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Stats of close vote reviews

This is a screenshot of review stats taken today, but it has been similar for a while (bunch of useless questions I followed ended at 4 close votes), lately in the worst state with stats similar to the screenshot's on various days.

You could ofc blame protests regarding AI and summer, but my observations regarding that are:

  • it has been in poor state even before these, missing 1-2 regular voters
  • some people prefer to vote from within questions and ignore the queues, missing bunch of close votes for older questions or questions where they failed to report the question themselves but someone else brought up a good reason

Here are some examples of older questions that ended at 3-4 close votes while they are still unanswerable or of very poor quality:

etc.

16
  • This stuff is really old. I had myself suspended from Review Queues last November (9 months ago) and I still show up. Old.
    – anon
    Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 21:08
  • 3
    I suspect there's broader motivation and UX problems there. I'll probably try to give it a go once the strike is over though, I've not been hitting the queues for quite a while cause I was prioritising other things ._>
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Jul 28, 2023 at 16:51
  • 2
    Thanks to your meta post, I went to the close votes review queue and used all my 20 votes today. I hope this will help clean up some of the problematic questions.
    – galacticninja
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 4:53
  • 4
    @Tetsujinn why did you edit out one of the facts from my post? I have no idea how you can call that note "contentious" while your recent questions, coincidentally criticizing reviewers, talks about e.g. "Gold Stupidity Badge", which is 100% a rule break and this observation wasn't insultive nor personal Discouraging people from reviews while not reviewing regularly is also an issue, as this site is entirely based on voluntary actions.
    – Destroy666
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 14:57
  • I purposefully don’t visit the close queue because the quality of the contributions are extremely poor and honestly I have probably already voted to close the absolute trash being reviewed. As for the removal of the bullet, that’s clearly an indirect personal attack, against a specific user. I will die on my sword for that observation.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 16:51
  • 3
    @Destroy666 - precisely to avoid this in comments… I see it failed, because you're more interested in 'being right' than fixing the issues.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 17:24
  • 4
    To avoid what in the comments? It's a comment for your edit, which wouldn't have happened if you didn't do it, so that doesn't quite make sense. Also, don't speak for others as to what they're interested in as you can't possibly know that. Else it could be called back as "projecting", but that's also ofc just a theory. If you want to know what I'm interested in, it's stopping contributing here after a half-year experiment, mostly for the same reason as why I haven't used the site a lot before, but that's off-topic here and not related to closed votes queue.
    – Destroy666
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 17:48
  • 2
    All I see is anger rather than logic. I removed a contentious issue… which you are now exposing for how contentious it actually was. This is not your first rodeo. I'm done now.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 18:05
  • If that's what you choose to see... 2nd bullet point could be removed too then because I'm apparently "attacking" people who don't use the queues directly. The only difference is there are more clear examples of that behaviour/workflow. Think whatever you want, I made my point in meta about one of aspects of the site that I think is problematic and ends up with maybe 50-75% of questions that should be closed at 3-4 votes and you didn't persuade me it's not one of the issues.
    – Destroy666
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 18:46
  • 3
    The difference is one is generic, the other we've already fallen out over in rants under another post, which devolved into this need to be right rather than actually dealing with the issue.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 8:58
  • Most users who would vote to close questions, in the close queue, already vote to close the question when they initially see the question (others just answer the question but that’s a different problem).
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 31, 2023 at 12:12
  • 2
    I'm avoiding the queue due to the strike. When SE has decided to respect the community that built it and the mods who made it what it is, I'll return to the queue. I tend to be pretty active in there.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jul 31, 2023 at 14:59
  • 1
    Also @Tetsujin I don't know what's up with you, but you seem to be different from what you were, and I wish for the old you back.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jul 31, 2023 at 15:00
  • @music2myear - I'm still the same old me. Highly opinionated, usually with a wry grin;) I just object to people aiming questions directly at something they already ranted over in a completely unrelated question. See Ramhound's opening comment on here & for backstory, the rant that the bottom half of the comments on meta.superuser.com/questions/15043/… devolved into.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 31, 2023 at 15:06
  • 1
    Perhaps if users with less than 3000 points could participate then it would be clearable. I don't know if that discussion's happened already.
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 15:56

1 Answer 1

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Close Votes has always been problematic. It tends to sit around the 200 mark all the time. It's always been that only a few people ever seem to look at it - possibly because it's a daunting & thankless task.

I periodically have a look - more frequently in recent times - but it can take about 5 minutes per question to grasp the question fully, read all the comments, see if there are existing useful answers that would save its life, so I rapidly run out of steam. There are also a lot of topics covered by Super User that I know very little about, so I do a lot of skipping. Once I've skipped three or four, my enthusiasm is gone, and it goes back to being "somebody else's problem".
It's really always the last task I think of doing when I've exhausted anything else that might amuse me in a day.

The other issue stemming from that is that many questions in the queue are from years ago. Any earlier votes thay had have evaporated over time leaving them in a queue from which they really ought to just be swept into the bin by one ruling vote, but getting another 4 regular votes before those again evaporate just never gets chance to happen.

It becomes its own enemy, a self-reinforcing long queue.

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  • The questions from years ago are freshly reported I'm pretty sure, as like I mentioned in my 2nd bullet point, people report those occassionally and they're missed by people ignoring the queue feature and just close voting from the question lists. Normally close votes seem to expire after around a month
    – Destroy666
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 15:02
  • Or I see the algorithm is actually a bit different with votes getting removed one by one: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120896/… but the effect is more or less the same - 1-2 months and 3-4 close votes are pointless and gone.
    – Destroy666
    Commented Jul 29, 2023 at 15:05

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