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I used to have 24 votes per day for closing questions. Today I noticed that the number of votes was 50. True, this morning there was a bunch of questions (16) to be reviewed, but otherwise I saw no other difference. What happened?

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    $\begingroup$ I believe that your flag weight + no. of flags increase with your reputation + number of flags submitted. So could be the same for close votes? $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    May 29, 2014 at 8:13
  • $\begingroup$ I thought something like that, but my reputation is a bit over 4K since a long time, and the number of close vote I casted is high (~900) but not yet at the magical threshold of 1000. This is why I was puzzled. $\endgroup$
    – mau
    May 29, 2014 at 8:17
  • $\begingroup$ I wanted to compare, as I have a touch more reputation but have done fewer reviews, but cannot find out how many votes I can cast per day. Is it written anywhere, or do I just have to reach my limit? $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    May 29, 2014 at 8:29
  • $\begingroup$ when you are browsing close votes, you should notice a number (white on red background) on the very bottom. $\endgroup$
    – mau
    May 29, 2014 at 9:22
  • $\begingroup$ I see no such number! Do you mean when you are looking at a post that you are about to decide on? $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    May 29, 2014 at 9:45
  • $\begingroup$ @user1729: Vote to close this thread, you will see in the closure dialog, on the bottom right corner a number of votes you have left for today. I also have 50 now, so it can't be affected by reputation and flag weight. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    May 29, 2014 at 10:54
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf Gotcha! I only have 24 here, but yeah it looks like I have 50 on main. $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    May 29, 2014 at 11:06
  • $\begingroup$ so the Power That Can decided to raise the number of possible close votes on main math.SE? $\endgroup$
    – mau
    May 29, 2014 at 11:45
  • $\begingroup$ It was always (or since a long time) fifty on SO. Maybe they up-ed it here as the site grows. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    May 29, 2014 at 11:49

1 Answer 1

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Several days ago, someone complained on Meta.SuperUser about the review limit of 20 per day. Shog9 declined to increase that limit, but did something else:

There's one other problem: y'all get 20 reviews, and only 24 votes - so if you review 20 posts and all 20 should be closed, that only leaves 4 votes for new questions that you encounter on the site. That paltry surplus leaves some of you in the position of having to ration your votes - not a good way to encourage folks to review (unless you wait until just prior to the new day). So I'm raising the number of close votes per person here to 50 per day.

Apparently, the limit went up here as well, for the same reason.

Which raises two issues:

  1. Why haven't we been told? Who are we to you, Shog9? I thought we had something...
  2. The risk of repetitive strain injury from navigating the dialogues is very real.

To alleviate the latter, I wrote bookmarklets for two common close reasons: Unclear what you are asking and Missing context. Drag one or both to the bookmark bar, and you'll be able to vote with one click, either from the question page, or from review queues (Close, Low Quality, and First Posts).

Edit: I did not expect this to work in the Close review queue, but it does. Turns out, there is an invisible "close" link under the question there, which the user cannot click but the script can.


Should anyone want to modify the bookmarklets, the un-compressed code is below.

Unclear:

document.querySelector('.close-question-link').click();
window.setTimeout(selectReason, 200);    
function selectReason() {
  b = document.querySelectorAll('.action-list');
  if (b.length>0) {
    b[0].children[2].children[0].children[0].click();
    window.setTimeout(submitButton, 200);
  }
  else {
    window.setTimeout(selectReason, 200);
  }
}
function submitButton() {
  document.querySelector('.popup-submit').click();
}

Missing context:

document.querySelector('.close-question-link').click();
window.setTimeout(selectReason, 200);    
function selectReason() {
  b = document.querySelectorAll('.action-list');
  if (b.length>1) {
    b[0].children[1].children[0].children[0].click();
    b[1].children[1].children[0].children[0].click();
    window.setTimeout(submitButton, 200);
  }
  else {
    window.setTimeout(selectReason, 200);
  }
}
function submitButton() {
  document.querySelector('.popup-submit').click();
}
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    $\begingroup$ You're correct - I looked at a few stats for various sites on the network & realized that SU & Math both fell into the same boat: lots and lots of incoming questions, relatively small number of folks with close vote powers (AU and of course SO also fell into this category, but have had 50 votes/day for a while). I went looking for a feature-request here and came up empty. Disappointed, I concluded that folks here just never use all their votes and walked away. $\endgroup$
    – Shog9
    May 29, 2014 at 15:13
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    $\begingroup$ @Shog9 This poor design decision will may well be the last nail in the coffin for MSE. The random closures and downvotes have already driven away many of our most knowledgeable folks. And now they will only increase with the hgher limits. The mind boggles... Good thing there are other math sites in the works. $\endgroup$ May 29, 2014 at 17:46
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    $\begingroup$ @Shog9 Thank you — I've ran out of close votes many times $\endgroup$
    – Grigory M
    May 29, 2014 at 18:06
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    $\begingroup$ @BillDubuque: what's the problem with the closures? (Better, what kind of random closures happened?) I can only think at problems with downvotes. $\endgroup$
    – mau
    May 29, 2014 at 20:15
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    $\begingroup$ @BillDubuque Can you give any examples where "The random closures and downvotes have already driven away many of our most knowledgeable folks."? Most high-rep people who have left MSE did not announce why. $\endgroup$ May 29, 2014 at 21:18
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    $\begingroup$ @BillDubuque And I would conjecture that the constant stream of effortless homework questions has driven away just as many knowledgeable contributors. But considering that rather few people have publicly stated why they're departing, this (and your comment) seem to just be conjecture. $\endgroup$
    – user61527
    May 29, 2014 at 22:52
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelGreinecker It is not conjecture, and anyone who has followed these matters could easily ascertain the facts. $\endgroup$ May 29, 2014 at 23:19
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    $\begingroup$ @user61527 The correct way to fix that problem is to provide more powerful filtering tools so that users can see only the types of questions that they like, not to allow users to globally force their personal proferences on the entire community. $\endgroup$ May 30, 2014 at 12:53
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    $\begingroup$ @BillDubuque I really don't see the problem of increasing the limits of close-votes. down-votes are anonymous while close-votes aren't. This automatically limit the extent of misuses on close-votes. $\endgroup$ May 30, 2014 at 13:40

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