Root Access

DavidPostill

10:00 PM

@bwDraco Please be very careful how you write this (Note: I'm out of popcorn ...)

Ben N

I have some growing outside, you can borrow mine!

allquicatic

I think if you focus on the philosophy of deleting (or not deleting) questions "in the abstract", rather than focusing on a specific user/moderator, your chances of getting a good response are much better... you might want to mention random only in reference to citing some of his actions as examples of something in order to discuss your point

bwDraco

I have this feeling that we may have to start calling on him to resign (or put him on notice) because he's acting without, and apparently against, community consensus.

Ben N

That might be a little strong

allquicatic

the abstract concept behind doing / not doing something is a much less incendiary subject than an individual's behavior

besides, by posting your meta Q about the abstract topic, you will be able to understand, what the community consensus actually is

Ben N

10:03 PM

allkitkatic is right, focusing on behavior rather than a person is much more likely to get good results

allquicatic

then he'll post his answer and we'll see who gets more upvotes :)

oldmud0

do we need a superuser lawyer?

allquicatic

@bwDraco Wrong approach, IMO... I still think you should write the question but please read my advice first :)

Ben N

There is a documented MSE procedure for torching a mod, but I would be surprised if that got anywhere

Anyway, I crystalized my thoughts on deletion

0

A: Why and When are closed questions deleted?

Under certain circumstances, closed questions are automatically deleted by the Community user. Otherwise, they can be deleted with varying numbers of votes from 10K+ users (depending on the score of the question and its answers). Finally, moderators can instantly delete any post. As for why they...

allquicatic

Also consider the following: IF we create a good, thoughtful meta Q and get lots of good comments / answers that show, after it all, that perhaps what random is doing is against consensus, it's reasonable to think that he might actually consider changing his behavior somewhat

and we can do that without having to say in the question that he's a bad fellow or intentionally acting against consensus or whatever

and we can do that without having to oust him as a mod :) so, win-win in that case

Ben N

10:05 PM

^^^ wise things ^^^

djsmiley2k

'random' ?

allquicatic

@djsmiley2k a SU community moderator

djsmiley2k

oh thats their nick?? ok lol]

allquicatic

also there is a fairly often-touted argument that moderators are going to have different "styles" and different approaches to moderating, so unless the behavior observed is way off in left-field and gains a strong community consensus against, it's probably going to be tolerated by the Powers That Be

Ben N

@DavidPostill Are you sure 20K+ users can undelete things removed by mods?

I don't have that anywhere, and I can't find any info about it in the help center, so I can't verify it myself

allquicatic

10:09 PM

So, if this is something the community feels needs to be addressed, the first step is establishing in a meta Q in no uncertain terms what the consensus appears to be, and solicit enough feedback to get a representative sample of active users

hopefully it will show up in hot network questions or hot meta questions and that will garner enough attention to get at least a lot of voting (positive or negative), if not comments and answers

Ben N

If a mod agrees, we could get it featured

allquicatic

Mhm

DavidPostill

Ben N

I see that too

It just gives an error when I use it

DavidPostill

@BenN You are right. It doesn't work :(

The privileges says "Voting to undelete answers except those deleted by a moderator" - it doesn't mention questions ...

superuser.com/help/privileges/trusted-user

Ben N

10:12 PM

That's the page I checked :/

Should I write up an MSE thing?

allquicatic

@BenN if only to get the privilege page updated to clarify about questions, I'd say so

although ideally the undelete link would not even appear if you lack the permission to do it

SE will probably take the shortest path to a decent resolution though and just update /privileges

Ben N

Hmm, I'm trying to decide whether I should ask for the link to be removed or the ability to undelete to be restored

allquicatic

@BenN I think they'll want to let CMs continue to have the final say; that appears to have been a deliberate design decision, as the "default" behavior without any specific qualifiers would be to allow vote undeletes on mod-deleted posts

Ben N

I looked through the proverbial history books and it looks like the change was made to stop question owners from one-click restoring their questions when deleted by mods

allquicatic

IMO it would be better if CMs had the option to "soft delete" stuff in a way that would allow the community to undelete if they feel it should be, while still having a "hard delete" nuke button for cases where it's egregiously harmful (like spam, vandalism)

DavidPostill

10:16 PM

The problem with restoring undelete is presumably most deleted questions (crap/spam/offensive) should not be undeleted. It would be nice to vote to undelete too broad or off-topic thought (if we disagree with the deletion).

allquicatic

soft delete low quality questions that are on-topic and not offensive/spam/garbage; hard delete spam/offensive

DavidPostill

+1 ^^^

Ben N

Yep, locks seem like the tool for the job there

Primary source for the original change: meta.stackexchange.com/q/77107/295684

bwDraco

0

Q: An open letter to random♦ about deleting closed questions

random♦, I've noticed that over the last several months you have been deleting large numbers of closed questions. While I understand that closed questions really don't belong on this site, recent controversies have called attention to your deletion of closed questions that have high-quality answ...

DavidPostill

@BenN Ah. So we can still flag deleted questions and ask for then to be undeleted ... presumably that flag would be handled by a different mod ...

Ben N

10:21 PM

It's a dice roll which mod handles a flag

DavidPostill

@BenN Yes, but they are not supposed to handle flags in which they have an interest? In the same way as I would not flag to undelete a question just because I lost rep on an answer ... and I skip reviews where I have an interest as well ...

Ben N

I can't remember whether there's official guidance on that

The mod flag handling, that is. Skipping reviews where one has a conflict of interest is definitely the thing to do, even if there's no guidance

bwDraco

For context:

Controversy on random's decision to delete closed questions with good answers

yesterday, 2 hours 17 minutes total – 164 messages, 6 users, 2 stars

Bookmarked 17 secs ago by bwDraco

Ben N

0

Q: Clarify that normal users cannot undelete questions deleted by moderators

When moderators delete posts, they cannot be undeleted by non-moderators. The "undelete" link still appears for 10K+ users, though, but it produces an error tooltip when used. That fact doesn't seem to be mentioned in either the 10K privilege page or the 20K privilege page. The latter says someth...

feature-request deleted-questions privileges privileges-page

Also, an existing feature request that is double plus good: meta.stackexchange.com/q/86710/295684

allquicatic

@bwDraco So you decided to proceed with it as a direct confrontation with an individual moderator instead of discussing the topic in the abstract? Eh... I'm not sure that will go over so well, to be perfectly honest. For one thing, the meta Q you linked to is from StackOverflow. The immediate kneejerk response could very well be, "Well that's for SO, we do things differently here."

Wish you the best of luck with that Q but I'm a little worried that it won't get the results you're hoping for.

2

bwDraco

10:30 PM

I'm honestly getting tired about this. I'm hoping to see changes, not resignation or removal proceedings.

Hennes

96 questions [tagged h](http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/hp) left.
But enough front page spamming for now.
1 or 2 more days should do it to clean that out.

Ben N

@Hennes Thanks for all your work!

Hennes

Down 1000-ish questions. (some edited, some retagged, some just tag removed).
If we ever have a cleaup up weekend give me a yell because I am spamming the active question pages a tad more then I like, but speading it out to one per 15 minutes is mentally hard.

Ben N

We should organize one of those, it's been a super long time

Hennes

Fixer is busy on the google tag.

11 more tags to go from meta.superuser.com/questions/8402/…

bwDraco

10:35 PM

It isn't the first time this has been discussed.

Hennes

nods. Indeed

Ben N

IIRC you wrote a similar-ish thing (but not on the same subject of question deletion) a few months back?

bwDraco

It was overly combative and has since been deleted.

Hennes

Still not 100% sure on concensus on other things.
or even 100% sure myself about which tags we should and should not have.
E.g. HP-procurve? HP-switch. If not, then why do we have Asus-laptop. Is that more specific?

bwDraco

I've decided to stick to the facts this time and avoid being overtly accusative.

Ben N

10:37 PM

@Hennes I think the consensus was that product tags are OK, while company ones are not

asus-laptop actually tells you something about the question, so I think it's legit

bwDraco

I have also tried to show an understanding of his viewpoint.

Hennes

I saw quite a few questions where I would have tagged them with managed-switch or [tag:lagg/trunking] if it had existed

DavidPostill

@BenN @allquicatic "Thank you for informing us of the compromised user account. The user is being dealt with"

Ben N

Oh @allquicatic, you might want to adjust your use of "CM" as referring to mods, since most MSE people think "community manager" (e.g. Shog9) when they see that

I upvoted your answer, because those are some good possible feature requests

bwDraco

10:59 PM

@allquicatic It's really hard to word something like this but I honestly am getting tired of this.

I've already tried my best to not be so harsh on him, nor am I suggesting that he step down.

allquicatic

@BenN done

bwDraco

So, how should I handle situations like this?

Ben N

@bwDraco If you're trying to get the attention of an SE CM, the "contact us" link might work better than the Tavern

Though it might be a good idea to just sit back and chill for a while

allquicatic

1 hour ago, by bwDraco

I have this feeling that we may have to start calling on him to resign (or put him on notice) because he's acting without, and apparently against, community consensus.

Granted, your meta question does not go that far, but you've certainly put that on the table in chat at least...

bwDraco

I know. That was a mistake.

I'll excuse myself from this matter at this point and just watch how it plays out.

Psycogeek

11:10 PM

@bwDraco well IMO i am glad sombody says something, but it wont be me :-)

A person might recognise that those kind of balls can be usefull in some work situations, like managment, owner and just protecting yourself against that worlds laziest employees you work around. Soooo it is a skill, used effectivly, not sure how much you have to sweat over it, if you dont regret post, and cut into your self esteem based on other opinions that will fly about from saying things confidently.

bwDraco

Question edited to address some concerns.

I have some things to do so I may not be able to tend to this matter.

allquicatic

Heh, Shog9's graph does a pretty good job at showing the data... seems like a few of his recent deletions have stepped on a few active users' toes, but aside from that, in terms of sheer quantity, he's doing exactly what he's been doing for years

Psycogeek

When i first got here , his moderations style was confusing, and being new, did seem overly harsh and unnessisary and arbitrary. As i have lived here for longer, it is more par for the course.

IMO (again) when you have 1.5 million people visiting first, then is a good time to create disturbances that upset the people that you depend on to have a site.

we dont!

Dog

11:28 PM

!!oh i was about to type something here then I rememberd the bot's asleep

allquicatic

!! s/asleep/currently exists only as data in my ZFS snapshot until I get home and have the willpower\/energy to fix it/

Dog

Yeah I think "asleep" will do informally

Speaking of ZFS snapshots, I really need some way of automating my snapshot => Send | Receive => hold/unhold process

Takes me close to two hours every time I want to do a backup... so I only get round to it once a year or so

bwDraco

@allquicatic I know my personality can be rather abrasive at times. I'm already doing my best to keep it under control.

Psycogeek

just dont do the crime if you can't do the time :-) umm must be a better way to say that. Dont do the talk, if you cant do the walk .

bwDraco

It may be just me, but it's just something that always seems to get on my nerves.

Psycogeek

11:41 PM

@bwDraco oh it is just you because the other 50,000 people who might have a problem with it, did the walk :-)

Bob

@Dog Hold? Unhold?

Ramhound

@Ramhound Fair enough that the comment is posted automatically, I didn't know that. However I'm annoyed because you chose/said "Recommended Deletion". Why? Did you properly review the question and other answers? This is a perfectly good answer and there's no need to delete it. — Clonkex 5 mins ago

Dog

@Bob Basically a lock to prevent deletion (accidental or otherwise)

Ramhound

Clonked decided they would harass me for a system generated comment.

Dog

docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gjdfk/index.html

Ramhound

11:49 PM

.... I am speechless

Bob

@Dog Ah. Sounds useful.

Ramhound

He deleted it; bah!

Ben N

You don't actually have to select a reason

Ramhound

i do

Bob

@allquicatic As for Cavil - I can toss him up on a server (yours, mine, whichever) from the latest export, if you want.

Oh, wait... uncommitted code changes...

Ben N

11:51 PM

Ah. I usually spare the poster the auto-comment if there's a similar enough one posted by someone else

Though in this case there was no such existing comment

Dog

@Bob Except when you forcibly remove a hold because you can't remember why you put it there in the first place, only to find out later it was critically important

Bob

-_-

bwDraco

The open letter is deleted.

Dog

Oh hey the open letter to Random about deleting posts has been deleted

bwDraco

Hopefully, though, we can focus on making the most of good content that happens to be attached to a bad question...

Journeyman Geek

11:54 PM

@bwDraco be the change you wish to be.

Ben N

Oh hi JMG, good, uh, morning?

Dog

@JourneymanGeek Woof

Journeyman Geek

fix up closed questions before they get deleted. ect ect

Ramhound

@BenN at least I am not crazy....

Journeyman Geek

@BenN Morning. Coffee and Drama, part of a complete breakfast ;)

bwDraco

11:55 PM

I'll start to play a more active role in editing when I get a chance.

Ben N

Gotta get that popcorn in your diet!

bwDraco

There is so much for me to learn...

Journeyman Geek

Also calling out specific users is just totally asking for trouble

mod or otherwise

focus on problems not personalities

bwDraco

I just need to spend some time practicing soft skills. I'll try to arrange this when I get a chance (the weather has been remarkably uncooperative lately).

@JourneymanGeek That's incredibly hard to do. I may need to be suspended given that this isn't the first time this happened...

I'll make some adjustments now (effectively immediately) to prevent this from happening again.

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco That dosen't solve the underlying issue - many of your actions seem to be "Hey, I want attention" or " I'm going to attack moderators for actions I disagree with"

bwDraco

11:58 PM

In hindsight, I think I should have asked "Can we not delete closed questions with good answers?"

Ben N

@bwDraco Yep, that would be better. Then we can discuss a question rather than a person :)

bwDraco

My parents are rather overprotective of me and that has stunted my development of soft skills.

Ben N

After all, if somebody disliked a pattern of my activity, I would prefer that they ask about the action rather than attacking me

Controversy on random's decision to delete closed questions with good answers

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