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I just cast a closevote (duplicate) on this question, which at the time had no comments, answers, or votes.

As I write, it says Marked as duplicate by FumbleFingers 2 minutes ago, and there's an answer posted 1 minute ago.

The question does seem to be closed. But I'm not a mod, so how come the system didn't wait for 4 more users to closevote before doing this? And how come an answer was accepted after it was closed?

Have I just been granted "superpowers", or is there a bug in the system (perhaps relating to the answer being posted seconds after my closevote)?

EDIT: (having been enlightened by @tchrist). I've just posted an answer to Provide visual prompts to actions of regular users when they exercise superpowers. In the absence of a visual prompt as requested, I don't actually want this "superpower".

I'm not going to devote huge amounts of effort to making sure I use my unilateral closevote powers any more carefully than I used my normal "1/5th of a closevote" power. I can't even be bothered to keep tabs on which particular tags I'm empowered for, let alone keep checking the questions to see if they happen to have those tags.

So before there'e a kerfuffle about my pending imperious behaviour, you might wish to consider adding your vote to that meta.meta feature request.

EDIT2: Apparently the links I was given earlier about this subject all end up on Stack Overflow's meta. But since my complaint involves a site-wide feature, it's more properly addressed on meta for the entire network (where currently my complaint just has one uncommented downvote, so I feel could use some support! :)

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  • See my comment to Shoggoth below: it turns out that we have only five superheroes on EL&U — for the nonce.
    – tchrist Mod
    Jun 9, 2014 at 17:34
  • @tchrist: I still don't really understand TPTB's hostility to the idea of an on-screen notification where casting a dup closevote will take immediate effect, but Shog's answer here does at least give me a better handle on why the power was introduced in the first place. And having had 2 days to learn more about it, I'm not so bothered as I was when I suddenly hit "unexpected behaviour". But I know I'm not so good at "site searching" as, say, you or RegDwight, so I can't be expected to regularly present several potential dups when I closevote.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jun 9, 2014 at 17:46

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Yes, indeed: you are now a Superhero, able to wield the mighty Mjölnir.

Notice the gold badge where the diamond would go:

superhero demo

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  • Oh wow! I'll have to be a bit more careful! The honest truth is I wasn't 100% convinced the dup I'd linked to definitively answered the question. And I had every intention of checking to see if there were any other better ones to cite, in which case I'd have edited them into the auto-generated closevote comment. But I got sidetracked into posting this here, and haven't bothered to do the intended follow-up check. Truly, power corrupts, so I'm not going to bother now. If I made a mistake it'll just have to take 4 more alongside the current dissenter to reverse my closevote.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jun 6, 2014 at 22:19
  • (can I now demand that all "Kneel before FF!"? :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Jun 6, 2014 at 22:21
  • (Only when you answer single word requests)
    – Matt E. Эллен
    Jun 7, 2014 at 18:10
  • @FumbleFingers: That's not a single-word request, but "Kneel!" might work. Or might not
    – Tim Lymington
    Jul 10, 2014 at 15:21
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In regards to your concerns over the use of this feature:

I wish to note that we created this feature specifically for sites that get so many duplicate questions every day that it is not feasible for voters in the top tags to keep up with them. Generally-speaking, gold badges go hand-in-hand with this sort of traffic, but there will no doubt be exceptions for sites where tagging and/or voting deviate significantly from how they are used on SO/SF/SU.

EL&U does not get a very large number of questions each day, so if enough people here feel that users with gold badges are doing a disservice via their voting, we can disable this behavior on this site until such a time as it is clearly needed.

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  • 1
    For now at least, I find it super-unlikely that this would be a problem at EL&U. We currently have only 5 users with any gold tag badges at all, and in only 5 tags. Given the five users that have this priv, these are not users likely to abuse the privilege, either: Barrie England: grammaticality, meaning, word-choice; FumbleFingers: single-word-requests; Hugo: etymology; jwpat7: single-word-requests; Robusto: meaning, single-word-requests, word-choice.
    – tchrist Mod
    Jun 9, 2014 at 17:30
  • "EL&U does not get a very large number of questions each day" No on the contrary it gets far too many!
    – curiousdannii
    Nov 3, 2014 at 2:46

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