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This question, The meaning of "did not immediately respond to requests for comment" [closed], was closed by the following users, in this order:

Janus Bahs Jacquet, tchrist♦, Rory Alsop, user66974, FumbleFingers

What's tchrist♦ doing in the middle? I thought that when mods decided to close a question, their vote was binding?

From the help:

Moderator votes are binding. Any place we have voting — close, open, delete, undelete, offensive, migration, etc — that vote will reach the threshold and take effect immediately if a single moderator casts a vote.

How has this happened?

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1 Answer 1

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Moderators can't cast non-binding votes.

Before moderators were moderators, their votes were ordinary votes and listed in exactly the same way as other votes (that is, in the order received).

When a moderator is elected, every mention of their name gains a diamond. Having existing comments and votes suddenly gaining a diamond is something which candidates [should] consider when running for election.

In that list of users, you can see that "user66974" isn't actually a user. This is the same mechanism: the account which was active in July 2014 isn't now, and every mention of it now bears its generic ID.

I believe that by the same token, if a moderator gives up that role, the diamond is removed from every mention of their name: this could result in questions appearing to have been closed by fewer than five votes with no mention of why that happened (which the diamond would explain).

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    At least we don't behead an ex-moderator.
    – ab2
    Aug 10, 2019 at 16:59
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    I didn't even think to look at the date! It was on the homepage. Aug 10, 2019 at 19:09
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    @ab2 the reverse is true though, once beheaded, the diamond will be taken away.
    – JJJ
    Aug 12, 2019 at 22:50

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