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With question and answer up and down votes, one has so many they may cast per vote period. From What are the limits on how I can cast, change, and retract votes? :

  • Thirty post votes per day per user (includes upvotes and downvotes)
  • Up to ten additional question-only votes per day per user. These may be cast at any time during the day, but the exact number you get depends on your voting behavior for the day.

This goes to the "you cast so many votes on questions in a day and you get more votes"

Let's do a similar thing for close vote reviews. Many sites have a surplus of review tasks that can be handled, and some people are hesitant to do reviews because it means they won't be able to respond to new questions as much.

Let's encourage people to do reviews. Just as the above approach was designed to encourage people to vote on questions more, a similar approach can be used to encourage people to do /reviews:

After completing 10 close vote review tasks in a day, you get 10 more close votes. Yes, the cap for review tasks that one can do in a day is higher than 10, and the big sites have it much higher than 10.

Having this will encourage more people to do at least 10 reviews in a day, which is a key part of community moderation for a given Stack Exchange site. It also helps with addressing the concern that some have of not being able to handle new questions when helping in /review (they could do 10 review tasks and stop at that and still have as many close votes for front page issues).

I would like to point out that people are focusing on this being a "give more close votes". That is a side effect of the intended proposal's goal. I want to see more people reviewing in /review. I've often heard "I don't do /review because I use up all my close votes on new questions" and that is an important thing too. Both finding new questions and /review are key parts of community moderation - and neither should be neglected.

This proposal is to address that concern by giving them more close votes when participating in /review so that it doesn't compromise their ability to deal with new questions. The model for this is based on the model for encouraging people vote on questions by giving more up/down votes when people cast sufficient votes on questions.

Furthermore, I will point out that there is the "what if people just do 10 'leave open' reviews and then have 10 more close votes" to which I say "if they have done 10 close vote reviews with leave open results in good faith, they have helped address the volume of material in /review and should be entitled to more close votes according to this." It also simplifies the logic. If the users are not doing reviews in good faith, then that is an issue that needs to he handled by the moderators (and chances are they're not doing just 10 leave open resulting reviews).

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⁢        ⁢        ⁢        ⁢     Double-Badger Superpowers

Photo of two European Badgers, photo credit Chris Noble of The Wildlife Trust

⁢                                                 Photo credit: Chris Noble at The Wildwood Trust

TL;DR:

  • Give holders of CVRQ Steward + silver tag-badge holders double-weighted CVs in that badged tag

  • Give holders of CVRQ Steward + gold tag-badge holders triple-weighted CVs in that badged tag.

More Close Votes — and Double-Badger Superpowers

You make good points. I worry that unless this is mitigated according to track record, it risks people just going crazy with it and tossing bad CVs all over the place. Some sort of dampening effect that fed back into the determination might be enough to address that, but maybe not.

Imagine if everyone had 100 close votes the way we all get 100 flags (well, if we're on Santa’s nice list). Would everybody having 100 close votes help improve the site, or would it just make for more mess needing clean up?

If the answer is that it would just make more work, then what about only some users having more close votes and having that based on some metric? Simply basing it on review queues completely might not be good enough. People can just game that too easily. Here are two ways to mitigate that:

  1. This bonus awarding only happens if hold the gold Steward badge in the close vote review queue. Or give a little for silver and more for gold. Or make it require n times Steward there, like 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 or over 9000.
  2. Tie it in with actual success metrics, not just simple counts. Did the close votes actually do any good, or did they later evaporate or had the question reöpened? You would need to have a good track record.

Close and reöpen votes are in a way the same thing, even though they have their own respective review queues. Should domain expertise in one count for expertise in the other? Should the extra votes only count if you have say a silver tag badge in one of that question’s original (not edited in or out) tags?

More Cogitations

I avoid running the Close Vote Review Queue because of how quickly it exhausts my close votes, and I feel like I need to hold those back until the end of the day in case they’re more needed. Come 23:55 UTC, if I remember and am around, I finish off the rest of them. But plenty of days what I’ve put off never happens because I’m doing something else.

That means the Close Vote Review Queue is counter-productive to its own purpose. The SE model works best when privileges are exercised, not when they are husbanded for a rainy day.

What’s more, the moment you max out, you cannot even flag for closure. This just motivates people into creating low-rep socks whose whole purpose in life is to close-flag because their owner has run out of proper close votes. This is the wrong sort of motivation.

I like your idea how it is not one-for-one, that when you hit the 10 CVs through the review mark you get those +10 CVs back. I’m not completely sure stopping there to help avoid burning out expert close-voters is necessary or sufficient: it is too little, too much, or is Goldilocks still sleeping in my bed?

Another way of going at it might be a point-of-dimishing returns model. That way when you your Review Queue Close Vote count hits an even multiple of 10, you get back not 10 but 5, but it is not just at the first 10 only.

Other options exist, and these are not mutually exclusive with your own suggestion or my modified version of yours. Here are just a few that come quickly to the top of my head:

  1. I run out of close votes all the time. All. The Time. Perhaps it’s time to recognize that there should be something between the 50 CVs you get on SO and the 24 CVs you get on other sites by increase the higher-traffic non-SO sites from 24 to 36 CVs.

  2. Delete votes scale but close votes do not; how in the the world does this make any sense? Fix this bug by awarding +1 CV for each 3k over the 3k minimum needed until a max of 100 CVs is reached on non-SO sites, or 200 CVs on SO.

  3. Grant “very” high rep users with a good or excellent track record of being right about closure "higher weighted" CVs, so:

    1. Grant double-strength (counts as 2x) CVs for those with good rep+record. This way only 3 such power-votes are needed to close an open question or reöpen one.
    2. Grant triple-strength (counts as 3x) CVs for those with excellent rep+record metric. This way it takes 3 votes from the enhanced power-closers and just 2 votes from the topmost ones.

    This is of course for both close and reöpen. It is not Mjölnir, but it helps. By tying it to other criteria than merely reputation alone, it ties the privilege to actual performance not merely to popularity gained by answering joke questions with joke answers the way almost all other privileges are granted. You have to have proven yourself good at CVing for your votes to be back a double- or triple-whammy.

Badges?

Unlike option #0 from the OP or even in my modified form tying it to success rate at CVs, option #3 addresses this concern:

Very, very few people hit the current limits on a regular basis; not sure this is much of a privilege. Also, unlimited non-binding votes potentially just creates more work for other users. I'm pretty sympathetic to the desire to make close votes more effective for trusted users, but more weak opinions isn't likely to accomplish much. — Shog9♦ 2015-04-04 16:05:07Z

One possible way to address this would be to make the double-strength CVs a new 30k privilege and the triple-strengh CVs a new 40k, 50k, or 60k privilege.

The problem with that is that it is wholly reputation based instead of based on some combination metric that factors in not just reputation but track record as well.

I thought about tying option #3 to a new silver and gold CV-related badge respectively, but that might be problematic if once the privilege were somehow earned, subsequent “bad” behavior (unrequited close or reöpen votes) eventually made that user a poor candidate for having double- or triple-punch CVs.

So here’s a better idea.

You must hold a gold Steward badge in the CV queue. Then you get more effective CVs for those questions whose original tags you hold a tag badge for as follows:

  1. If after CV Steward, you also hold a silver tag badge for the question’s original tags, then your CV counts for double-strength.

  2. If after CV Steward, you also hold a gold tag badge for the question’s original tags, then your non-dupe CVs now count as triple-strength there on those questions.

An actual dupe CV of course remains plenipotentiary for gold tag badge holders under the Mjölnir exemption and would not be subject to Steward. This is just to up the weight of the non-dupe close votes for badge holders.

This two tiered double-badger approach is attractive because it actually adds new badge privileges, which the SE Team has said they would like to find more ways of doing. It is difficult to game because it requires proven domain expertise.

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    The close vote review of votes is to help all people, and especially get them into active participation in /review. Programmers (for example) only has 34 stewards total, 17 for close votes. Furthermore, only 9 silver tag badges have been awarded. Only myself and Robert Harvey are in the intersection of those two (he has design and C#, I have Java). The badge approach does not work for the medium sized sites.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 12:30
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    @MichaelT Yes, I was wondering about scaling. Often the SO levels are useless for other sites. If it is still a perceived need, perhaps the "wee" just-past-beta/low-traffic sites could do bronze and silver instead of silver and gold?
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 12:37
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    A reputation threshold might be all we need on a non-SO site. It's not unheard of to have SO-specific badge requirements for things that other SEs only require reputation for.
    – Ixrec
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 13:34
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    -1, European badgers.
    – Jason C
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:15
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    @tchrist I'd urge you to think about this in the context of English.SE. The close vote queue is currently 86, there are 21 close vote stewards. It has some gold badges based on the extremely focused area of specific common questions... but this wouldn't entice day to day close voters from participating in /review, promptly addressing those new items in /review and helping fix the broken windows that show up in there too. That's what I'm hoping to do with the "more votes after reviewing" idea.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:41
  • @MichaelT Are you saying that Close Vote Steward should be enough for the added weight?
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:42
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    @tchrist I'm saying the people who already have close vote steward are wonderful people who have helped in /review significantly. I am trying to find a way to help the people who cast 24 votes (or 50) close votes without going to /review find a reason to do reviews in a way that doesn't compromise their other community moderation activities.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:44
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    @MichaelT Ok, I see where you’re aiming for here: you want more people to go through the CV RQ more often. I admit that on SO I do so only for very targeted sets just because it is so daunting.
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 18:45
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    When you look at the 'top reviewers' in SF, Programmers.SE, English, you can see a few very dedicated people. This also comes with when people look at closing old questions, they keep seeing the same five names. Why? Because those are the people who are doing reviews. To help improve community moderation and reduce that perception - we need to encourage more people to do reviews. ...
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 20:15
  • There are many who cast close votes on the incoming and active questions, but hold back from doing reviews because of the perception that this will take away from their ability to deal with the new questions. This suggestion is trying to help them find a reason to review, and diminish the perception that the five reviewers (rather than the community) are closing everything. Its getting that community participation in /review that is key to not burning out moderators or reviewers.
    – user213963
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 20:18
  • Gold badges in tags have unilateral close powers already, so "triple-weighted CVs for gold tag reviewers" would be useless, wouldn't it? Or is that just for duplicates?
    – TylerH
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 21:05
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    @TylerH Gold tag holders have binding votes for closing and reöpening only when it comes to dupes. I have here suggested increasing the CV vote for the other sorts of CV for silver and gold tag badge holders if that’s the original tag, but only if they also hold a CV Steward badge. It is possible that on low-traffic sites the criteria could be less strong; for example, silver CV Reviewer + bronze/silver tag-badge instead of gold CV Steward + silver/gold tag-badge. Alas, I misread the OP in the first edit round, not realizing he was seeking something with a slightly different angle.
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 21:17
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    You asked me (elsewhere) how this would work on smaller sites. In my experience gold review badges are unattainable on smaller sites. For example, Mi Yodeya, which graduated in 2012, has no gold reviewer badges at all, and the top reviewer in the close-votes queue has just over 400. It's not that we don't review things; it's that there aren't enough things to review. Workplace, which is several times larger, has half a dozen gold review badges in the close queue. On small betas getting the silver badge is an achievement. So I think this mainly helps large sites, for what that's worth.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Apr 27, 2015 at 12:55

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