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As you can see in the history below, while reviewing a question from Staging Ground, I chose to "Vote as duplicate". Later on, someone else approved that question. Now it's posted and it's just like my duplicate vote never existed.

Staging ground question history

Since the question is a duplicate to me I'd have to flag it as duplicate, again.

Could duplicate votes be automatically converted to a duplicate flag/close vote uppon question publication ?

PS : I guess the same applies to "Vote as off-topic"

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  • 2
    That actually was added during the beta, I don't know why that feature isn't there anymore.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented Jun 10 at 14:01
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    Related, albeit tangentially: when users dupe-hammer a question in SG, it should not leave a comment suggesting the closure target as if the gold badge holder is only 'suggesting' it. I know the feature is there in general "so that people have something to reply to" but in the case of dupe-hammers, askers don't really need to reply...
    – TylerH
    Commented Jun 10 at 14:26
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    Isn't the real problem that somebody approved it although it is a duplicate?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jun 12 at 9:25
  • I would agree if we accept that questions like this can graduate unconditionally. I don't necessarily agree with that at all, so let's take it one step at a time. I don't know what the process should be, but it feels wrong a question which has been flagged like that can graduate as if nothing happened; especially off-topic. Given that the usual minimum effort approach of looking at reputation is again applied, I'd then offer that the minimum rep requirement for approval/graduation should go up when a post has been flagged. Shall we say... +500?
    – Gimby
    Commented Jun 12 at 9:29
  • We shouldn't forget that it isn't that bad if a few bad SG posts get approved - This is inconvenient but the site has mechanisms to handle it. I think a good question stuck in the SG is significantly worse (opinion).
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 12 at 9:32
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    @dan1st of course, but this is not the time to do the bare minimum effort, everything that can be done should be done here. The staging ground is pointless if people don't get the opportunity to learn what not to do; this counts for both the people posting questions as well as the people reviewing.
    – Gimby
    Commented Jun 12 at 10:21
  • Yes but I don't know whether other options are better and most alternatives have trade-offs. I fully agree that off-topic/duplicate votes should carry over (I also kinda remember that from the beta) but requiring 2 votes for going back from off-topic to something else is not objectively better (a big advantage of the SG is that these changes can be done without requiring much consensus from many users/these things can be done easier).
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 12 at 13:10
  • @dan1st "This is inconvenient but the site has mechanisms to handle it." I would argue that inconvenience is too weak. It's inefficient. People might never come back and look at the question again with overall limited reviewer time. Especially for duplicates where duplicate targets are not simple to find. Why not keeping the reviews until they are resolved even after "approval" (whatever that really means, not necessarily that the question is free of problems).
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jun 12 at 16:51
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    @NoDataDumpNoContribution Let me clarify myself: I do think that close/duplicate votes should be carried over but preventing them to be approved without multiple reviewer is a more difficult question IMO (especially since I think in most cases, the reviewer publishing is someone who closed it due to being notified on Re-Evaluate)
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 12 at 16:56

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Could duplicate votes be automatically converted to a duplicate flag/close vote uppon question publication?

Yes, it could and it should. Although that might perhaps lead to immediate closure upon approval for example if many close votes meet an approval. The reasoning behind the removal of all reviews/actions upon approval was to give questions a fresh start. They should appear as new, untouched questions, only in better shape. As if the staging ground was another website, completely decoupled from the main site, that acts independently and then publishes questions to here.

However that is problematic because people make mistakes, one cannot trust that approved questions really solved all issues. And valuable information is lost by throwing reviewer feedback away. There is lots of helpful information in all these comments and upon approval it's mostly inaccessible. That might demotivate staging ground reviewers.

But there are also advantages in that no outdated comments on resolved issues remain that would distract from readers attention.

The underlying problem is that approval is currently assumed to basically evaluate all minor or major revisions and all other close issues positively, so comments on them would no longer be needed. An approval is assumed to guarantee that all issues are solved. This is an unrealistic high quality assurance. In truth, it just means that a single person thought the question is good (versus potentially others that thought differently). In practice the value of an approval isn't so high.

In any case we should educate approvers more about what it means and under which circumstances approval is appropriate. ("I assert that this question has no issues anymore and that includes all issues with this question that may have been raised by others" like). We could also increase the value of an approval for example by requiring more than a single approval in case of unresolved issues or raising the rep requirement for approval. We should also keep all issues that have not been marked as solved after approval.

It would probably also help to have issues as specific as possible instead of having generic issues. Missing MRE could be a single item, better title could be another one. Or for example, the approve button could only be active if all issues are marked as solved.

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  • I assume this is only about pending close votes in the Staging Ground. If not, there would like be close votes on fixed (after re-evaluation) questions.
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 12 at 19:02
  • @dan1st I imagine more like issues that arise with the question and each of them can be re-evaluated. If not all issues have been re-evaluated when somebody hits approval, the issues are converted to close votes or simply kept open. This would only work for canned comments tied to specific close votes though. Like duplicates or debugging questions without sufficient info. At the very least one could keep all comment threads about unresolved issues, so people can continue from there. Maybe approval even doesn't mean so much. Curation doesn't stop at that point.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jun 12 at 19:37
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    Moving/Copying comment threads to the published question is not a good idea at all IMO. These comments are for improving the question before it gets published and there often are many comments in the SG that would clutter the question on the main site. And if we would copy close votes from already closed questions in the SG to the published posts, there would be many questions that have 2 close votes when these questions are created.
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 13 at 5:18
  • I think the better way is (as it was during the beta I think?) to carry CVs over for automatically published questions (where a CV resets the timer) and notify the reviewers when a SG post they voted to closed is published by someone else. We shouldn't forget that most questions that get closed in the SG and published afterwards are probably ok for the public site. If a reviewer repeatedly publishes closed SG posts, that's for mods.
    – dan1st
    Commented Jun 13 at 5:22

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