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I was just doing some Reviews on the Fist Posts queue, and encountered this post:

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This I found really unusual, as this is a one month old answer, which is even accepted and has more than 10 upvotes. It is also closed.

I checked the First Posts history and of what I can see I was the only one to review it recently. Furthermore, exploring that history of reviews I can see that on the date of posting (12/7/17) user @scaaahu successfully reviewed it.

Any reasons why this post came again on the review queue? Could this be some malfunction or bug, or has someone experienced this before?

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    I think that we need a new status-UndocumentedFeature. – IDrinkandIKnowThings Jan 6 '18 at 1:25
  • @IDrinkandIKnowThings did you find it unusual also? Seems to.be some sort of backsafe for reviews, but never have I noticed. – DarkCygnus Jan 6 '18 at 10:27
  • Its one of those bugs that has no real negative impact on the system, and is way too much work to fix. So instead we call it an undocumented feature :p – IDrinkandIKnowThings Jan 6 '18 at 21:59
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Apparently, the position of "first post" is dynamic.

This related post on Meta.SE says:

Questions are added to the queue when they qualify for it. Normally, a question qualifies as a "first post" when it is posted - but there are situations where this doesn't happen until later on:

  • ...
  • Other, earlier posts from the same author are deleted

That's what happened here. This user had two posts, both answers. The other one was on a question that was deleted today, taking its answers with it. That answer was previously reviewed as a first post (by you, in fact), but it seems that information doesn't get recorded with the user. Three minutes after the older question was deleted, the now-only post from this user entered review.

I agree it's peculiar. I suppose erring on the side of more review is better, particularly if a new user posts a bunch of stuff at once. There might be better ways to implement reviews, at the cost of code complexity and developer time, but I don't know if it's worth it.

  • Yep, seems that you are correct...Funny enough, this also explained to me why I lost 10 rep today, as I also had an answer on that deleted question. I also agree that we should err on the sire of more reviews, so seems that this behavior is useful. – DarkCygnus Jan 5 '18 at 17:43

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