19

After submitting a close vote, in order to retract it, you have to press vote to close.

The issue with is simple,Who presses vote-to-close when they're retracting a vote or "unvoting" to close?

The counterintuitive setup would make "newbs" confused on how to retract a vote. (Infact I had been on Puzzling.SE for over 100 days (I kept going consecutive since I joined until I hit trusted user! :D) and I was confused.) Why would I press vote to close, after voting, especially when attempting to do the opposite.

My proposal is simple, after voting to close the button should change from "Vote To Close" to "Retract Close Vote" or at the very least add a "Retract Close Vote" next to it.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Maybe an explanation on why it's in there?

Despite being over a year old nothing seems to have been done about this. I would like to mention this is still a problem and I am still hoping to see if something can be done about it.

Improve this question
5
  • 5
    The problem with changing the button, though, is that the user is then no longer able to simply load the vote to close menu to view vote counts. While the primary function of clicking the "close" button is casting a vote to close, there are other reasons to open that menu.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 2:14
  • 3
    @anim Well at the very least there should be a separate button created next to it. It shouldn't be so counterintuitive.
    – warspyking
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 2:28
  • 3
    Press start to shutdown.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 12:02
  • @CodesInChaos Haha, very funny.
    – warspyking
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 16:21
  • @animuson What if the button was changed and a new button was made saying 'Close Reasons'?
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3
+50

I understand the confusion. The menu for me has an important function that should be kept: viewing the close votes others have cast. I find it interesting to see how the others have voted, for that, the close menu is the only way to access that information now.

I order to comply to the confusion, an extra option could be added to retract their close vote, or guide the user how to retract a close vote when they cast a close vote for the first time.

Improve this answer
14
  • I agree with this opinion, especially the guiding part.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:33
  • If you can retract a vote you have been awarded enough reputation that you know you can vote and retract votes
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:35
  • @Ramhound But how are they to know where it is. It felt very obfuscated to me my first time. Despite having both the rep and experience.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:38
  • How you retract your vote is documented
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:43
  • @Ramhound Where exactly? After 'browsing' through the help center by ctrl+F'ing 'close' on each page I'm still yet to see it. It seems rather hidden considering it's something that should be easy to find and understand.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:47
  • @warspyking This search only returns one result you need to look at...
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:58
  • 1
    @animuson Thanks, but it's still an awfully small point, as a newbie I could easily skim over that. I think there should really be an easier way to find it. And why should one have to look to find HOW to do it, it should really be a self explanatory thing IMO.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:02
  • 1
    @warspyking The feature is self explanatory. You're thinking of hidden, which it is. But it kind of should be. This feature seldom ever gets used, and bringing it out of the close menu just gives it way more attention than it would ever need. I'd guess the most we could probably do for this is to change the hover title for the button to say "retract your close vote or view vote counts" (or something along those lines) if you've already cast a vote. The "close" button itself shouldn't be seen as "vote to close" but "this menu contains all things related to closing."
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:11
  • @animuson Well perhaps it should be renamed to 'Close Options'? I feel that would make sense.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:15
  • @warspyking There's simply not enough space in that area to be renaming things to make them longer. At the highest privilege level, that line is pretty full. We even have to remove the "protect" option for moderators and put it in their mod menu because there just isn't room for all the buttons, and that's pretty much the least important button out of the bunch.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:20
  • @animuson I still feel it's sort-of counter intuitive though. Is there any other way to solve this problem? I liked the idea of pointing to the guide the first time they close-vote.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:27
  • @warspyking We already point users to the guide in the privilege notification when they gain close vote privileges, so I doubt pointing them to the guide again when casting their first vote will achieve anything. To be fair, that privilege page didn't actually mention retracting close votes until December 14 last year, so part of that was our bad that users were never told about it anywhere.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:30
  • @animuson That would actually explain a lot considering when I had this problem, I thought I had searched for it.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:31
  • @animuson What if the first time they vote to close a piece of hover text appears noting that you have to reclick there in order to retract your vote?
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:33
-1

To me it seems very natural to return to the place/menu where I performed an action to undo this very action. If I change some settings in my browser by ticking some box somewhere, say, and latter I change my mind, then I will go again exactly there to undo it.

Thus to open the close dialog again to undo my action there is very intuitive to me.

Improve this answer
7
  • I do see your reasoning here, but I still don't understand why I would select 'close' if I want to 'unclose'. There should be an additional button, or the text should be renamed to something easier to understand. Despite now understanding how it works a lot more, I still feel it may be hard on newbies.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:33
  • An additional button will just add more noise to the interface
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:36
  • @Ramhound Well perhaps the button should be renamed, or some other novel idea that I do not have the creativity to think of?
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 23:38
  • @warspyking in my mind because you do not "unclose" (I would rather consider reopen as "unclose" and for this the button is renamed) but change/undo/takeback what you did in "close." In my editor I have a (sub)menus "syntax highlighting", "spell check" etc, if I want to turn it on I go there and select the language, if I want to turn it off, I go there too. I go to "syntax highlighting" even if I want to "unhighlight" and this never felt strange to me. I active my close flag in a certain menu, if I want to deactivate I go to that menu again, just like I do for the spell-check in editor.
    – quid
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:09
  • @quid But the button is specifically called 'close'. In anything I've used like you're saying 'syntax highlighting' would be a check button and 'spell check' would be a spell check menu, but the button itself is called 'close' as if you want to 'close' something. We could rename it to 'undo close' and still have the menu in there. Perhaps it doesn't seem strange to you, but it definitely did for me.
    – warspyking
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:13
  • @warspyking I acknowledge this is a subjective thing. The point of my answer was to point out that to me this seems completely intuitive to have it there, which could be some kind of answer to "why it is there." Some find this is a very intuitive place.
    – quid
    Commented Feb 20, 2016 at 0:20
  • Performing some un/deletes for testing something.
    – quid
    Commented Jul 9, 2016 at 16:06

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .