I just read Answering a question, then closing it as duplicate and the following question occurred to me: Should it be permitted for users to both:

  • answer the question
  • cast a close vote

All close reasons indicate that the question is for one reason or another not suitable for the site, so we're not looking for new answers to that question. If it's a duplicate, then there are answers elsewhere.

What I'm thinking are two new rules:

  1. If the user has cast a close vote (even if the question has not been actually closed), they are no longer permitted to answer the question. If they want to answer the question, they'll have to retract their close vote first.

  2. If the user has answered the question, they cannot cast a close vote. If they want to cast a close vote, they'll have to delete their answer first.

I guess a third rule is the user shouldn't be permitted to undelete their deleted answer after casting a close vote.

This proposal would prevent gold badge users from answering the question and then invoking the dupehammer to prevent other users from answering.

  • 13
    The other option is to just raise an automatic mod flag, and have them look into the issue, possibly deleting the answer, merging the questions, reopening the question, or whatever. – Servy Feb 17 '15 at 20:36
  • 18
    @Servy: That sounds like more workload for mods. – Greg Hewgill Feb 17 '15 at 20:39
  • 5
    @GregHewgill If it's what it takes to handle the situation correctly, that's what it takes. If no automatic action can be decided on as the correct course of action, enabling manual intervention is sometime the next best option. – Servy Feb 17 '15 at 20:41
  • 2
    @Servy: I just can't think of a situation where a user can legitimately both answer and close a question. I know I've done it, but I probably should have deleted my answer when I decided to vote to close. – Greg Hewgill Feb 17 '15 at 20:45
  • 5
    @GregHewgill You answer it first. Then you discover a dupe later on and close it. Though in that case, you might consider deleting your answer as well. – Mysticial Feb 17 '15 at 20:46
  • 4
    @GregHewgill Yes, but what should be done? Should the answer be deleted, the question closed, the questions merged, etc.? Even if you know that what happened was wrong, it may not be clear what actually should happen. This is the case for the majority of the existing automated flags. The system knows something is wrong, and that some action needs to be taken, but a human needs to determine what the correct response is. If it turns out that there is only one correct response, then a mod flag would indeed be unnecessary. – Servy Feb 17 '15 at 20:51
  • 13
    Close reasons don't all imply total unsuitability, some imply long term unsuitability hidden behind the generic term "off topic". A question may still be answerable, even if it's a crappy question. This is why "Too Localized" was abused, and eventually removed, and this is why the "typo or no longer reproducible" off topic reason exists now. You can still answer the question, and still downvote and closevote it, help the OP, and kick it into the Roomba's path. The downvotes and eventual closing indicate to the OP that it was a poor question. – Michael Berkowski Feb 17 '15 at 20:59
  • 20
    Sometimes I answer a question, after which someone points out it is a duplicate. I agree and vote to close the post. Nothing untowards here, but now suddenly I have to delete my answer first. I just helped the OP, now I have to take that away to dupe-vote to keep the site reasonably clean. I'm not sure that that is productive. – Martijn Pieters Feb 17 '15 at 21:04
  • 10
    So instead what I fear will happen is that answerers will be far less inclined to close vote a post with this change in place. – Martijn Pieters Feb 17 '15 at 21:06
  • 6
    Sometimes good questions get posted to SO, when they might be a better fit on Superuser or Serverfault. In that situation, I don't see anything wrong with answering, then voting to migrate. – Jim Lewis Feb 17 '15 at 21:17
  • 2
    I dunno... Is this really an exploitable thing? Because if it is, I'm totally in. For exploiting it, I mean. I just don't see it as one... – user1228 Feb 17 '15 at 21:25
  • 3
    @MichaelBerkowski If a question is a low quality quesiton that the site has determined shouldn't be answered as those types of questions cause more problems than they solve, then one should not encourage answering it and voting to close. The whole point of voting to close it is to say that the question shouldn't be answered (here). – Servy Feb 17 '15 at 21:48
  • 1
    @Servy That sounds an awful lot like coming to a conclusion before there is actual consensus. Not all questions with a close vote end up being closed, and taking action to discourage answers before the consensus is reached is counter productive. – Travis J Feb 17 '15 at 21:54
  • 3
    It shouldn't be too hard to whip up a data.SE to find out how many people close questions with answers too and see if this is a small or big problem. – user289086 Feb 17 '15 at 21:54
  • 2
    @TravisJ That is a valid argument for why it's okay for someone to answer a question someone else (but not five others) has voted to close. But if you are voting to close the question, it is because you personally feel that (as the question stands) it would be better off for it to not be answered. Answering it is thus a contradiction. – Servy Feb 17 '15 at 21:56

Yes, absolutely these users should be allowed to both answer and vote to close.

Users who gain rep also gain privileges on the site because we trust they know more about how the site is used, and we want them to help us maintain it.

By doing this, you would be limiting the maintenance potential of some of your most active userbase - the answerers.

Just because a user answered a while ago, doesn't mean that later on they shouldn't be able to vote to close (as a duplicate or otherwise) as new information emerges, or site rules change, or a better question is discovered.

Keep in mind that most questions require 5 close votes to get closed, so in many cases a single user does not have the power to both answer and immediately close the question. The only exception is moderators, and gold-badge users if they are voting to close as a duplicate.

So basically you would be putting in a limiting mechanism to make it harder for users to maintain the site, in exchange for the potential that our "trusted users" may try to ... Stop others from gaining rep instead of them? Gain an extra 25ish rep from a closed question? I don't even know.

And as a side note, I answer because I like to help users. If given the choice between writing a detailed version of an answer with examples specific to the OPs code, vs closing as a duplicate to something generic that the OP may or may not understand., I will vote to answer and leave open every time.

  • 14
    Thank you for that last paragraph. It's become such an uncommon viewpoint in the past few years and even wins scorn from some segments of the community. – Michael Berkowski Feb 18 '15 at 2:10
  • 13
    I will sometimes give a brief, succinct answer that covers the immediate points of the question, and then go hunt down the detailed duplicate, and subsequently vote to close (assuming I can actually find the duplicate, which is usually not as easy as I'd like). I don't do it to get rep, or prevent other people getting rep. I do it so the OP gets a sufficient answer to get them on their way, and the question ends up closed as a duplicate of a question with a good (usually far longer) answer. – Jonathan Leffler Feb 18 '15 at 6:50
  • 4
    @MichaelBerkowski I couldn't agree more. There's been so much emphasis in the newer rules over the past few years on trying to get the perfect canonical question and treating SO as a sacrosanct knowledge repository, that we've seem to ignore the fact that people often simply answer to help others. SO's main drive is its Q&A flow, not its curation aspect. Sometimes it feels like the SO motto "Ask questions, get answers, no distractions" has been forgotten. – Bruno Feb 18 '15 at 17:58
  • 4
    @Bruno Parts of meta and some tag-specific chatrooms have become echo chambers in that regard - it's super frustrating to those of us who still spend most of our time actually in the trenches trying to help users improve their questions to be answerable, stave off more downvotes or actually answer. Like wartime medics running between the wounded while snipers shoot at them. Except, you know, not really anything like that at all :-) – Michael Berkowski Feb 18 '15 at 18:15
  • Hello Rachel! Maybe it's me not contributing enough, but I haven't seen you around. It's great to see your insightful answers again. – Ben Feb 18 '15 at 20:00
  • @Ben Thanks! I haven't been as active lately on StackExchange... I started a new job a year or so ago and it doesn't have anywhere near the downtime my old job had, which was usually my SE-browsing time :) – Rachel Feb 18 '15 at 20:06
  • 1
    I'm guessing you don't run into Android questions where there are 5 different answers each with a good amount of "it works for me" and "it doesn't work for me" comments attached to each answer! – Mark Feb 20 '15 at 19:02

This proposal would prevent gold tag users from answering the question and then invoking the dupehammer to prevent other users from answering. emphasis mine

The wording implies that evil lurks in the heart of the closer. I try not to make windows into the souls of men to divine their intentions. But, whether intentional or not, the fact is that answering then closing (not simply voting to close, but slamming the door shut), does in fact freeze out other answers.

Either it is a dupe and should be closed; or it presents enough of an edge case -- or has an interesting aspect -- that it is worth answering. In the case of the latter, it ought not be closed.

Sometimes the answers are good (like this or this (a crap question IMO)) in addressing the immediate and broader or other issues. But that is not always the case. More often I see the opposite: a 5 line answer very narrowly addressing the local issue, then an immediate dupe close by a gold badger. On more than one occasion I have had an answer composed to offer an alternative approach or offer some degree of explanation and not been able to post it because the question was now closed.

As a matter of principle, it seems oligarchical to condone the practice of answering and closing. I would propose that if a gold-tagger answers, any vote to close they cast reverts to 1 of 5 needed for that question. If it is simpler to prevent a close vote at all, I am fine with that.

If a question is worthy of one answer, the site is not dirtied or made less perfect by more than one.

Even answering and VTC seems a little off kilter, but unless it is a well known dupe (like NRE) it usually takes enough time to get closed that anyone on hand who wants to weigh in can do so.

Note: the term 'rep' was not used in this answer. Well, until now.


I'm not in favor of these proposed new rules. While I very rarely answer a question and cast a close vote at the same time, I have done it before, and don't think it should be made impossible.

The main reason is that while we can cast close votes, the close review queue is constantly overloaded. So many questions that should be closed are not, no matter if I cast a close vote or not. Unless it's a blatantly horrible question, chances are that my vote will expire before the question gets enough votes.

So facing the fact that questions that should be closed will remain open, there are 3 main possible scenarios:

  1. I can write a quality answer. We end up with a mediocre question with a quality answer.
  2. It gets no answer. We end up with a mediocre question with no answer.
  3. Somebody else sees the unanswered question, and posts an answer.

    a. The answer they post is bad. We end up with a mediocre question with a bad/wrong answer.

    b. The answer they post is good. The outcome is the same as scenario 1.

Which of these 3 scenarios is best for the quality of the site? While none of them are ideal, I would argue that scenario 1 and 3b are probably the best. Some people might prefer scenario 2, since they believe that mediocre questions should not get answers. But since scenario 1 is the only one I can control, it's the only way for me to prevent the otherwise very common scenario 3a.

The only case where I think it might be a good idea to prevent this is the case where a gold badge holder applies the dupe hammer. In that case, they know that the question will indeed be closed, so the above is not a concern.

Now, in reality, I almost always just cast close votes anyway for questions that I think should be closed. And I definitely do that for very bad questions. But I don't want new rules that in some cases will stop me from doing what I think is best. If I cast a close vote on a question that I know will never get 5 close votes, I want the option to answer it.

  • 1
    If the question is amenable to a quality answer, it might be possible to edit it into a quality question, as well. Admittedly, I would be loathe to heavily edit a question to make it fit if it was poor to begin with. – David Conrad Feb 19 '15 at 21:27
  • I agree with #1.

In my opinion, if a user casts a vote for closure they should probably not answer the question.

  • I disagree with #2.

If a user has answered, they should still be able to cast a close vote.

There are two many corner cases to handle for this to be viable without causing too much strain on either moderators or the use of the feature in general. Not to mention the amount of effort it would take to implement all of the handling for the corner cases.

Further, if the answer is of value it seems counter productive to delete it. Historically if this were applied to closed questions it would result in far too many useful answers being removed. It would also not make sense to differentiate only from new answers as there is fundamentally no difference between the two sets (that of historical versus currently answered but wanting to close vote).

  • Please note that I am not suggesting that any of these new rules be applied retroactively to old questions. – Greg Hewgill Feb 17 '15 at 22:15
  • @GregHewgill - Why draw the distinction? If old closed questions have answers then it doesn't make much sense for new closed questions not to have them. – Travis J Feb 17 '15 at 22:18
  • 3
    In all honestly, how many cases are there where a user first votes to close, and then answers the question? And if they really really wanted to, they could just answer first and vote afterwards. The value of this is questionable and impractical :) – Rachel Feb 17 '15 at 22:19
  • @Rachel - I agree. While I think that the first suggestion makes sense, from an implementation side it seems unnecessary. – Travis J Feb 17 '15 at 22:20

Tough to say.

I don't want to make it something that's entirely blanket out there; a user could cast a close vote, forget to retract it, and have it harmlessly expire, and in the meantime, they couldn't post an answer to the question. Mind you, this is a lot less extreme since you can just retract your close vote, but it feels like the system's getting in the way.

If we made it apply exclusively to those with gold tag privileges, then there's two scenarios to consider:

  • Question is closed, but reopened by other means - another gold tag user or the community.
  • Question is open, they reply, but find a more suitable answer in a duplicate question later.

In the second case, I've advocated for just removing the answer at that point, as it's more or less noise, and it sends a mixed message about the particular user's decision to cast a binding close vote.

The first scenario is tougher. The question was thought to be a duplicate but the community overturned the decision.

At that point, I'd still question why it was decided that the question be closed as a duplicate; someone who's experienced in the tag believed that this question deserved closure, but others in the community didn't.

Y'know, that's not a scenario I'd ever trust an automated system to handle for me. Who's to say that the community was right over the gold tag person? Who's to say the opposite?

Questions like that may warrant going into the reopen queue, with a twist - let silver badge users and above review questions and scenarios like that. There's a lot more of those users with that than the gold tag (and yes, I am painfully aware that those numbers aren't entirely "pure", since a gold tag holder also holds a silver tag), and while they're not trusted with the ability to close dupes with a single vote, they've likely been around enough in that tag to at least do some digging on the scenario.


I'm sure I've answered and voted to close a few questions in the past. I agree this is a bit odd, but this wasn't completely irrational or self-interested. This was certainly never to prevent someone else from gaining points.

The main cases I have in mind were questions that I thought would be more suitable on Super User (or maybe Server Fault). Once I've read the question and if I'm willing to spend a few minutes helping the asker by providing an answer, I'll do it there and then. While I'm generally willing to spend a bit of time to help others, I'm certainly not ready to spend time monitoring that question and checking whether it has been migrated until it is (and if it is); you can wait days for migration to happen sometimes.

I can't remember doing it for duplicate, but I can easily imagine a couple of situations:

  • I would answer, and only then be made aware (or remember myself) that there is a very similar question. If I've spent a bit of time writing an answer that is slightly more tailored for that question, I might as well leave it. (Remember, duplicates rarely are 100% exact duplicates, sometimes adapting the wording of the answer is useful.)

  • I would provide an answer, then after a couple of comments for clarification, the question would be turned into something a little bit different, which would now mostly be a duplicate of another question. Again, the exchange and the path that led from this problem (typically a slightly different error message, or something misinterpreted by the asker) can potentially be useful to others.

Overall, I'm not sure this really is a problem. This somehow also assumes that people who vote to close in that situation do it deliberately to get the points themselves and to prevent others from participating. I don't believe this is the case.

As a side note, sure, there may be a few occurrences of this behaviour, but is it worth adding yet another rule to Stack Exchange? We'll soon have to spend more time on Meta trying to figure out what we're now allowed to do or not, instead of answering questions on the main site, which should certainly be a better use of time for everyone.


As someone who has personally both answered and voted to close a question on multiple occasions, I think I may be able to give some perspective. For me, the two are not related.

If the user asked as question that I know the answer to, I'm not going to withhold a potential answer from them, just because there's some problem with their question, whether it be a dupe, off-topic, whatever. That seems unnecessarily cruel to me, and I think it's things like this that leave a bad first impression with new users. Sure, maybe they asked a duplicate question, but down-voting them and voting to close and then walking away does what exactly?

Also, with a rare exception here and there, I find most duplicate questions actually have a spin that makes them slightly different. The gist of the question may be the same, but simply sending the user off to see the answer to a similar question doesn't necessarily provide the answer they need. In cases like these, I'll often close as dupe more to consolidate than to simply boot it from the system. In other words, here's the particular answer you need, but the next person that stumbles upon this question might find a better answer for them on the similar question's thread.

Decisions to close, for me, are based on whether the question merits one of the close reasons. If the user provided no code, they're going to get a close vote from me for Off-topic > Why isn't this code working?. However, I might still take a stab in the dark at an answer if I have a good assumption of what's likely the problem.


For things like off-topic, you might well know the answer and also vote to close, and also recommend migration to some other SE site for which you're familiar with the topic rules. Seems odd to say you shouldn't answer in that case, since the answer will migrate with the question, except if we say something like, "it's our purpose to dissuade people who post off-topic questions by denying them an answer, not our purpose to get question and answer to the right place".

I suppose you could try to follow the question to its new location and answer it there, but that sounds like hassle and SE didn't get where it is today by making it difficult to answer.

Disabling dupehammer (or putting up a dialogue saying "why are you being weird?") for people who've answered the question makes sense to me: they should instead put their answer on the question they're marking this a dupe of, shouldn't they? If their answers to the two questions are substantially different, maybe they shouldn't be marked as dupes.

However, even there I can see a case for doing it. "Dupe" is generally taken to include, "this question is a subset of that other question". There are probably cases where this question's answer only needs to be one tenth the size of the answers to the question it duplicates. The C++-FAQ essays spring to mind. So writing an answer with just the relevant part of the dupe-answer, might be more convenient than commenting to describe which part of the dupe-answer is relevant. I'd tend to settle for the comment, though, unless I'd already posted my answer before finding the dupe.

I've also occasionally wanted to hedge my bets. I'll vote to close, but if the community disagrees with me and thinks it's a fine question then OK, here's my answer. This probably happens less these days, though, since I'm more able to predict the community's opinion.

Closing bugs due to typos seem an obvious case as well where the question should be both answered and closed, quite reasonably by the same person. The solutions to such questions often fit in comments, so we could live without the ability to do both, but an answer's an answer.

In short: there are probably close reasons and situations where banning one person from doing both things makes sense. There are situations where it doesn't. So don't take a blunt instrument to a minor problem, but if there's dupehammer abuse then of course do something specifically about that.

You must log in to answer this question.

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