May 2014 Newsletter

Enhanced Duplicate Closure for Tag Top Users

We have increased the ability for the top users in tags to be able to curate duplicate questions on their site. A user who has the gold tag badge for a tag, which requires at least 1000 score across 200 answers, can mark questions within their tag as duplicates using a single vote, bypassing the normal 5 vote requirement similar to a moderator. The question must have had the tag in its original revision, and the target duplicate must have an answer. These users may also reopen questions within their tag that are marked duplicate, be it that the question shouldn’t have been closed, or that there is a more appropriate or complete question that should be pointed to instead. When such a top user closes a question, a gold badge icon will be displayed after their name in the close reason message.

This change is mostly designed for the larger sites who have tangled trains of duplicates, allowing the main participants in the heftier tags to better manage where all the duplicates are pointing. The votes are still part of the normal closure process, abiding by the same rules of only one vote per person per direction, and allowing the votes to be contested by the rest of the community. Should a question undergo at least two cycles of closure and reopening while a top user is involved, a moderator attention flag will be generated called “Contested duplicate question”, signalling that a moderator should step in and investigate the question.

  Read more → Increase close vote weight for gold tag badge holders

Anti-Recidivism System Added

We’ve added some new systems that deal with users who request deletion in order to evade restrictions that are placed on their accounts at the time of deletion. We log data on such accounts at time of deletion, which is then referenced should a new account from the same individual be created. If the user was suspended at the time of deletion, then the new account will inherit the remainder of the original suspension. If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated. Both cases of these can be found in the moderator-accessible user history of the new account, and you can see whether a user is restricted in question frequency by looking near the question and answer block status on the user’s profile page.