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I just voted to close a question because it was basically a duplicate of the same person's previous question. Looking at it a short while later I noted that my close vote (and possibly that of others) had seemingly disappeared (no vote count displayed after the "close" link).

Naturally I was puzzled at first and thought a mod might perhaps have cleared all close votes on that question for some reason, but that seemed very strange. Subsequently I noted that the poster had deleted and then undeleted the question less than 10 secs. later.

Does this allow people an easy way to clear all close flags on their question? Since people who have already voted can't do so again because those details are apparently not reset as well, how does this make sense?

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    meta.stackexchange.com/questions/168077/…
    – random Mod
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 14:38
  • @random: Interesting, but not the same. In that case the original question (which the newer one was voted as a dupe of) was deleted, so the close-as-dupe votes on the latter were naturally removed by the system because they no longer made sense. In this case neither of the two questions have been deleted. Just that the newer one itself was deleted and undeleted, and that apparently made all close votes on it magically disappear. If you can confirm then this appears to be a bug that ought to be fixed.
    – Karan
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 14:50
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    Link the question
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 18:56
  • @Sathya: It's this one, although looks like the poster has again deleted it. If you look at the revision history you'll see how it was previously deleted and then undeleted within 10s, and this cleared my close vote. Shouldn't be too hard to test too. Just have any question voted to be closed (by non-mods of course) up to 4 times, then as the asker delete and undelete. If the votes disappear then that looks like a bug to me.
    – Karan
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 7:56
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    The timeline does indicate that the close vote was cleared when the question was self deleted superuser.com/admin/posts/timeline/925680#closure_402405
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 12:52
  • @Sathya: Naturally I can't access that link. Still, now that you've confirmed it isn't this a bug in your opinion? Doesn't it mean anyone can get rid of all close votes on their question simply by self deleting and then undeleting?
    – Karan
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 12:54
  • @Karan i thought the bug tag on the question would mean something...
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 12:57
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    @Sathya: Ah, I just read your comment and didn't notice you'd edited the tags too. Thanks, hopefully this gets fixed soon. BTW do you guys let the SE devs know or does this need to be posted on meta.SE to draw their attention?
    – Karan
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 12:59
  • @Karan the devs monitor all Meta sites, not needed to post on Meta.SE
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 13:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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For the moment, this is intended behaviour. Well, not so much directly intended, but... it's a pretty small loophole/edge case. For the time being (the past year and beyond :)), I'd say that if you see someone abusing self-deletion like that, flag the post for a moderator to look over. They can either close the post or reprimand the user, as appropriate.

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  • Hey, finally an answer after a year! :)
    – Karan
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 3:05

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