Math Mods' Office

It isn't a moderator issue.

@Ѕᴀᴀᴅ It is probably pure coincidence that today and two days ago I got downvotes on old inactive posts as well. (I know that one should not care, but ...)

@amWhy I'll be honest---I don't think that this looks targeted at any person. It does look like someone is (or several people are) targeting the tag, but I don't think that there is any policy against that, and I do think that this is a tag which has been in need of housekeeping for ages. So I see the behaviour, and appreciate the heads up, but I am not sure that there is anything require diamond moderator intervention.

@MartinR Similarly here: today someone chose three of my negative/low voted posts and piled on some more downvotes in quick succession (a common tactic for disgruntled users). Possibly someone is attacking users active in CURED. But the timing for us all could well be a coincidence too.

How is possible that this user has been member from 3 months yet has answers in 2014 and 2017?

It seems that a long suspended user created a new profile and is posting several questions and answers. I already flagged for moderator attention, perhaps some moderator finds the time to have a look at it.

@NoamAtar wrong channel, ask in CURED. I personally don't see why this post should be deleted and I voted to undelete it

For the most part, the system works. These spammers get one or two posts on the main site, they get nuked by red flags, and they lose the ability to post. Sure, their accounts aren't deleted automatically, but they lose the ability to interact on the site, and their spam is deleted (mostly automatically, via flags from Smokey).

Your post is now shown in Charcoal HQ - which is a room visited by users who know a lot about fighting spam and about SE in general.

My flag as you can see, specified pretty clearly what the issue is about. The moderator here declined it based on a total misinterpretation of what I was saying. It got rejected for wrong reasons so I tried to post here instead.

@Jakobian Nope.

@JohnOmielan It should have been deleted (and has been deleted with the question). Not sure why it wasn't. I will investigate, but please don't expect further updates.

Is there some way to tell which postings the moderators will consider disruptive? Nine months went by before a community manager was willing to tell me for which posting I was suspended in 2022. My conjecture is that the reason it was considered disruptive is that it mentioned the moderators in a way that could be construed as unfavorable. I would not have thought that would be forbidden since it is claimed that the moderators are elected by the users.

It was my understanding from this very unambiguously-phrased help page that this shouldn't be allowed, but if my flag was declined then am I mistaken?

If this is an unacceptable level of censorship for you, then I would suggest that you may want to end your participation here (as you have suggested that you are going to do, multiple times). But please keep in mind that this is not an airport---you do not need to announce your arrival or departure.

@Peter The StackExchange network is not a public platform in the US---you do not have the right to free speech here. Yes, moderators censor the platform: we typically delete comments which are no longer necessary, which attack or disparage other users, or which otherwise disrupt the functioning of the site.

This is not acceptable.

As it is, presuming good faith is far harder now, because good faith means applying the correct process without factually-unsupported accusations, even in a vacuum without prior history.

Fact is, you do not have a right to get clarifications. If someone declines to respond and makes that clear through other means, your comment is no longer needed and is in line for deletion at any point.

Exactly. You have literally nothing to show why your flags are declined. You don't know who declined them. You have made an accusation of "moderator abuse" with no possible objective basis, so the only cause must be emotional dissatisfaction.

I would heavily advise stepped away from the issue for at least a day, and only returning to it if there is high confidence that improprieties have actually occurred, and not a purely emotional reaction to your flag being rejected.

This room is now ten years old. Happy anniversary!

I think we should have some kind of policy on book recommendation questions. A significant amount of those is questions is closed as opinion based, but others are upvoted and don't receive a single close-vote. While some cases are clear, I don't see a pattern on which book recommendations are treated in which way. Actually, the top question in that tag is incredibly subjective and broad ("What books must every math undergraduate read?") with a score of 258 and no close-votes.

Indeed, in your case, @BillDubuque, the pattern of downvoting old and inactive posts doesn't seem as readily apparent as in SineoftheTime's situation. In your situation, I see a small number of downvotes on answers which are proximate in time to you editing those answers (which means that the downvotes appear to align with those posts being bumped to the top of the active questions queue).

@BillDubuque No, the culprit is not easily inferred in your case, either.

@XanderHenderson I don't think this language is appropriate of a moderator. It's not forbidden for me to point out some things.

I would interpret it as continuation of the point he was already making

Dude, I really don't need you to mansplain Bill's comments to me. He is more than capable of doing so himself.

@BillDubuque I am not sure what you mean by "cases like these", since you aren't looking at the moderator dashboard for @SineoftheTime's account. Respectfully, I don't believe that you have the context to make the kinds of pronouncements that you are making.

That would be my fault, @GerryMyerson; I'm sorry. You're right. I'm still learning the ropes as a newly elected moderator.

I don't understand this new (?) trend of closing 5+ years old question

With Droite remarquable, I cast a UU flag, which was declined, on the comment "I'm too lazy to do my homework so I put it on some website and let them believe it's about a contest. Translating? Why would I? Didn't I mention I'm lazy?". I consider this to be snarky & condescending, and would be offended if I were the OP. Nonetheless, do you consider this to be acceptable commentary?

@Jakobian @YemonChoi I am not super comfortable with the in-depth discussion of another user on the site. These seem like the kinds of things which should be brought up to moderators via flags, and not in casual chat.

@SineoftheTime Better yet, flag such posts from math.stack for moderator attention.

@SineoftheTime I like croissant flavored croissants... :/

@Dev_anon101 What is it that you want out of this interaction?

@Dev_anon101 That sounds a awful lot like a conspiracy theory, to me.

You need to understand that you are imposing on the community here when you ask them to read your proof, particularly when such discussions are out-of-scope here. Point (1) is quite relevant: this site is not meant for proof checking, particularly when the "proof" relates to famous open problems.

Point (2) is blunt, but almost certainly correct: your proof is almost certainly incorrect---you are only using elementary tools. If an elementary proof existed, it is nigh certain that someone would have already come across it.

But you need to understand that Math SE is not meant to publicize new results, nor to check every random person's incorrect attempt to resolve some long-standing open problem. Your question is not on-topic, and the deleted comments were pointing this out. They could have been nicer, but they were not abusive.

@Dev_anon101 1) This site is not meant for proof checking and 2) your "proof" isn't correct. This post will probably get deleted soon.

What follows is an open letter to Stack Overflow, Inc., from some of the remaining moderators there, detailing a strike.

Just make sure that if you do decide to post a new question, that question meets the quality standards for the site.

That isn't our concern. We cannot enforce other institutions prohibitions against cheating, and in this case, I don't even see how you can make a strong argument that this is what is going on.

Also, you misunderstand my role as a moderator. It is not my job to give guidance or provide feedback about specific questions. Indeed, I am not expected to be a content expert on material on the site. My job, as a moderator, is to arbitrate disputes between users and to enforce site policy.

Hello, mods! I just raised a flag about potential targeting patterns, and quite a number of closure review tasks can prove the pattern. But do I need to flag a few more posts in the review list to be more concrete?

@Martin.s "I want to put the question in a magazine" is not a reason for us to delete a question.

Yes, I thought the same. Both the question and answer have upvotes. According to the magazine's rules, the question should not be posted on any website before publication.