Ugh, this Scattershot psq is listed as “hot” in my feed math.stackexchange.com/q/3395467/29335

@XanderHenderson well, in your example the moderator wouldn't have a more powerful vote because you only need five, but I'm guessing you meant three, not four.

@XanderHenderson That's fine but you may find you're alone, as there's no expectation put forth by the network for gold badgers to... not use the power the system gave them.

@TylerH That's the point, the moderator would only vote to close/reopen questions with four votes so that the mod vote is not more powerful...

@TylerH Again, several moderators have noted in the past that they will generally not vote to close a topic unless that topic already has four votes to close, since, otherwise, the moderator would be exercising the extra power of their vote, and potentially overruling community moderation.

In the example cited above, the question had three reopen votes when the gold-badger voted to reopen. Hence the gold-badger exercised the extra power of their vote.

However, that, by itself, is not that troublesome.

The real issue, as I see it, is that the gold-badger used their gold badge to reopen a post which they had answered. And even that wasn't what I was originally reacting to, when I read the timeline backwards---my first impression was that the gold-badger reopened the question, then answered it (which truly would have been abusive, I think).

@TylerH The system gives gold-badgers extra privileges, but it expects the gold-badgers not to abuse those privileges. The fact that they have extra powers means that they need to be cognizant of those extra powers, and not use them in a way that is abusive, or could be perceived as abusive.

In the case above, I think that there is a good argument that there is a conflict of interest, i.e. reopening a post which you have answered. The best policy in such a situation would be, in my opinion, to wait for others to vote to reopen (and not cast any vote).

If you aren't getting the upvotes you want, there is always the meta thread:

@ArnaudD. @XanderHenderson Several mods have also made it clear over the years they don't hold any intention of refraining from using their voting power and judgment where they see fit, especially considering they were elected for their judgment. There is no provision in the moderator agreement not to use the powers they are given, either.

@XanderHenderson Yes, abuse is not OK, but making a determination that a question is not a duplicate is not an abuse of that power, even if you have an answer on that question. The system affords you the power to unilaterally reopen questions closed as duplicates where you have an answer. If it were considered a blanket abuse of power to do so, the system would not allow for it.

The crux here is that two experts disagree and have both used their two votes. Neither of them can vote again, so there's no real issue.

Considering that 7 other users (whose scores in the tag are unknown to me) agreed with the gold badge holder who reopened the question (as of yesterday), you'd be hard-pressed to argue abuse of the power.

Granted, I don't know the site well or the user, so I don't know if there's some history or pattern of action here; I'm only looking at this one incident in isolation.

At any rate, what I am sure of even for this site is that if you think there's been some abuse of the system, you should flag it for moderator attention or bring it before Meta, not post it in a chatroom asking it to be undone by others.

I didn't mean to say that mods (or gold badge owners) should always wait for other people to vote. I just didn't really understand why you were talking about three votes rather than four (FWIW I hadn't noticed your first message so I wasn't aware of the specific instance).

@ArnaudD. I just re-read your comment above and Xander's example and see I misread it as "won't vote when there are only four votes" instead of "won't vote unless there are already four votes", sorry

@TylerH I disagree. I think that the question is a duplicate. I brought it to the attention of this room in order to have the question re-closed as a duplicate.

That is the point of this room.

I also mentioned the history of the question and answer, as I believed it to be relevant.

Notice the hedge: I think that this is inappropriate... I am not asking for the gold-badger to be sanctioned, and I am on the fence about whether or not it was an abuse. Personally, I don't think that it was an appropriate use of the badge, but the real goal was to bring the duplicate question to the attention of this room.

cv-pls sequences-and-series For the record: this is the question being discussed. Is \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} 1 = -\frac{3}{12}\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} 1 = -\frac{3}{12} true?‭ - Aops Vol. 2‭ 2019-10-05 01:02:11Z

@XanderHenderson For what it's worth, in SOCVR over on Stack Overflow, we disallow such requests where there's a disagreement between two gold badges, because the community (specifically SMEs) should decide via Meta rather than a tacitly-approved voting ring (even if there is a SME in the room). This is a different site, but the same principle likely applies; this kind of room is OK by the grace of Shog alone. But perhaps Mathematics.SE is OK with more heavy-handed intervention; I don't know.

@TylerH Indeed, MSE is not SO. It should also be noted that this room is not a "voting ring"---the point of this room is to make public and transparent efforts to close, reopen, undelete, delete, and edit posts.

The role it serves is similar to the role played by the Reopen Requests thread on meta.

As evidence of the fact that this room is not a public voting ring, please note that the question I believe is a duplicate remains open.

Also, if you look back in the transcript of the room, you will note numerous occasions in which questions are mentioned here and one or more users object to the suggested action. The point is to discuss action regarding specific posts.

Perhaps this could be done on Meta, but I suspect that if the discussion were forced to take place on meta, meta would rapidly become flooded with CRUDE-style requests, and rendered relatively useless.

@XanderHenderson It's a voting ring in that it is a place for concerted efforts to reopen or close questions inorganically (note I did say tacit).

We have dealt with the litigation over this (and similar) issues many times on Stack Overflow with SOCVR. The difference with CRUDE is that it has a different name, that's... about it. (And nowhere near as many rules, I'm sure :-))

Delete: DA, DB, DC, DD, DE, DF, DG, DH

Delete: DI, DJ, DK, DL, DM, DN, DO, DP

D1, D2, D3.

D4, D5, D6.

D7, D8, D9.

D10, D11, D12.

D13, D14, D15.