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In connection with the moderator elections, as we have been for the previous few, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. I wanted to write Autumn but for some reason it feels like it runs smoother to say Fall here.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

Here's how it'll work:

  • During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, November 16th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 3:00 pm EST on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

  • This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.

  • At the end of the phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, containing 10 questions in total.

  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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  • 9
    "questions or feedback about this new process" -- Could you point out what has changed from last time? It seems the same to me.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 2:36
  • 4
    I could probably remove "new" from the text in the future.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 11:40
  • 9
    It's not Fall every where in the world -- just the northern hemisphere. Just Ask an Earth Scientist. :D
    – Adam Porad
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 18:43

27 Answers 27

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141

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention.

How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

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  • 46
    This issue is currently plaguing SO. +1 for a very relevant question
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:47
  • 11
    Sample: replacing "intializing" with "initializing", but leaving everything else untouched (just click the triangles to see the diff, say the first 10). 100 were submitted per day for a few days.
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 18:37
  • 6
    @pnuts If you're going on an edit spree of titles, editing only titles, and leaving huge errors in the post... That should be handled the same, I would think.
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:18
  • @pnuts Which is great, if it's one post at a time. But if a person does, to steal the example in my post, 45 within the course of an hour, and that's all they fix... Might be time to chat with them about not doing that...
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:36
  • 1
    @pnuts At any rate, it's still going to be interesting to see how the candidate handle the situation.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:43
  • 1
    It seems to me that numbers matter, somewhat.  If a person submits one minor edit per day, I'd be willing to assume that it was an honest (although perhaps slightly misguided) attempt to improve the site — the user was reading the post, saw an error, and submitted an edit without performing due diligence.  But 10 or more per day smells like a blatant attempt to manufacture rep inexpensively (expending a minimum of effort), without regard for the workload for others [reviewers] that is created as a by-product.
    – Scott - Слава Україні
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:46
  • @pnuts: But there’s a difference between encouragement and motivation.  For example, government employees are paid a salary.  If somebody wants to be a clerk or a maintenance worker (or a computer professional) for the government because he needs a job (i.e., needs the money), that’s OK.  If somebody wants to become a judge or be elected to a legislative body or an executive position primarily for the salary, that’s a problem — I wouldn’t want somebody in a job like that if he or she didn’t have an agenda (e.g., improve the roads or reduce crime) or principles —  … (Cont’d)
    – Scott - Слава Україні
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 21:43
  • 2
    (Cont’d) …  partly because a person who was in it only for the money might be particularly receptive to bribes, but mostly because his/her behavior would be largely unpredictable.  Similarly here.  A user who is motivated by improving the site, and merely encouraged by the rep, might just need to be educated.  A user who is motivated by the rep, and who uses trivial improvements to the site as a vehicle to get rep, needs an attitude adjustment.
    – Scott - Слава Україні
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 21:44
  • 1
    @Scott The comment chain's getting a little derailed here- Perhaps you and pnuts should take this to chat if you really wish to continue to discuss this?
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 21:45
  • For some, it's about reputation and badges... as if it's a high score in a game. We should continue to stress... quality over quantity!
    – NotJay
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 13:42
  • In principle it's clear, if you make incomplete or not useful edits you're to be punished, independently of the rep. Case closed. The case would be more interesting if some of the edits were indeed useful.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:41
  • 3
    @Trilarion: Not until everybody agrees on that. I for one think this war on "incomplete" edits is complete nonsense and utterly disrespectful to those users spending a lot of their own time fixing what they know how to fix, and leaving things they don't know how to fix to those who do. The SO database isn't going to blow up if a post is corrected over the course of several edits rather than all in one big edit. There's almost a good justification in it for the whole "but it increases the edit suggestion review queue size", which I'd buy if that queue were in any way too large to handle.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 13:50
  • 2
    @Trilarion: Yeah lots of people do keep saying that. I don't think the extent to which your viewpoint is supported has really changed since that "last time"; I'm just saying that it's not a unanimous feeling and therefore not something I think we should treat as an "of course".
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 15:20
  • 1
    One key thing that I didn't see mentioned here -- fixing a single typo, especially in the title, may help others successfully find the post with keywords. Obviously it depends on the word, but all too often I ask a question only to find that someone posts a duplicate link on my post -- even though I searched and was not able to find it. Improvement of any kind should be taken for what it is, improvement. Forcing someone to perform an "all-or-nothing" edit would make aspiring helpers more intimidated to try to help. Why is it bad that people want rep? It's there for a reason.
    – Tim S.
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 0:33
  • 1
    @Kendra Thanks for asking back. When I saw so many questions which I thought should already be answered more or less by policies and discussions on meta I wondered if maybe people here think that the moderators should define the policies and not the whole community. Otherwise why would you ask them for it - I thought. I'm very glad this is not really the case and it's either about testing the understanding or about gray zones and the general policy of how to treat incomplete edits is more or less still defined by the community as a whole. I like this more. Many thanks for the discussion.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 18:55
79

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users.

What do you do?

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    This is actually an interesting issue, and one that moderators do face on a regular basis. This is a global site, and we often receive flags arguing that an avatar is offensive to a certain group of people or that a comment is derogatory in a way that we might not be aware of.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 15:33
  • 5
    Related: communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/587/…
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 19:32
  • 4
    A detailed description of a hypothetical post that's offensive only to a minority of users would help here; I'm not really clear on what kind of scenario you're envisaging.
    – Mark Amery
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 22:16
  • 2
    I agree that the way the question is worded encompasses a lot of very different possible scenarios. One end of the spectrum is stuff like tasteless jokes about some group of people, which will normally be removed quickly. The other is things that most of us probably wouldn't deem offensive enough to warrant moderator action on (say, mildly strong language, a cross or a half moon or a rainbow flag in a gravatar, mildly sexual references in a user name or dissing a country in your profile text)
    – Pekka
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 22:30
  • 3
    @Pekka웃 ... or claiming to be a descendent of people killed in the Armenian genocide, or an Iranian homosexual, or a gender dysphoric person, or one of any other group that some other minority angrily insists doesn't exist. The vast majority of things I can think of that offend only some minority group are things that very clearly shouldn't be removed on offensiveness grounds.
    – Mark Amery
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 23:35
  • 9
    Offense is only taken and cannot be given. Thar be dragons in accepting everything as potentially offensive and thereby grounds for censorship. Good question; I'm very interested in hearing candidate responses to this.
    – user559633
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 0:16
  • 1
    Yes please! This is critical in a broader sense, and it's important for us to know how candidates understand the balance between offense, true hate speech, and what's not actually hurting anyone.
    – Linuxios
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 17:01
  • 1
    @tristan: Absolutely. Couldn't agree more with "Offense is only taken and cannot be given". It sums up very well the subjectivity of offense and the difficulty of moderating it fairly and without large scale censorship.
    – Linuxios
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 17:02
  • 1
    @tristan if a person is throwing rocks around, is it a by passers fault if they are hurt by the impact? No one is advocating censorship, but people need to be made responsible for what they say and how that impacts a community. People should think about what they are going to say in a community. The next question is, what percentage of the community is acceptable to mean impacting the community? if 1% are offended? 0.01%, 10%... and I don't purport to have an answer to that one. What one person may find funny, another may find very insulting.
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:27
  • 1
    Rocks are physical things that do tangible harm. Be careful in your calls for controlling what others think and express based on untenable analogies. People are "made responsible" for negative impact on a community -- that's why there's the flag interface.
    – user559633
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 5:16
  • 3
    I actually forgot the original context w/r/t to my tools comment -- it's quite late here and your "percentage acceptable offense" angle threw me off. I didn't state that my reasoning was more valid than yours and that you weren't "entitled" to things on a website. If your comment on being "personally insulted" is in regard to our exchange, that's unfortunate. I stick to my original concern - offensive is subjective and is only taken. This is a huge question; I hope it's selected as the enforcement of a moderator belief has serious impact on who will choose to be part of the SO community.
    – user559633
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 6:17
  • 1
    The moderator could just start a general discussion about policies for such cases...
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:46
  • 4
    @MrsEd Sure. Acknowledging the Armenian genocide is punished by imprisonment in Turkey and Turks are taught that it never occurred, so patriotic Turks would take an Armenian claiming to be descended from genocide victims as an offensive libel against his ancestors. The Iranian government proudly claims that Iran, in great part thanks to its Islamic culture, has achieved close to zero rates of homosexuality (this may be true) so, again, a patriotic Iranian would likely take an assertion of homosexuality by another Iranian to be deliberately offensive and provocative.
    – Mark Amery
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 19:20
  • 2
    @MarkAmery thanks for taking the time to explain. It is interesting. Ps I had a pic of a pink Mr Ed the talking horse, but my change to the French has left my name making no sense :)
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 20:07
  • 1
    Just missed the edit window. I wanted to add that it was brilliant to include the post would not be offensive to the majority of users, because that is a critical piece that really probes whether someone understands discrimination, especially the more subtle and inadvertent aspects of it.
    – John Y
    Commented Nov 25, 2015 at 22:49
78

I posted this last time around, and I think it still has value:

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

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    @pnuts I didn't say I don't have an answer or that I don't think my answer is right, just that the answers given might be revealing/helpful. Some of the things people say during elections are pretty surprising (and I'm sure at least a few people have felt that way about my answers!).
    – elixenide
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 3:43
  • 1
    @pnuts: the issue is that different people consider different (the opposite) answers to this question to be too obvious.
    – jfs
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 6:05
  • This is a question about the site policy, not about moderator behavior. The site policy is afaik that usually every bit of code needs a bit of explanation. So self-explanatory code while sounding cool, does rarely exist. If however all the explanation is on comments in the code, why not.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:43
  • 3
    @Trilarion Actually, it's about how to apply the site's policies to an answer that is not in strict compliance with the the policies but still has value. Sometimes, that's a difficult call, which is one reason the mods need good judgment.
    – elixenide
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 13:14
  • @EdCottrell Still, the first answer in Can code-only answers be high quality? kind of gives a good canonical answer, does it?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 20:32
75

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

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    I like the idea of asking the candidates for an example of moderation style.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:49
  • 6
    @ryanyuyu My thought was that you can get a good feel for a person's attitude and experience by seeing their meta contributions. The ones that they select would probably say a lot about their perspective.
    – apaul
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:53
  • Some moderator candidates can have several hundred answers spread across two meta sites (Meta.SO and Meta.SE). Picking one or a few answers can be counter productive, instead you should be looking at their overall meta participation and the +/- votes on those contributions.
    – slugster
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:20
  • 5
    "Meta posts written after this question was posted do not count."
    – Jean-François Corbett
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 8:43
  • @slugster Of course we should look at their overall contributions, but I was thinking that a contribution selected by the candidate may say something more about them.
    – apaul
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 16:20
  • As a candidate (and user voting on other candidates), I really like this question.
    – Andy Mod
    Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 17:47
66

Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

  • How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
  • How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
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  • So if the first two are guaranteed to be used, are we voting on the last three questions?
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 13:58
  • @Yvette Not really. Those three are more for if we don't get enough questions proposed, or enough that really fit the bill anyway. If you do want one of those to have a shot, you should, as stated in Grace's answer here, copy it to a new answer to be voted on that way.
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 15:22
  • 1
    "In your opinion, what do moderators do?" I like that most. Actually I hope there is already a question somewhere on meta with exactly this content.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:45
  • I like the second last one, something I never thought about
    – gitsitgo
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 14:29
62

Another oldie:

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

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    Contact SO and ask for it to be disassociated from your account :)
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 14:06
  • 1
    @pnuts - There are nuances to this and disagreements within the community (see the arguments in the comments here ), so I think it's useful to hear a potential moderator's thought process on this. This is a real circumstance that we are presented with on a near daily basis.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 15:27
  • 2
    @pnuts - The only "rules" that exist which might disqualify someone as a moderator candidate are those laid out in the moderator agreement for protecting private information about members of the site. Even licensing matters can be subject to debate.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 15:56
  • Ah the old ethical dilemma :-)
    – scrowler
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 18:06
  • 1
    Delete it. ... No! Wait!
    – Jean-François Corbett
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 8:45
  • 1
    Isn't this again more a question for a site wide policy? I mean surely the answer should not depend on the moderator who answers it but should always be kind of the same decision. Also it seems like such cases are easy to identify and similar in nature, so once you decide on a preferred action you can always do it.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:49
53

I'm mostly interested in close votes that could be seen as opinion themselves. One person's "unclear" might be another persons "good enough". Therefore,

Your future close-votes will be binding and hold more weight. You will be able to close questions on your own, without the assistance of 4 other community members. With that in mind, will you cast more or less close-votes than today?

If you don't like the wording, the following improvement was suggested, which I think is fine, too:

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions?

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    I think this is one of the best questions.
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 13:51
  • 2
    Agreed. Lots of power here to piss others off that don't agree.
    – scrowler
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:28
  • 3
    I like the first wording better.
    – guntbert
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 17:18
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If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

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    @pnuts seems closely tied to me: What would you improve, why you find it needs improving, and how you expect that the community reacts? (If this was journalism, I would include where and when there too :P)
    – Braiam
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 2:48
  • 2
    I believe this to be an utter waste of time as a main question. This question should only be used for as a kind of "getting to know how you roll" conversation starter. The SE network is a large and evolving platform, but some of the evolution is not as large or obvious as it once was, policies and guidelines are reasonably stable and cemented. An individual mod can contribute to the overall direction of the network in a limited way, but that isn't the direct purpose of the diamond mod role.
    – slugster
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:29
  • @slugster I know that the moderator position is not focused on directly changing SO's culture, but I want to know what will motivate their actions and judgments. Or if they think certain aspects of the status quo can be realistically improved. Personally, the "getting to know how you roll" will be very important in how I will ultimately vote. I don't see any shoo-ins the way Martijn was last election.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 4:34
  • 2
    @ryanyuyu that's a fair enough comment. Usually some of the more serious candidates will hang out in the chatroom dedicated to the election so you could ask them questions like this. I guess that my problem with this question is that it is difficult to answer in a material way, and easy for people to argue minor points of the answer that they don't agree with. It's almost like asking a beauty contestant what's the one thing they'd like to do, invariably the answer will either be waffle or something totally inane :)
    – slugster
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 5:51
  • Is it the goal of moderators to change SO policies/guidelines?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:51
  • @slugster I could see that happening. But hopefully the candidates (if asked this) will take their time and write an SO quality answer. Or at least paragraph. Thanks for the input; I'll remember it for the next election question I ask.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 13:37
44

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms?

Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.

Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

(Note that moderating chat isn't as simple as handling flags and banning people. You need to hang around and understand the culture of some of the rooms.)

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    This is a very loaded question. This was also extensively part in the Code Review Elections. Especially since moderatorship on SO does entail se-chat wide moderator privileges, (thanks JeremyBanks). There's obvious issues with moderation of chat that make this interesting from room / site culture to lack of certain moderation tools
    – Vogel612
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 22:57
  • I didn't mean to imply that chat moderation is required. It certainly isn't. But if I'm looking at a list of candidates to vote for, I'd give some weight to someone who might be willing to moderate chat as well.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 22:58
  • @Vogel612 Stack Overflow moderators do also get the Stack Exchange-wide chat moderation power, FWIW.
    – Jeremy Banks Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 22:59
  • 2
    I'm not active in chat, but I think this question could give me a better idea of the candidates. "No, because..." could be just as insightful as "Yes!"
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 1:35
  • 2
    This isn't entirely true. Gordon frequents Room 11(PHP) and does some moderation when he's on. But Jon is much more active with flags, etc. The problem with chat moderation, IMO, is that it's really limited to just simple flags (as opposed to SO QA flags) so that it makes the mods go chase down problems, rather than letting high rep users deal with simple flags and let mods deal with problem users. Really needs a separate meta to discuss.
    – Machavity Mod
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 13:10
  • 2
    This isn't really true; Boltclock is very active in the HTML/CSS chatroom as well. Don't forget there are other chatrooms aside from your own!
    – TylerH
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 15:07
  • @Vogel612 I'm not active on Code Review; what happened there to make chat moderation a major issue there?
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 20:25
  • @DanNeely there was some ... wind around the moderation of the site's main chat room, basically days before the election. here's a "Post Mortem". The gist is: Moderating chat is really really really difficult, and that's probably an understatement.
    – Vogel612
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 21:19
  • As a RO, I feel like better RO tools would fix this. The best I can do with Joe-Abusive-User right now is move his messages to another room and kick him out for 60 seconds. But I understand that the SE team is busy with other features that we've all asked for a bunch of times.
    – user559633
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 0:13
  • @tristan Joe-Abusive warrants a moderator flag. Abusive behaviour is not tolerated and may lead to a chat suspension. Joe-Off-Topic on the other hand should learn from being kicked, so that should be okay. You can flag for moderator attention directly on the message, using the "Flag for moderator attention" directly on the popup card of the message. Do not use 10k-Flags for this, 10k-Users do not have the tools to deal with Joe-Abusive
    – Vogel612
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 9:37
  • @Vogel612 Site moderation happens somewhat asynchronously and with delay. Chat is a more interactive model and more immediate. I don't agree that the current RO and site tools are adequate.
    – user559633
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 10:56
  • 1
    This is an insightful and topical question. Although Jon isn't the only moderator active in chat, he's certainly been one of the more active when it comes to moderating chat as a whole and delving into the long-slumbering issues affecting multiple rooms; interested to see who else has interest in helping there. Also, don't suppose you'd be convinced to run...?
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 23:48
  • 3
    @Shog9 As of right now, I don't have the time or the patience to mod such a large site. I'd also have to lock up my asshattery which I tend to spew all over the Lounge and the metas.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 0:02
  • +1 for Jon. He's really taken the chat as his personal responsibility and moderated rooms, even ones he's regularly not active in. Glad I voted for him. Would love to see more mods pick that up.
    – Benjamin Gruenbaum
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 8:45
  • 4
    You may have asked it, but 50 other people upvoted it; I consider it a reflection of the zeitgeist on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. We've traditionally ignored chat when it comes to defining moderation duties, and the result has been a set of wildly conflicting ideas and ideals when it comes to how chat is treated... Both by those who use it, and by those who probably should use it. It has become, frankly, an embarrassment to many.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 15:39
31

If elected, you will have to deal with some (many) crazy people. Do you feel you have thick enough skin to handle this? Are there any examples of how you've reacted in the past to similar situations?

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    This is one of the most important questions, IMHO. This issue comes up all the time, even when we mere mortals without a diamond try to post helpful comments. (E.g., "This is not an answer. Please ask a question instead by clicking blah blah blah.") It's surprising how often people lose it over that kind of thing.
    – elixenide
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:02
  • 16
    Too vague to be useful. The responses to this sort of question in the past have been platitudes that fail to reveal anything meaningful about an individual candidate.
    – jscs
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 8:29
  • 2
    @JoshCaswell, I disagree. "Do you have thick skin?" is a useless question on its own, but examples of dealing with craziness are very informative. A mod should treat disrespect with more respect, which is easy to say and difficult to practice. So if firm, objective, and helpful responses to provocative posts are demonstrated by example, then the question is quite meaningful.
    – kdbanman
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 19:37
  • 2
    @pnuts, The Dunning Kruger effect applies as long as someone is evaluating their own performance alone, so the "Do you have thick skin?" question is vulnerable on its own. But as long as the community sees examples of thick skin (or lack thereof), the effect is mitigated because the performance is judged by many.
    – kdbanman
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 19:44
  • 1
    Too slippery. By posting a real-world example, the candidate would be saying, "Here's how I dealt with this crazy person." It's like you're inviting potential moderators to torpedo themselves by trashing people they've dealt with behind their backs. And without examples, the question is pointless. If they didn't think they had thick enough skin, they wouldn't have nominated themselves.
    – Alan Moore
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 20:32
  • @AlanMoore That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it. That said, it could actually be another facet of the answer - can you talk about a prickly situation without torpedoing others? That's an important skill for a moderator to have.
    – Undo Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 20:36
  • 1
    "crazy people" is not a great choice of words.
    – Jean-François Corbett
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 8:52
  • 1
    This question could be asked of past moderators as a kind of post mortem: "Were you tough enough?", "Did you expect this?", ...
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:53
26

You're actively looking at Meta Stack Overflow, at least once a day, to try to get a feel for anything that might be changing in the community. Day after day, for at least three weeks, you're noticing posts from the same user questioning your decisions. Some of these questions are very constructively made, with examples and reasoning, while some are more just straight rants.

How do you handle the situation? What actions, if any, do you take concerning the user?

6
  • Are you certain these users are actively following Meta or plan to once elected?
    – Travis J
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 0:26
  • 12
    @TravisJ "If elected, I will stop reading meta" would be a very interesting campaign promise. I think it's a safe assumption.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 1:38
  • @TravisJ It's a setup for the question. The scenario setup. Given the scenario, they consider and answer. It's not an assumption or anything like that. (If they aren't actively checking Meta, they won't see the posts unless someone else points them out, anyway. One of the other mods would likely just handle it in most cases, explain why a mod choice was right or bring that particular dicussion to the mod's notice for their input.)
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 3:02
  • 8
    @pnuts Actually, would you believe me if I told you it was a scenario that came to me in a dream? (Sad but true... I had a dream last night about MSO. I was a moderator, and a user named Umbreon with a picture of my cat as their avatar was doing that exact thing. And then I woke up to the cat yelling at me. The things the subconscious does...)
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 3:08
  • 3
    @Kendra you seriously need to SO free time lol
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 14:04
  • @Kendra - that is just hilarious. Wish I could upvote comments just for that one.
    – user4843530
    Commented Nov 24, 2015 at 18:56
23

You notice some bad behaviour by a user (not important what it is) and you make the call that the behaviour is bad enough that a temporarily suspension is appropriate. You suspend the user and notify him/her of why you've taken that step.

The user contacts you back directly saying they are sorry and pleading for the suspension to be lifted early - the user seems genuine. What do you do?

  1. Lift the suspension
  2. Respond, denying clemency and reiterating the message
  3. Do nothing and don't respond
  4. Something else
2
  • 3
    5. Increase suspension length!
    – gitsitgo
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 20:45
  • I like this question, those with mod experience or abilities should be able to answer it easily.
    – slugster
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:34
21

This question comes directly from my moderation experience on Hardware Recommendations.

A registered user has taken it upon himself to answer a question directly to the OP, via email. Although the email was obtained legitimately, the OP has posted on Meta asking how they should respond. How do you deal with (a) the OP's queries, and (b) the email-answerer?

2
  • 5
    Even if this exact situation doesn't come up on SO often (dunno if it does in a similar form), given the meta questions that have popped up concerning answers from support staff of products asking users to email them about it, this seems like a decent question to me.
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:11
  • I guess simple policy analysis should give a good answer here: External communication cannot be forbidden but should not interfere with the working of SO.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 9:54
21

What is your stance on the use of the Low Quality Review Queue by lower-rep users to delete answers of poor quality that would not be covered by VLQ or NAA flags? Many users in the LQRQ would happily delete comment-answers, link-only answers, unintelligible badly-formatted posts, or other posts that have severe content or formatting problems.

Is this ok? Most moderators would not delete all these kinds of answers if they were flagged as VLQ or NAA because many of them do attempt to answer the question. This discrepancy between what moderators will delete, what LQRQ reviewers will delete, and the name "very low quality" and "severe content or formatting problems" in addition to the duality of "bad answer" flags (VLQ and NAA are not clearly differentiated) confuses many flaggers who unexpectedly get flags declined.

What will be your policy on handling VLQ and NAA flags? Do you support the more aggressive deleting of answers in the LQRQ? What is an acceptable answer, do comment-answers that attempt to answer the question count?

3
  • hey, the first question actually somewhat complicated.
    – Félix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 6:31
  • 6
    I think this is a great question -- I have noticed a pretty big gap between the things moderators delete via flags and the things that collect "recommend deletion" votes.
    – josliber
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 2:49
  • This is great, you have explained the confusion well.
    – user3956566
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 15:29
18

It is suggested that you have a minimum of 30 mins a day to devote to moderating the site.

  1. How are you likely to apportion your time most days? Intermittently, one big session?

  2. And given the answer to one what time of day are you most likely to be on? (using UTC)

This is with a view of having moderators covering the 24 hour time span comfortably. And not all people are up during the day or the night, etc

1
  • 3
    Intermittently. Most people prefer it that way. SO is not a classroom where you have to sit for an hour or so. You pop in whenever you can. what time of day are you most likely to be on? (using UTC)? - This is actually a good question. This way we can have a fair idea on how many mods might be available at a given time.
    – TheLostMind
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 15:04
14

The original revision of this question maybe isn't as clear as I'd hoped. See below for the original question.

Several candidates are moderators on multiple sites. How do you plan on balancing the workload from all of the sites you are or may become a moderator on? How would you handle activity increasing on one site to the point that you can no longer effectively moderate at the other(s)?

Original:

To those candidates that are already current moderators at other pages in the network:

If elected, how do you plan to balance your responsibility to this site with the responsibilities to the other sites where you are already a moderator? Do you believe that you have the willingness, for the foreseeable future, to add to the amount of time that you spend moderating and curating the sites that you are responsible for? Put another way, if in the future you had difficulty maintaining a high standard at all the sites you moderate, what would you do?

This question is posed mostly because the first 4 nominees (Undo, Andy, Thomas Owens, and Ed Cottrell) are currently active moderators on other sites. If there are additional candidates who are not currently moderators at other sites, the question can be answered in the hypothetical sense. (ie - if you became a moderator at another site)

3
  • 6
    Users who are not SE mods may well be leaders of other Internet communities, so this question would still apply.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 2:35
  • @pnuts Other leadership (not necessarily formal mods, just leaders) duties are, well, duties assigned to a small group of people, while other participation is at-will and spread across many participants. It's possible to fulfill many duties, but the candidates should show an understanding that they are giving up some discretionary time by accepting them.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 3:58
  • @pnuts - The question wasn't really intended to be 'do you have 30 minutes to spend,' it's more, 'how do you plan on balancing your responsibility to your existing moderation duties with your new duties?' While I'm sure that most if not all of the candidates can do it, I'm interested in how the candidates plan on handling changes to their own activity. I wouldn't vote for an otherwise qualified candidate if it meant that their moderation activity at their current sites drops. It's not fair to the other sites. (Side Note: I welcome suggestions/edits from anyone.)
    – theB
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 13:01
13

In what ways will you be more effective as a moderator, as opposed to using the moderation privileges granted at high reputation levels?

This is a slight rewording of one of the fallback questions. Some of the current nomination statements leave me interested to read the responses to this question.

9

What do you consider to be the full extent of appropriate and effective handling of posts by new users who misuse StackOverflow? (For example: questions exhibiting poor research, obvious duplicate, poor question structure, no MCVE, "give me da codez".)

Similarly, what do you consider to be inappropriate handling of such posts? What do you consider to be an appropriate response (especially by you) to an improper handling by another user?

0

If elected, how do you expect your moderator duties to affect your participation on SO, with asking, answering questions, and comments assisting with programming, not moderation?

-2

How will you make SO friendlier for beginning programmers?

9
  • 1
    Fyi, it's too late now -- the questionnaire has already been determined and posted.
    – Frank
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:22
  • Not that this is a problem scalable to a handful of moderators to handle to begin with. I suggest you go search around Meta for similar discussions, Andrew. This comes up all the time here.
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:25
  • I figured but I just now came across it and I don't know any other way to get my question out for people. Thanks for commenting that it's too late instead of deleting the post though. I appreciate it.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:25
  • Thank you @Kendra. I'll look in to the meta posts then. I really love SO, but find it very toxic at times toward beginners which has caused me to leave it for months or years. But, it's the best resource so it's worth seeing how it can work. Thanks again.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:27
  • @Andrew A lot of times the "toxicity" comes from said beginners not understanding how the site works and/or completely disregarding our quality guidelines and our rules. If you want an easier time here, my best suggestion: Take the time to read the help center, and follow the tips there. (I was 100% new to programming when I started here, and that's what I did. I've had no problems here because I just followed the guidelines. It's not as bad as it seems, I can promise you that!)
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:29
  • It is not for myself that I worry. My low status score deals more with my ambivalence toward participating on SO when some reviewers or commenters are really harsh and close things on an occasionally stringent adherence to the letter of the law, instead of the intent. Personally, I've preferred to not ask questions here because there is a lack of patience on the part of 'seasoned' contributors.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:35
  • I have asked one question on here and it was well researched and formatted: stackoverflow.com/questions/33659965/….
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:38
  • Indeed it was! A quick tip for you: Perhaps consider summarizing the links and what they wanted you to do. This way, users wanting to assist you are less likely to need to follow the link. That, and, should the links die in the future, the post is still useful for future users who come across it. You make that edit, and I feel you've got a very high quality post. (Good job!)
    – Kendra
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:50
  • @Kendra... great point. Thanks for the heads up.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:15
-7

As a moderator, what role will you take with regards to posting on meta? Will you be more active there, less, the same?

7
  • 1
    I would hope that their current Meta levels don't change...why would one suspect that it would?
    – Makoto
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:29
  • 3
    @Makoto - Have you looked at participation on meta from moderators? For the most part the participation of moderators has seemed to drop lately once elected. Overall, Meta Stack Overflow seems to have had a drop in moderator participation recently and this can be seen by looking the "Users" tab and sorting by "Participation". That is what leads to this question and the "suspicion" of that type of behavior.
    – Travis J
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:33
  • 16
    Given that, if elected, you'll have other things to do, I'd be surprised if meta participation didn't fall. There's only so much a person can do.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:40
  • 1
    @TravisJ: I would expect that the time spent on Meta is mostly supplemented by one's time spent doing moderation tasks, so I'm really not that bothered if there was a drop-off.
    – Makoto
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:41
  • 8
    I think this is a fair question, but maybe for different reasons. Moderator participation isn't really down. There are just other users that are more active and that participation sort doesn't display any numbers. But there are moderators who don't participate in Meta much (and some who never really did), and it's fair to be curious how much they expect to participate here once elected.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:41
  • 3
    I would be interested to know the answer, but perhaps it is just me. While I understand that there are other duties to accomplish, I feel like it makes the community stronger to have moderators posting on meta as that comes from a position of authority. Having a user who posts on meta suddenly disappear from the discourse in some ways feels like they are operating in the shadows and not as a part of the community. Part of being a moderator is how you deal with increased authority, and posting on meta is also part of wielding that authority, both in new posts and historical posts.
    – Travis J
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:45
  • I am interested to know the answer. I expect the moderators to at least lurk and to respond to criticism of their actions, even they do not actively post on other issues. @TravisJ I think the question could be improved by explicitly asking for the candidate's self-assessment, rather than leaving it implicit, as that's what I want to know. Not just "Less, because I'll be busier" but "Less, but that's okay because...".
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 1:42
-9

This was taken from the Code Review election question collection, all credit goes to the user @rolfl. I think it's a good question, and can be used in most places, with a few modifications.

Moderating Chat

As a moderator on Stack Overflow you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackoverflow.com.

A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room - there is swearing and name calling.

What do you do?

4
  • 2
    Related proposed question.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 15:21
  • @ryanyuyu Related, but in no way the same.
    – Ethan Bierlein
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 15:21
  • 8
    OK, next level: A heated discussion is flagged in the C++ chat room.
    – Pekka
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 20:14
  • 1
    I don't understand why this is getting downvotes. I think it's a perfectly legitimate question.
    – Ethan Bierlein
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 20:15
-9

It is unfortunate that a simple question with a simple answer attracts way more upvotes than the more complicated questions which have really intelligent answers.

Some questions that date back >3 years, have more than 1000 upvotes and still gain upvotes every day. I am refering to questions like : "what's the difference between a public and a private method".

But a more important problem, is that fact that from time to time these questions are posted again. Both the duplicate question and duplicate answers often gain several upvotes before they are closed.

This makes it attractive to answer duplicate questions, even though you actually know they should be closed (due to being duplicates). What is your vision about this ?

3
  • 8
    Not sure moderators are supposed to have a vision about this. Duplicate close voting should be done mainly by the voting community, IMO.
    – Pekka
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 20:16
  • 1
    Moderators have the unique power to merge questions, which may apply to duplicates that received good answers. Still, I don't think this question is worth one of our 10 slots.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 21:04
  • Sometimes those simple questions and answers are so popular because they reflect the great importance those Q&A's have had. The upvotes mean that the Q&A have had a great impact on a larger number of people than the more specific and difficult question and answer, which would necessarily reach less people. This is a populist voting system with merit as a factor in voting, but usefulness being the most important.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:19
-10

How do you plan to track users who would use multiple accounts in stack overflow to get upvotes or do downvotes to others?

1
  • 3
    That's what the moderator tools and training are for. A lot of that stuff is automated anyway.
    – ryanyuyu
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 4:18
-11

Stack Overflow took an extraordinary step to commemorate a political event in the United States in late June of this year by changing the site logo. This was done with significant amounts of support and dissent, with people passionate on both sides of the logo-change or no-logo-change debate.

Recently, I asked for a similar logo change for another political event. That request (though no one has made a decision) seems like it's not going to be honored.

I am concerned about the arbitrary involvement of Stack Overflow in politics. I feel that a policy is needed to either have criteria by which such requests are accepted, or to have a strict policy of being non-political in all circumstances (no logo changes and the like), no matter how passionately people feel. Picking and choosing arbitrarily just doesn't seem just to me.

As a moderator, you would have considerable say in what goes and doesn't go on Stack Overflow. What are your feelings about politics on this site in general, with respect to the logo change, and the idea of politics policy?

Thank you for wanting to make this site even better.

3
  • 10
    I don't think the mods have any influence on the political actions of Stack Overflow, Inc.; employees might and owners certainly do.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 20:54
  • 2
    Like @JeffreyBosboom said, this is not a moderator-driven decision. Personally, I would like to see the site stay out of politics and current events entirely. But, all that aside, those decisions are all made by the site's owners, not the moderators.
    – elixenide
    Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 21:09
  • 2
    Not disagreeing that maybe a policy is needed, but this discussion has nothing to do with moderators.
    – Pekka
    Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 22:44
-16

What is your stance on comments?

Should we have more of them? Less of them? Will you actively edit questions to include information from comments? How should an answer given in a comment be handled? How should requests for additional clarification be handled?

4
  • 3
    Not a real question. This question is overly broad, lacking context… :p
    – bjb568
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 23:49
  • It's a good thing to ask about, just a bad phrasing. RPG.SE has a particularly stringent comment policy, while SO only cleans up offensive or flaming comments.
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 2:24
  • They are interesting questions. Putting them on SO meta would be useful, if they aren't already there.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 10:02
  • "Will you actively edit questions to include information from comments". Not sure about other sites, but I highly doubt mods on SO have the bandwidth to actively edit posts in this manner.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Nov 14, 2015 at 12:00
-19

Do you hate fun?

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