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  • 15
    In SOpt, we discussed that about a year ago (with relative community support on lowering the threshold). One of our mods even questioned one CM about that, and we've never got any response. And now I'm surprised that you're not only doing this test, but also ignored SOpt. You (the CM team) could've said "we're working on it" in our meta, at least we'd know our request wasn't ignored, but instead you left the impression that you simply ignored us. I'm really disappointed.
    – hkotsubo
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 12:47
  • 8
    @hkotsubo I'm sorry - but, while I did get a note from JNat back in January 2020, the last thing I heard was that y'all were still discussing it and that no decision had been made - so there wasn't anything for us to respond about and I didn't hear anything else that I can remember. Since that time, we rolled out a way for mods to draw attention to things that need our help - using the status-review tag. When I went to make a list of sites to consider for this test, I missed SOpt because that tag wasn't used.
    – Catija
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 13:42
  • 11
    And... not that it's a great excuse because I should have said something - I haven't responded to any of these posts as far as I can remember. I'm very frustrated that it's taken so long to get this project moving and I apologise for that but I had no way of knowing when it would actually happen. I did write an answer here on MSE when someone asked what was going on and I have tried to be communicative with the mods who have asked me about it directly. We've been incredibly short-handed the last year and it's only now, with the new hires, that we're finally able to get things moving.
    – Catija
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 13:47
  • 3
    @hkotsubo Why would it not be possible if we've done it on SO and other sites? We can't make it asymmetric, with close requiring a different number of votes as reopen, but there's nothing preventing y'all from getting this changed other than us needing to find the time to actually test it. I looked at the numbers and it does look like the mods are doing a ton of work and so I am going to get this going on SOpt as part of the test - with the big caveat that I'm concerned that it won't show much improvement if the users don't actually do any of the work.
    – Catija
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 14:27
  • 5
    @Catija some years ago, Cascabel and me tried calculating our own mod closing percentage on cooking, to see if we are very likely to overrule the community :) and noticed quickly that it makes a lot of sense to distinguish between a mod hammer for duplicates and a mod hammer for one of the other reasons. Dupes are usually more clear-cut, and also require the memory of "I know I have seen this", which our current high rep users don't have, since they have been around for a shorter time than the mods. Did you make that distinction in counting the mod-close percentage?
    – rumtscho
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 15:39
  • 6
    Glad to see we (SOpt) will participate. Thanks @hkotsubo and Catija.
    – Largato
    Commented May 4, 2021 at 17:17
  • 2
    @anonymous2 Yeah, I'll be trying to be certain we only consider mod hammers - so fifth or third votes would be excluded from the count. I know a lot of mods are OK with those votes but, on the scales I'm seeing, the votes tend to be unilateral or second votes at best in many cases. :)
    – Catija
    Commented May 5, 2021 at 17:08
  • 2
    @hkotsubo The data from the first few days of any test like this can be somewhat misleading - the test itself can cause additional awareness and participation that doesn't reflect the natural behaviors of people on the site. As such the plan is to not actually look at the first week or so of data when assessing the outcomes. The 45-days includes a buffer so that I can grab a nice, clean 30-day period in the middle or so. Regardless, the site settings have been changed at this point.
    – Catija
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 17:35
  • 4
    Why have the migration votes been changed and why didn’t the sites that are the most frequent migration targets get to weigh in on that decision? ELL has had trouble in the past with very low quality migrations from ELU, so the ELL community should have had some input on whether that was a good idea.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 19:26
  • 3
    @Catija Is there any indication that the current migration votes need adjusting? So what if some questions get closed because they’re low quality instead of migrated? You’re assuming the amount of questions currently getting migrated needs to be adjusted upwards, when honestly there’s still quite a few stinkers getting through, and dropping the requirement is going to make it harder for people to stop the migration of crap.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 22:01
  • 5
    It also occurs to me that while it’s easier than ever to migrate stuff to ELL, we still need the same number of votes to reject a migration. Changes to migration paths should involve both sites, even if it’s just a “hey, this is changing” post.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 22:38
  • 2
    I'm having to balance things here. It's much more similar to have the 2/3 ratio vs 3/5 ratio rather than having 3/3. One person could prevent all migrations simply by using any other close reason - whether intentionally or accidentally. You're talking about it like I've made it impossible to prevent migrations rather than considering the other possibility. Honestly, I've really never liked migrations between ELL and ELU because they tend to be terrible quality and because there's not enough participation on ELL to fight them, @ColleenV - much rather just go back to mod-only migrations.
    – Catija
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 22:42
  • 2
    @ColleenV I checked the 20 most recent migrations here: and what I found was - Mod migrations: 4 Unanimous migrations: 5 Split decision migrations: 11 Also, to compare to what that would have looked like with only three votes - Unanimous migrations in first three votes: 7 Two of first three *not for migration: 3 So, of the 20 most recent migrations, if it required unanimous voting, only 11 of the 20 would have been migrated. If 2/3 is required, 17 would have been migrated. So making it unanimous would have a negative impact if you consider migrations generally good.
    – Catija
    Commented May 7, 2021 at 6:15
  • 6
    @Catija I’m not really asking for any particular action here. I’m giving feedback about how the decision was handled. I don’t know whether it will be a burden or not. Of the 11 that were split decisions, how many were well-received on ELL? I don’t have the reputation to see the migrated away page on ELU, but this query I cobbled together a couple years ago shows that 1/3 or less of the migrations get an upvote on ELL. Counting votes on ELU doesn’t measure “good” migrations.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 7, 2021 at 11:08
  • 4
    Now I’ve read multiple times that moderators (and also gold badgers) aren’t always comfortable with using their unilateral closing powers all the time. Is it time to reconsider these proposals: How Do I Opt Out of Privileges? and Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding close/open vote? Sure, the binding close-vote is a privilege, but it is also a burden — an unnecessary one. Just give these privileged users a choice: binding vote or regular vote. I don’t see any problems in this, only solutions to existing problems.
    – Sebastian Simon
    Commented May 11, 2021 at 19:51