I was reviewing close votes, and got this question:

Maximum product prefix string

One of the comments links to another, older question - in which the actual question is even word-for-word identical; in other words, the newer one is a duplicate:

Java programming task efficiency

Alas, selecting "close - duplicate of - 20251645" got me the infamous "STOP! Look and Listen" modal. Note that if I were to encounter this question outside of the review queue, I would have, too, voted to close as a duplicate (I am aware that the answers look more useful with this newer question).

Is this intended behavior of the review queue?

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    I've voted to close the older one as a duplicate of the newer one. The new one has a better answer, more votes and half the views in only 15 days vs the year old older post. – Andy Sep 2 '15 at 14:39
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    @Andy: Hmm, that does sound unintuitive, but on second thought, it is perhaps the most reasonable course of action. Thank you. – Piskvor Sep 2 '15 at 14:41
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    @pnuts: Without your comment above, I would have voted "totally absolutely unclear what you're asking" on that question - the wording is way too abstract. With it, your question becomes understandable. – Piskvor Sep 2 '15 at 22:30
  • @pnuts I think the comparison of your question and this question is why for SO questions we're advised to provide sample input and expected output. Your question was way too abstract. – Joel Sep 3 '15 at 5:55
  • @pnuts Maybe I should. I'm trying to point out what it was about your question that caused many people (even the person who finally helped you) to struggle to understand what you were asking --- to the point that the question was closed and people speculated it was a tasteless April Fools joke. Given that background, I don't think it was my inexperience that caused my difficulty understanding. Perhaps I would understand your question better with more experience, but even with my inexperience I understood this question because an example and an explanation of what went wrong were given. – Joel Sep 3 '15 at 6:25
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    @pnuts - I won't continue this further. It's clear that only one person figured out what you meant, and that was only because s/he knew about the issue already. You won't convince me that his/her first comment shows any evidence that your question was understood. His/her second post starts with a guess about what you saw. Her/his third post is an educated guess: "given that you also mentioned duplicate..." I was trying to help and explain why the question here was clearly understood by everyone and why your question was a "waste of breath". It's your choice how you take my comments. – Joel Sep 3 '15 at 6:53

It is impossible to predict duplicates that no one has identified yet; as a result, they tend to screw with the audit-generator pretty badly. I've gotten bit by this myself.

Don't worry about it; you know you're right.

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    Aha, so that was the cause. Thanks! – Piskvor Sep 2 '15 at 14:47
  • But it was somewhat identified by at least one dup vote (assuming the comment was generated) that aged away, right? And that is probably due to the low traffic nature of those tags. – rene Sep 2 '15 at 14:53
  • @rene: May have been autogenerated, or maybe not. If not, I would personally balk at parsing comments for finding possible duplicates. – Piskvor Sep 2 '15 at 15:01
  • So, yes there was a comment, @rene... But no close vote or even flag. That would've helped avoid this. – Shog9 Sep 2 '15 at 15:02
  • @Shog9: Yeah, after looking at the question more closely, I did guess that the review machine had no data from which to guess the duplicate-intent. – Piskvor Sep 2 '15 at 15:03
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    Screwed up audits happen consistently, there is one on the Hot Meta Post at least weekly if not more often. When that happens to people it's quite upsetting does not provide good site experience to them. Is this considered acceptable? "We do not know how to fix it, so we'll leave it in it's current abysmal state, move along" – Andrew Savinykh Sep 2 '15 at 19:45
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    @zespri: There's an easy fix: Get rid of the Custodian and Steward badges. Then we wouldn't have robo-reviewers, wouldn't need audits, etc. But then we wouldn't have enough reviewers to actually handle flags in a reasonable amount of time, so it's a non-starter. – Kevin Sep 2 '15 at 20:05
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    @Kevin We would still need audits because you sometimes see those "Why did I fail this audit?" posts where the audit was actually right and the reviewer wrong. People make mistakes or don't get the rules, even if they are not robo-reviewing. – LisaMM Sep 3 '15 at 12:59
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    Guys, "don't worry" is not an answer. REAL answer could be smth proposed here meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188780/… but it is still not implemented – old-ufo Feb 7 '18 at 9:06
  • @old-ufo yes, that answer already exists there and in other places too so no need to repeat it. that doesn't make "don't worry" any less of an answer to this question. – Gimby Feb 8 '18 at 12:01
  • May be it doesn`t make, but my other question (meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/256727/…) is being "closed as duplicate" with pointing to this "Don't worry" answer as an answer to my question. That is ridiculus, wtf is going? – old-ufo Feb 8 '18 at 13:03

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