First, the word "close" can have a few very distinct meanings, some being:
- "to come to an end or terminate" such as, Close the door [or close this question].
- "having the parts or elements near to one another" such as, The candidates are in a close race. (I'm trying to keep close to the voting paradigm -- haha)
(Definitions taken from Dictionary.com definition of close)
And, when I first saw on SO/SE "View close votes" I read it as the second, but I couldn't understand what that meant. (me: "Close? Close to what?") To those of us who don't (or didn't) know that there was a voting process to close out a question, it's easily misunderstood.
Don't you think the phrase should be rewritten to say, "View votes to close" instead of "View close votes" because it would be more clearly understood?
Here is a screen shot of the listing of Privileges. It's the primary place where the phrase is shown.