According to multiple mods, gold badge holders can now unilaterally close questions as duplicates. I hold seven gold badges for tags on SO, which means I can, on my own, close questions as duplicates for those tagged questions.
Simply put: DO NOT WANT.
However, I do not see any ability in SO (the only SE site I spend much time in) to opt out of any privileges, let alone this one.
Is there a spot that I'm just not seeing that allows me to turn off this new privilege?
We've no plans to make "opting out" an option. This is in keeping with existing behavior: once you gain the ability to vote to close, you can no longer flag for closing. The system trusts you more, and there's no way to tell it to trust you less*.
To be perfectly frank, I've never liked the attitude toward closing that turning it into a voting system brought with it: too many people vote without much thought, expecting other voters to keep their carelessness in check. If that doesn't apply to you (and I don't think it does) then you're exactly the sort of person we'd all appreciate having a bit more say in what gets closed.
And if you do make a mistake, you have the ability to immediately re-open the same question you immediately closed. Reopen votes on duplicates are binding for badge holders in the relevant tags as well.
*short of creating a sockpuppet and working it up to whatever rep threshold gives you the weaker voice.
close link, so I will no longer be closing questions.
Commented
May 13, 2014 at 12:02
android questions, that's not a big limitation. I don't know if "production-grade Greasemonkey script" is a thing, but my script certainly is not one, particularly since I had never used it before. :-)
Commented
May 13, 2014 at 12:53
When I first got the privilege of unilateral closes as a mod of a tiny site, I had the same first reaction. But I've come to appreciate that unilateral actions can head off a lot of pain later. I was able to monitor comment threads and meta posts until I became convinced that the conversation no longer constructive. My unilateral decisions were subject to oversight from other mods and the community itself. But usually what was needed was for someone to make some definitive decision. Putting that responsibility in the right hands is the whole point of the feature.
Some things to put your mind at ease:
For the foreseeable future the feature will be limited to duplicate closes. These are easily the least controversial types of closes since they usually bring the asker one step closer to getting a solution (if not giftwrap an answer directly).
Other gold badgers and mods will be able to reverse your decision. You'll never be able to irreversibly close a question since the community has many ways (including flags) to make their dissension known.
The feeling of "oh no, what have I done, take this privilege away" will fade over time. The surest way to help it along is to vote to close questions you don't have to power to close unilaterally. Once you get a taste of what it's like to get things done it's a serious culture shock to be blocked from acting. (I feel this on sites outside of Stack Exchange that don't let me suggest edits or vote.)
Duplicates are a huge problem on Stack Overflow and this is a first step at handling the problem. We can't keep adding more mods to do things like close duplicate questions. It's vital that we find more ways to empower users to fix problems large and small. Expect to see other features along these lines.
The next time you see a duplicate in a tag you have a gold badge in, why not vote to close and see how it goes?
You are an expert.
Don't downplay that. You've been around and answered enough on that tag that you are actually fully qualified to receive one of the many mod powers for that tag.
Further, there's still plenty of oversight. Mods, other users, and even you can re-open a question you've closed. Leave a comment when you close one, and let the author reply if they want to demonstrate that their question is notably different, if you feel the need to, but don't feel that the dupehammer has no oversight, and isn't community justified.
Lastly, so, so, so many questions need to be closed as duplicate. By demanding that your vote be followed by 4 other people before action is taken, you're wasting time and limited votes. Let them use their votes on other questions - some of which won't even be in your tag.
Don't give in to impostor syndrome. You are not only qualified, but requested, by the community no less, to participate more fully and more dramatically in improving our site.
Please don't take this lightly. You can refuse - we're not going to make you, but we're also not going to allow you to simply hide your expertise and provide a crutch that allows you to pretend you don't deserve or can't handle this task.
We trust you. We need you. Please reconsider your position on the dupehammer.
If this just a normal close, so a single edit puts the post in the reopen queue, then I don’t see the big problem. But if it stops the questions being reopened in the normal way, then it is a big problem.
The reopen queue works so fast anyway and most questions that are closed in error are very poor questions anyway.
However I would rather have a gold tag badge holder have a bit less power, so that one other close vote is needed.
I would also like to see per user “review queue” that shows all questions that have had new comments or been edited since I voted to close them.
There is also the need for a workflow that allows me to leave a comment pointing to anther questions that may be a duplicate, then come back in a few hours time to vote to close if there is no other comments etc to convince me it is not a duplicate.
Unilateral closing (and also deleting) is a very bad idea, even for mods. There has not only been abuse of it, but there have been plenty of mistakes made. All of those votes should get a few eyes on it, not just one decision-maker who might be a little too busy and miss something (as I often do).
There was a great feature-request to allow a closer the option to apply a normal, non-binding vote, but that was declined. It would have solved the problem (if extended to all unilateral voters), but despite the huge vote-count it didn't get any play from the Team.
