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The last few days I've been logging in only first thing in the morning (I'm on holiday, and the family get annoyed if I'm on the Physics SE all day :-) and there have been more than 20 questions with close votes in the review queue. So all my 20 close votes get used up before I've even finished the review queue.

We can argue about the close policy, but that's a separate issue. Given our current policy on closing I have too few close votes to effectively implement the site policy. I don't know if the number of close votes is SE wide, or whether it's tweakable on a site by site basis, but given the Physics SE (probably) closes more questions than any other SE it would be nice if we could have more votes.

Before the flaming starts, please note that I am not commenting on whether our policies on closing questions are right or wrong. I'm just saying that 20 close votes per >3k user is insufficient to implement those policies.

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    $\begingroup$ I agree too, but part of the argument against might be that the other 3k+ members of this site need to be participating in closing & how can we get them to help? $\endgroup$ – Kyle Kanos May 27 '15 at 11:52
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    $\begingroup$ This is probably more of a question for Meta Stack Exchange $\endgroup$ – Danu May 27 '15 at 12:29
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    $\begingroup$ I think the need is for more 3k+ users to use the queue, which will help diversify the reviewer population (also necessary). $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty May 27 '15 at 13:18
  • $\begingroup$ FWIW, there's currently 183 3k+ users. $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ May 27 '15 at 16:52
  • $\begingroup$ Also FWIW, 28 of those 183 haven't done a single review ever. $\endgroup$ – Kyle Kanos May 27 '15 at 16:52
  • $\begingroup$ Any comment from the mods? Can we ask the powers that be for more close votes? $\endgroup$ – John Rennie May 28 '15 at 5:07
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    $\begingroup$ Hmmm ... Stack Overflow went through a period with the closevotes available to active closers weren't sufficient to keep up with the poor (or poorly formed) questions. In a sense it could be seen as a positive sign about our growth, but we can certainly ask the team if we should be treated as a "bigger" site these days. $\endgroup$ – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten♦ May 28 '15 at 17:05
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There's a difference between close votes and close vote reviews.

Some other sites give people more than 24 close votes per day (for example, the number was bumped from 24 to 50 on ServerFault a couple of months ago). But I think StackOverflow is the only site that gives people more than 20 reviews per day (and even for SO, I'm not positive it's more than 20).

So more close votes per day can be increased on a per-site basis, and has been on sites with lots of questions, but reviews per day is unlikely to be increased. The main reason has been mentioned in comments - instead of a few people doing more reviews, more people should be doing them.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, I didn't realise there was a difference between number of votes and number of reviews. I assume they're both set to 20 here because once I can no longer review I can no longer vote to close either. $\endgroup$ – John Rennie May 28 '15 at 5:06
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    $\begingroup$ @JohnRennie You get 24 close votes here. And remember that the review queue allows only 20 reviews. That means a vote to leave open counts against your reviews. So if you use all 20 reviews but 4 of them are a leave open, you should have 8 close votes remaining. Ask ACuriousMind how to find the questions without the review queue. He usually uses up his votes before using up his reviews $\endgroup$ – Jim May 28 '15 at 14:08
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    $\begingroup$ @JimtheEnchanter: I don't really go looking for them...I just look at many of the questions when they're posted fresh, I think. $\endgroup$ – ACuriousMind♦ May 28 '15 at 19:21
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The Stack Exchange model for solving these sorts of problems seems to be to turn them into a game and give out badges.

For reviews we already have the custodian/reviewer/steward badge series, which awards the total number of reviews over the lifetime of an account.

The issue here seems to be that we want more people to spend more time reviewing the queues. You could cultivate that habit in people by awarding a bronze badge for exhausting all your review tasks for a day (á la the "mortarboard" for getting the maximum number of points in a day). Next step up might be a silver badge for using all your review tasks on five consecutive days, and a gold badge for using all your review tasks on thirty consecutive days.

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  • $\begingroup$ On the other hand, having so-so questions age out of the close queue isn't the end of the world. $\endgroup$ – rob♦ Jun 8 '15 at 14:43

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