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Let me just say this bluntly: we need to do more moderation.

Some facts:

  • For a while, I was the only user with any active delete votes. (I posted a message in chat to rectify this, which helped a little)
  • Currently, bad content stays on the site for too long, accumulating usually no delete votes.
  • Flags are acted on extremely slowly; the same flag sometimes sticks in the queue for 3 or more days. Never have I seen a flag handled within 5 hours.
  • General programming and other off topic questions sometimes take a day to be closed.
  • has brought in a lot of attention, so this is especially important now
  • Now the flood of code trolling questions is starting to get unmanageable...
  • Yes, Community♦ will auto-delete stuff, but the quicker bad content gets off the site, the better. We need to show the actual quality of our site, not this flood of code trolling questions. (And any other low quality questions that may appear.)
  • etc...

So, I propose a moderator election, and some other things, but mainly that.

I know that elections can happen when the current mods call out to the powers that be. Why not do that? No offense to mods, but many users are much more active than them.

The last activity by any mod was December 21st. It was a simple comment about some code. Again, no offense, but the moderators barely do any (publicly viewable) moderation.

Check, if you would like. See for yourself.

Our site needs more moderation. It needs moderators that regularly moderate.

If bad things were stopped sooner, people would get the right idea and do better things. If we want to get out of beta, we need to show that we can; we need to keep every question on our site's topic and show that we can survive as a full Stack Exchange site.

So, it would be great if the current moderators would reach out to Stack Exchange and get an election going.

I also have a related but minor and less important proposal: just get the community to do better moderation. Just do that, however you can - tell other users; post a community bulletin; hold a contest or something. And if you're reading this as a privileged users on CodeGolf.SE, just follow this call to action and do more moderation.

Thank you for reading. I just want one of my favorite Stack Exchange sites to succeed.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I don't care much about deletion. Things can be deleted if needed, but Community♦ will usually take care of it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ Indeed, and moderators should not get into the middle of it in most cases. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Johannes The quicker it gets off the site, though, the better. \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ BTW, I just looked at your "publicly visible moderation" link, and indeed it won't display anything relating to actual moderation that moderators do. There is a mod-only page that does show most (not all) moderation activity by other moderators. Although I'm not permitted to share the contents of that page, I can say that moderators do take administrative actions more frequently and more recently than you've mentioned. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris Alright, thanks for clearing that up. I was aware th mods do some things "behind the scenes", but I didn't know that much of it was not viewable to normal users. Still, IMHO closure and deletion are very important to maintain a high quality standard. \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ They are, and moderators are supposed to let high-rep users do the closing and/or deletion unless a post is seriously egregious (and has been flagged by other users as being so). \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris From that page: "Keep the site reasonably on topic by closing, migrating, or removing blatantly off-topic questions." Sometimes programming questions and other obviously OT ones stay here for a long long time. The quicker they go, the better our site will look, and a binding close/delete could be really helpful in those cases. \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ Sure. Be sure to flag those posts so moderators can attend to them. Most of the time, unless the post is seriously bad, moderators will choose to be hands-off, letting the community's will speak for itself. This is especially important for high-traffic sites like SO, where moderators have to be careful not to be heavy-handed (nor give the appearance thereof). \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris Ok, so how do I flag this programming question? i.imgur.com/pbdbl8V.png \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 18:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Choose "other (needs ♦ moderator attention)". That's the only option that notifies moderators. In the specific case of your screenshot, I've asked the SO mods to see if they want the question, in which case I'll migrate the question there. If they don't want the question, I'll just delete it. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 18:23

1 Answer 1

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I don't oppose the idea of holding an election to bring more moderators on board, but my understanding is that elections generally only happen for graduated (out of beta) sites, and this site doesn't seem like it's going to graduate any time soon.

Though, with your level of passion and dedication, perhaps you could help it graduate? You are signing up to be nominated for moderatorship, aren't you? :-)

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I believe if the mods of any site get the SE staff to see that they need more help, they can set up an election, though I'm not sure since I don't have much experience with beta sites. We need something different to happen if we want graduation though. Thanks, I didn't consider actually nominating myself; I would be willing to be the site's janitor to help it graduate though :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ Actually, for graduated sites, potential moderators must nominate themselves for election. This is because there were a couple of incidents where high-rep users on SO (like Jon Skeet or Greg Hewgill) were nominated by other users and elected, and then they had to decline because they weren't up for the workload of moderatorship (and for SO, it's a very full-on job). \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm not sure what the procedure for grabbing more mods on a beta site is, but I will let Shog9 know that you are up for the work. :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ Why thank you :-) just a random guy on SE wanting one of his favorite sites to succeed \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ Well, other (non-current-mod) candidates that I would vote for in an election are: Jan Dvorak and Peter Taylor. \$\endgroup\$
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JohannesKuhn Excellent. But they have to opt themselves in first, as commented above. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:34
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Johannes I would definitely vote for them as well, if they nominated themselves. I know that are very devoted to the site. But still, this is all speculation; there might not even be an election :-P \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JohannesKuhn What about you? Are you nominating yourself? There may or may not be an election, but knowing who's up for doing the work is a definite first step. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 2:52
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'd do the job, but I believe that I'm not a good moderator with my radical ideas (like vote to delete all "language, score - code" answers.) As mod, my vote would be binding, as normal user, the community can stop me. \$\endgroup\$
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Dec 29, 2013 at 11:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ @JohannesKuhn That's true, as a moderator you'd be obliged to be hands-off in such cases, and you might find that to be too onerous. ;-) \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Dec 29, 2013 at 14:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's sad that the moderators can't really moderate. \$\endgroup\$
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Dec 29, 2013 at 20:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JohannesKuhn At cases like those, you just need to leave a comment. Since I can edit posts immediately, I constantly need to remind myself: "Is this a suggestion or a necessary edit?" For the former, I leave a comment; latter, I edit. \$\endgroup\$
    – Justin
    Dec 30, 2013 at 1:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris So, any status on this so far? I have noticed that you've been closing and deleting a lot more recently; thank you for being so responsive :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Dec 30, 2013 at 12:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris So... what's the status on this? Will there be an election? What did Shog say? \$\endgroup\$
    – Doorknob
    Jan 2, 2014 at 4:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DoorknobofSnow Shog9 has acknowledged my message, but I haven't heard anything further since. (My message was a link to your comment, plus a note that we may have a potential new volunteer for moderatorship. For posterity, the actual exchange is here, but you won't be able to access the link unless you're a moderator.) \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Jan 2, 2014 at 12:19

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