Considered nodes are a hint to the janitors that they have some work to do. It can happen that the work gets done in a fashion that doesn't reset the consideration (perhaps even by the OP) and it may take a short time before that is noticed and fixed, but generally that isn't more than a few tens of minutes.

If you notice something that has been in a really bad state for a long time then you could /msg janitors, but please, only for something serious. After all the janitor who fixes the node might have been answering a question (some of the janitors around here are quite bright - for janitors), and we wouldn't want to delay that would we :).

Just to follow up on something GrandFather wrote a while back in a message to janitors:

Would it be helpfull to show the time when a node was considered in the NRE table?

Yes! I think it would help in the sorts of situations mentioned by the OP. It would also be useful when trying to decide if Monks have had sufficient time to weigh in on a perhaps controversial or non-obvious edit.

HTH,

planetscape

When that happens, I just vote on keep. If enough people do it, this tells janitors that that node doesn't need any consideration.

This is also what I've been doing. If no one else cares enough to make a change to PM, I guess that's what I'll keep doing. It just feels to me the same as when I see code where the programmer uses the same variable for different purposes in different sections of code. Just feels like bad design -- or in this case misuse of design because a needed feature is missing.

In other words, we're letting human process take up the slack where the computer code doesn't provide all the needed functionality. Sometimes this is a good idea -- sometimes human processes are the best solution -- I just don't think that is the case here. Wouldn't it be helpful for the janitors to see a note of some kind indicating that the requested change has already been made? Seems like it would streamline their own workflow.

--DrWhy

"If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains. Oh, wait..."

The voting on Nodes to Consider does not use your XP votes.

It simply costs a few seconds of your time to vote.

People might stop checking Nodes to Consider if they kept seeing "already been done" all the time.

For the probable effort to change the database, I don't see the value gained by having it.