# What is needed to have the right to close a question (as a duplicate) with a single vote?

I've noticed that some questions are closed by a single vote. What's needed to give an user such a privilege?

• Moderators can do that. – GEdgar Jan 21 '15 at 14:37
• @GEdgar Not only! – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 14:38
• You want superpowers? look at the rules in this answer. – achille hui Jan 21 '15 at 14:39
• @achillehui I love to have superpowers! (To be serious, I think some questions need a more specialized perspective to be perceived as duplicates and I'd be happy if I could close them as such; an example is this question which collected three closing votes and stopped.) – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 14:51
• I have added some tags to the question which seemed reasonable to me. Of course, if you disagree or can choose a better set of tags, please, do edit them. – Martin Sleziak Jan 21 '15 at 15:46
• Good luck in your hunt for this privilege! Use it wisely, once you get it. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 21 '15 at 15:52
• I'm not in a hunt for this privilege, just asked. And it's a long way until achieve this, so I'll most probably forget your advise since then. For short, a useless comment. – user26857 Jan 22 '15 at 16:32

A non-moderator user can cast a binding duplicate vote if they have a gold-badge in a tag originally on the question (and the usual criteria for dupe-closure are met). Note that these users are marked on these occassions with the symbol for a gold badge, a yellow circle.

To get a golden tag-badge one must have a total score of 1000 in at least 200 non-community wiki answers with this badge; the score is the number of upvotes (minus down-votes) a post gets. To track one progress one can look at the list of tags on ones user-page.

See posts tagged for earlier discussion.

• Thanks. And how is gained such a gold badge? – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 14:43
• You are welcome. To get a gold tag badge "You must have a total score of 1000 in at least 200 non-community wiki answers to achieve this badge." Note it is score, not points. Generally, you can find descriptions of all badges on math.stackexchange.com/help/badges – quid Jan 21 '15 at 14:45
• Thanks again! (What's the difference between "score" and "points"?) – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 14:54
• "Score" is net-votes (upvotes minus downvotes). Points is $10\cdot \text{upvotes} - 2\cdot \text{downvotes}$, ignoring accepts, @user26857. – Daniel Fischer Jan 21 '15 at 14:56
• @DanielFischer Thanks. (Is my score in the commutative-algebra section equal to 519 as it's written in a small grey box in my profile?) – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 14:59
• @user26857 It was when it was last updated (some time early today [UTC]; it's updated daily), now it may be slightly higher or lower, depending on what votes your non-community-wiki answers in that tag have received since then. If you hover your mouse over the grey box, a tooltip with a breakdown and short explanation of the data shows up. – Daniel Fischer Jan 21 '15 at 15:03
• @DanielFischer Got it! Thanks again! – user26857 Jan 21 '15 at 15:11