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Someone has been voting to close a ton of old questions in the past couple days. The review queue jumped from about 40 (for me) to over 100.

I don't disagree with whoever (*cough* noob *cough*) is casting the first vote - so far every question I've looked at I've also voted to close - but I worry that it's counter-productive to load up the queue with so many old questions at once. Since there are very few people (other than *ahem* me) who do the maximum 20 reviews per day, I think the close votes might age away before enough people get to them.

Also, I feel like older bad questions are less of a problem... if they've been sitting around stinking up the place for a few years already, I don't think having them open a while longer will matter.

OTOH, if people do want to get them closed quickly, you can do what I sometimes do: while reviewing, click through to the actual questions and vote to close it there. That won't count as one of your 20 reviews per day.

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  • 2
    Close queue is at 195 right now, FWIW. So yes, as has been the case for quite a while, there are not enough active members of the community to process the close review queue.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 7:59
  • 8
    If all the close votes you've seen are legitimate, why do you call him a noob? Don't discourage active participation. The problem is not the guy who creates dozens of close votes. The problem is that there are not enough people to look through the votes. But that is not something that person is responsible of. Maybe the problem is also that he is technically able to create so many close votes. But that is not his fault, either.
    – Daniel
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 9:39
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    @Daniel It's me. Ward's not saying that some noob is doing it, Ward is referring to me with the last half of my nick.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 10:51
  • 3
    Oh, I see! Still, I think no one should be blamed for trying to improve Serverfault. Not even you 😜
    – Daniel
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 11:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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(cough noob cough)

Oh, that jerk... yeah, he sucks. But, at the same time, 50 close votes a day... use 'em or lose 'em. If they age out, they can be re-cast, so worst case, "losing" a close vote to aging is really no different than losing it to not spending before the end of the UTC day.

And to be fair, with over 800 open questions with the string "cPanel" in them somewhere (for example), the vast majority of which are pretty old, stumbling across old garbage that needs hit with that first close and/or downvotes is hard to avoid.

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  • "...they can be re-cast,..." I'm pretty sure that's not the case. If you've voted to close and your vote ages out, you can't vote to close again.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 14:58
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    @Ward Old rules. They've been updated. I'd like to take a moment to address some of the concerns raised regarding the second portion of this change: the ability to re-submit questions for close review [...] If you feel strongly enough about a question to keep burning your votes on it, so be it.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 15:07
-1

You do not need to do the entire review queue yourself! Even if someday you are miraculously elected moderator!

If the initial close votes were cast in error, it would be another story, but I'm not sure this pattern actually prevents anything from being done, and it's work that needs doing.

I hope that noob is also going through the close vote review queue on at least as regular a basis as he trolls for old bad questions.

It's too bad that some votes are ageing off. Perhaps we need moderator help to slam some things shut.

As always, don't cast initial close votes on things that are basic but entirely reasonable:

Casting the first vote on cpanel garbage that we have community consensus is clearly off topic is not a problem, but rather a service.

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  • Yeah, I burn my remaining close votes in the close queue. All 2 of them. :)
    – Desperatuss0ccus
    Commented Mar 3, 2016 at 2:25
  • trolls => trawls, if that's what you meant.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Mar 3, 2016 at 9:34
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    @DeerHunter I'm a very talented guy. I can troll and trawl at the same time.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Mar 3, 2016 at 20:41
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    Why should one not cast the first close vote on the question you've linked to? It's one that a little elementary research would have answered, which to my mind makes it OT; I'm only grateful that JennyD got there before I did. I'd certainly rather see questions like that one closed than some fairly-harmless five-year-old cpanel relic with an accepted answer, that's not likely to come back from the grave and hurt anyone.
    – MadHatter
    Commented Mar 3, 2016 at 20:41
  • The asker has to Google for the answer somewhere, and why not let that somewhere be here?
    – Falcon Momot
    Commented Mar 3, 2016 at 21:06
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    I think the community view around these parts is pretty clearly that we expect people to do their homework - which almost always includes web searches - before posting here. I really, really don't want SF to becomes the first port of call for everyone with a problem that can easily be sorted with JFGI, and I won't be staying around if it does.
    – MadHatter
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 10:23
  • This is fine. Close duplicates! We do not need to expunge useful answered on-topic questions only because the answer exists elsewhere too.
    – Falcon Momot
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 10:31

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