@syneticondj There is a documented procedure, but I cannot find it

@syneticondj Found it - moderator.stackexchange.com/2012/01/december-2011-newsletter

Thanks Mark. Looks pretty recent even.

@Zoredache: I would not call it a conspiracy, but it is at least non-transparent - there has not even been a meta post informing about the resignation / suspension

let alone an explanation of the reasons

@syneticondj And why would there be? You seem to be forgetting that this site is not run by the community, and especially not by moderators. Its run by a for-profit organisation and they're under no obligations to reveal everything they do to us.

I suppose, suspensions are something we generally wouldn't want to be public, and resignations may be the same. If a person doesn't want to share their reasons for resigning, I don't think we should compel them to.

@MarkHenderson I like your phrasing. =D

@Zoredache I was just about to write the exact same thing

There was nothing when chopper3 resigned either

Hell I'm a mod and I didn't even know about it until I saw his name missing from the list

Kara's reasons are between Kara and whomever she decides to discuss it with.

@RebeccaChernoff Exactly, thankyou

@MarkHenderson he commented in the channel here, when people asked. But no, nothing official was ever announced.

@MarkHenderson because transparency is something that is at least advertised to be the guideline for running this site

I find it most fascinating how the mix of community and for-profit works out, considering that the Venn diagram is a bit messy and the goals aren't necessarily congruous.

@syneticondj So do you expect to see a list of salaries and profit/loss statements made public? There has to be a line between respecting peoples privacy and running a company that is transparent

@RebeccaChernoff thanks

profit/loss statements are public - at least for certain kinds of organisations. A simple note saying "has left for personal reasons" would be entirely sufficient by the way - no need for salary disclosure

@syneticondj I think you're putting far more weight onto all of this than is due. At the end of the day, it's a website where we help eachother, nothing more, nothing less. Some of us might use our reputation to help get another job, or as a demonstration of our knowledge, but the end goal is to make the internet a better place. Which is being achieved in leaps and bounds.

Those who love the site get involved in the meta participation, like myself, you, and many others, and that's great

But I could quit this site tomorrow and never come back if I wanted to. because it's just a website.

(I already did that with slashdot. I got the shits and I've never been back once, after years of reading)

@MarkHenderson Can't tell if website or restaurant.

@MarkHenderson I do not think I am putting much weight onto it. It's just that I think there should be a notification and documentation for mod changes - there is one when mods are elected, there is no reason it should not be there for mods leaving.

This would make participation more transparent and thus the site a nicer place to hang around

@syneticondj Actually, not always. Sam was promoted to mod 6 months after the election, and he came 3rd. I left being a moderator of another stack exchange site (webmaster.se) because it was really boring and I didn't feel any connection to the community. Dozens of changes get pushed out to the SE websites every day with no notifications

IMHO, it's all fine as long as the community remembers their place in the stack and what the other parts priorities are. In many ways, Mods are uncompensated volunteer labor. Which is fine if you want to put that in, but it's not for everybody.

@syneticondj I can agree strongly on the point that they should be announced, but I cannot agree that the reasoning behind any demotion/resignations should be included.

@MarkHenderson There are changes and there are mods - which I would consider special due to the fact that too many web forums indeed do have a bad moderation record and opaque decision processes - which gave moderation within the WWW a bad name altogether

@syneticondj Unless there's a 501c3 foundation running it with open election to the board, I really wouldn't assume that any organization on the web is an open democracy.

@AdrianK you surely are right, but my perception so far is that StackExchange at least does make the effort to be as much of one as possible given the circumstances

@syneticondj When it comes to SF I suspect outsiders would be far more concerned about narrowly many of the high level users, including myself, decide what is on/off topic.

And that process is mostly run by the community.

@syneticondj Personally, I think it's cultural. Similar orgs there in Germany might be exactly that way, but when there is money involved in America, it's a bit different. Not to say you're wrong in your goals, but I'm a bit more jaded these days.

@syneticondj And they do. If you want to know how their pay structure works, you'll find that. But you won't find how much people are paid. If you want to know how they measure how awesome you are, you'll find it. But not how awesome each person is. If you want to know how much $ they raised through VC, you'll find it, but not the conditions on the funding.

But I tell you what. I'm applying for a job that is in the same building as the SE crew. So, if I get the job and Im ever fortunate enough to meet them, I will raise your concerns with them. Just not with Jeff Atwood cos he quit.

@MarkHenderson don't take the trouble - I just could post to meta.

@MarkHenderson he did?

@MarkHenderson I don't think he's asking for that. Pay structures and similar don't impact the community, let alone salaries. But decisions and information regarding the standard that mods and users are held to are certainly within reason.

@AdrianK most of that is available to a certain degree, between the various blogs and metas. It just gets hard to find.

@syneticondj See codinghorror.com/blog

@Zoredache Hence my point about this place getting close to needing a certification just to understand how things work.

@AdrianK Too right. It's a nightmare keeping track of it all.

@Zoredache thanks. "if you build it, they will come" - this is quite a nice bit of work to hide a reference

@syneticondj I suspect the next post in his blog might be relevant; "Listen to Your Community, But Don't Let Them Tell You What to Do"

It's about how he lamented the use of meta in the beginning

BTW, back to the original point, which was about moderator in-activity. This post was ~2 years earlier and mentioned the same thing though less specific about the details, and many other general things about moderation. blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation

@AdrianK In some ways, I kinda think the main meta should include an actually wiki with the FAQ and documentation.

I think the site needs some real documentation, and the Q&A format of Meta doesn't make for docs that are easy to read.

@MarkHenderson That's one reason why I'd decided the other day to not jump in with both feet in SF. I'm more than glad to pop in with answers on stuff I know well, but I have precious little time for work and RHCE studying as it is.

@AdrianK Since we got all the new mods, I must say, I've only had to deal with maybe 20 or 30 flags a week. It's been a really nice change from the 200+/week I had to do after chopper left

So it might not be as imposing as you think ;)

@MarkHenderson You've probably not seen my laundry list here at the office. I've got about 10 years worth of modernizing to shove through if I can. We're still on NIS here, with a web of NFS mounts, passwords stored in an in-house database in the clear, all sorts of crap like that. Mostly left as it is because it worked and nobody wanted to risk any disruptions by trying to improve a system that already worked.

@AdrianK I can relate... I always feel a bit dirty when I log onto someone elses network and I just want to spend the time doing the rest of it properly. But when it works, it works, and there's little incentive to fix it

@MarkHenderson Precisely.

Never change a running system - that kind of thing?

@AdrianK Ah, the smell of the technical debt. codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/…

eheh

@Zoredache Yeah, I read that and went home and drank an entire bottle of wine of Cabernet.

@Zoredache: Ahh, the very bane of my existance

though its mostly about hardware for me

@AdrianK does the work really look better when viewed through a glass full of red wine?

@syneticondj Like morphine, it dulls the pain.

So it looks better when viewed through an emptied glass of red wine?