TL;DR:
There is a really annoying usability problem with the AJAX loading of duplicate question content that makes user interface elements unnecessarily shift around.
Current behavior
The current user behavior of voting to close a question as duplicate is as follows:
- Locate the duplicate, copy its link
- Click "Close" on the question
- Click "Exact Duplicate"
- Paste the link
- Wait for the content to be loaded in the background
- Click the "Vote to Close" button (or at least try to click it)
The "problem" with it
Sometimes the AJAX load takes a while. After the content is loaded, the box expands and the "Vote to Close" button moves downwards by an indefinite amount of pixels. That's because it depends on the body size of the duplicate question.
In the way I use it, I don't really have to read the body again. I know it is a duplicate because I already got the link to it. I don't need to read the duplicate's body again because in order to get its link I visit the duplicate's site before.
Now I'm just waiting for the button to become active, and when it does, it suddenly moves away. Somewhere. This is a huge usability problem.
To show a practical example, I simulated a slower network connection and made a screencast:
Proposal
While this may seem like "not a big thing", from a point of user interface design it is unexpected behavior. It obviously would be better to have the button stay in its place, for example here:
This way, I'd know where to click when the button is activated, because it always stays in the same place. Sounds reasonable enough, does it?
If the reason of this inefficiency really is that users should read the dupe's text, introduce a timer or force them to scroll down. Don't make them search the button. Also, if you need five people to vote to close, this minimizes errors. And actually, that's not the point of this feature request.
C
buttons before my links in the duplicate suggestion boxes script I wrote so that it automatically fills in the above window. It would then be a matter of "locate the duplicate, click the C button which automatically votes to close"...