (then) Community Manager states that this was a one-time issue with some code.)