The Town Hall

FEichinger

1:34 PM

I still have absolutely no idea what this question is looking for.

jwacalex

1:47 PM

yes

it sounds like a mixture of youth-protection issue with moderating

FEichinger

I'm not even sure if that answer is an answer, or if it's just a continuation of the train of thought in the question.

jwacalex

the answer by xitan should be merged into the question, because it's only extenting it with some ideas

Monica Cellio

2:26 PM

@FEichinger anybody else interested in voting to close as unclear? It looks like I'm the only one who has so far.

FEichinger

@MonicaCellio I don't like voting as unclear (as the first close voter, anyway) on questions that seem like they could have some sort of question in them. I mean, it could just be me not quite getting it.

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger the purpose of putting a question on hold is to get it fixed and reopened before it attracts answers that might not be to the intended question. It's not supposed to be permanent (unless a question really is unsalvagable, of course).

I also tend to be firmer with self-answers -- the asker clearly thought it was clear enough to offer an answer, so bring the rest of us in on the secret, y'know?

FEichinger

I'm well aware of that. I was just waiting if someone else might figure out what's going on with that question.

Monica Cellio

Ok. Just pointing out the close option in case others are as puzzled as we are.

BTW, it looks like we have a couple users close to being able to approve edits, so with luck pending edits will be resolved soon. (We only have one user who can approve and an edit requires two.)

FEichinger

(Now that you have cast a vote, I have added mine as well. Just didn't want to be the one initiating, what with me being part of the comment tree and not knowing if it's just me or the question.)

@MonicaCellio Well, we should have SE staffers checking the queues from time to time ... But I suppose they figured we'd be getting there on our own quickly enough. :|

Monica Cellio

2:32 PM

@FEichinger thanks. (I hadn't made the connection with the comments.)

@FEichinger should, but we don't know how frequently. :-)

FEichinger

@MonicaCellio Well, shouldn't be too long until we get pro tems.

We're almost two weeks in.

Monica Cellio

2:50 PM

@FEichinger that'll certainly help.

AJ Henderson

3:07 PM

@FEichinger I think it is relatively clear what the question is looking for, but I guess it is probably a bit overly broad

since it asks multiple questions that generalize it to "how do I setup policies to prevent abuse of kids through my community?"

which could have books written on it and they could even conflict with each other

AirThomas

4:17 PM

First time in the VLQ queue is super awkward without some indication that I should expect to be reviewing NAA flags as well. =/

I'm surprised how abrupt the drop-off in questions has been on Mods.

AJ Henderson

@AirThomas I'm not particularly surprised. If you look at a lot of the early questions, I think they were mostly questions that people knew answers to already

in other words, it was an initial population of questions that people have had in the past and make good starting fodder

FEichinger

The big question is really whether we can generate enough traffic.

jwacalex

according to area 51 this is the "biggest" issue

Monica Cellio

@AirThomas that happens -- the initial burst is all the questions people have had in mind for a while but had no place to ask, and then it levels off. We do need to keep up the flow, so people will have things to answer and reasons to visit, but I wouldn't worry just yet.

FEichinger

Less than 150 visitors per day is a bit low. Especially considering the SE network alone has over 400 moderators.

Monica Cellio

4:32 PM

@jwacalex having been on other betas, I highly recommend ignoring the Area 51 page for a little while. We're in ramp-up mode; those stats are going to fluctuate wildly. Right now they don't mean anything.

2

FEichinger

(We're still comparing pretty well to some other beta sites, of course. But we really do need more than that.)

AirThomas

I'm just used to the drop-off being a bit more gradual

FEichinger

Meh, we happened to run into a vacation weekend. Happens.

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger true, it's vacation season in the northern hemisphere. I think traffic is down on a lot of sites.

AirThomas

Was there a holiday?

FEichinger

4:38 PM

@AirThomas "Summer", as they call it.

AirThomas

Ah. So vacation for people with leave and/or money. (<> me)

I expect the September bump will be a bit muted compared to sites that more directly relate to homework.

Monica Cellio

In the US and Canada, school starts in the next week or two. Just before that is a popular time for family vacations, I gather. (So is just after school lets out. In between those, kids sometimes have summer camp or similar. Note: I'm not a parent; this is anecdotal.)

@AirThomas probably true, but we should start thinking about how to make our existence known to the folks who run those sites.

FEichinger

@MonicaCellio We should generally figure out some ways to spread the word.

Getting random people off the Internet for some topic is usually pretty easy. Telling moderators "Hey, here's a resource for you!" is a bit more complicated.

They tend not to look for advice elsewhere, and they usually aren't easy to address without attracting unwanted attention.

So we lack both Google and a certain word of mouth on our side.

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger yes, though all SE sites face the "how do we find our target experts" problem. In our case, it's reaching the people who run IRC channels, Reddit sites, mailing lists, misc. web fora... other than one at a time, how do we find those folks?

Mind, one at a time works too; everybody here should be talking about this site to moderators they know from elsewhere.

AirThomas

5:04 PM

@MonicaCellio I linked the Mods proposal in the datascience chat after our pro tem announcement but not sure if anyone took the bait.

Which is too bad because 2/3 of them are first timers that I can tell.

Monica Cellio

@AirThomas oh, datascience's pro tem announcement. I was briefly confused. :-) Anyway, another way to spread the word is to link specific questions that are relevant elsewhere; if something comes up here that can help there, maybe if you let them know they'll come take a look.

AirThomas

Makes sense.

FEichinger

5:20 PM

I think we also need to back off a little from our SE bias "fear".

Andy

I agree. Though, I haven't been able to come up with a suggestion on how to prevent SE from completely dominating the questions.

AJ Henderson

@FEichinger a little probably, but part of that is that we also already have a resource for mods with SE specific questions, granted it isn't as good as having historical look ups

at least for diamond mods

and there are additional privacy concerns when a strong link exists between the community you are involved in and the account you are asking the question on

I think both of those concerns are bigger issues than simply having a lot of SE focused content

FEichinger

@AJHenderson Definitely. Specific (more or less identifiable) instances should be just as off-limits as for other media.

But duplication of content was never something that bothered any SE site. Heck, we pride ourselves on it more often than not.

And general situation handling that happens to be SE-specific by environment should not be off limits here either.

AJ Henderson

yeah

FEichinger

It's like prohibiting UX from discussing how to, say, make the new user hints more effective.

Braiam

6:11 PM

@FEichinger too much duplication can be indicator of a bigger issue (people not finding the answer right away)

Meta Moderators

6:31 PM

0

Q: Merge [rules] into [policies]?

policies currently has two questions and rules has four. These don't seem sufficiently distinct to me. Can we either clarify the difference (via tag wikis, please) or merge them (and create a synonym)?

AirThomas

@MonicaCellio My gut reaction is that "policies" apply to moderators and "rules" apply to users

But that's admittedly just a feeling I have

FEichinger

Community rules are, in a way, a subset of moderator policies.

The question is whether we need the distinction. And if so, how we should present that distinction.

AirThomas

Yeah. I'm not sure.

jwacalex

moderating policies are "generating" the rules for a user to follow?

Monica Cellio

6:48 PM

@AirThomas interesting; some of the sites I moderate definitely have "policies" for content (like "back it up").

AirThomas

@MonicaCellio Yeah, and after reading the questions in those tags, I can see that wouldn't be a great way to distinguish them.

I used to work at a regulatory agency where I had a big binder full of rules and a separate one full of policies.

The rules carried the weight of law, whereas the policies were mostly internal.

Meta Moderators

0

Q: Can we kill [bad-moderation]?

The tag bad-moderation sounds vague and judgemental. What exactly about what happened is "bad"? Shouldn't a tag for that be used instead (like bias, in use on at least one of these questions)? In any difference of opinion between an unhappy user and a moderator, one side of that is going to wa...

discussion tags

AirThomas

But as a public sector employee I am maybe a little too used to labyrinthine bureaucracy...

Monica Cellio

7:03 PM

@AirThomas yeah, I've been in organizations that distinguished between laws and policies, with the former being things written into bylaws, regulatory matters, that sort of thing. But "rules" is fuzzy in my experience.

FEichinger

@jwacalex That's how I see it, usually. But I guess some teams might be handling that differently.

Pops

1

Q: Who moderates the moderators? These guys!

First off, thanks to everyone who participated at the unofficial pro-tem moderator nominations meta post! Throughout the beta, we need members from this site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from eac...

discussion featured moderation

Side comment for whoever upvoted that within its first five seconds of existence: "...wow."

FEichinger

@Pops That would be me.

Because my phone told me about the meta post.

Pops

Oh. Well, that's just selfish, then. (JAY KAY)

FEichinger

:P

Pops

7:15 PM

Look how attentive your new mod is to your meta site, everyone!

FEichinger

Also: Shhh! I was going to wait for the bot to post it, and then pin it.

jwacalex

:D

Meta Moderators

We now have diamonds, ladies and gentlemen.

7

Monica Cellio

@Pops yay! Congrats to @Andy, @FEichinger, and @AnnonomusPenguin!

@Pops I saw the title change; does that count for anything? :-)

(That is, I loaded the page with the original title, followed a link, came back via browse "back", and saw the changed title.)

Pops

@MonicaCellio Why, I am sure that I have no idea what you are talking about. YOU CAN'T PROVE IT, WHATEVER PROOF YOU HAVE IS 'SHOPPED

FEichinger

7:27 PM

I saw the "this post has been edited" banner, so ... yeh.

I may or may not be spending way too much time here.

jwacalex

@Pops: so i've to shopp it also?

FEichinger

Then again, I knew about it in advance ...

AirThomas

Combolations, Valerie

Monica Cellio

@Pops are edits within the 5-minute window hidden even from the depths of the database? So asking a friendly dev to dig it out for me won't work? Good thing I don't need to prove it, then -- you as much as admitted it with that response. :-)

Pops

@jwacalex A conspiracy!

@MonicaCellio Yes, they are.

Andy

7:28 PM

Thanks @MonicaCellio

jwacalex

but form now on, if something goes wrong we can blame those people :P

FEichinger

@jwacalex Yep, that's what we're here for.

All the blame are belong to us.

2

Monica Cellio

So, uh, we just lost all our non-mod 1k users, at least for a little while. Mods, you'll need to pay attention to the review queues. :-)

AirThomas

@MonicaCellio Nah, they just have to get together and upvote you and AJ a few times, then sit back and have a drink

Monica Cellio

@AirThomas well, I wouldn't want to encourage serial voting or anything like that. I figured I'd edit my way to 1k, but ran into too many tag problems (hence meta posts).

I suspect that in a couple days AJ and I will be in a position to help, and I don't think either of us is going anywhere, but in the meantime...

FEichinger

7:51 PM

@MonicaCellio In the meantime, we should have it nicely covered.

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger yup. Now that we have three mods (plus any CMs who wander by), we should be in good shape.

Feeds

AJ Henderson has added Andy to the list of this room's owners.

AJ Henderson has added Annonomus Penguin to the list of this room's owners.

AJ Henderson has added FEichinger to the list of this room's owners.

AJ Henderson has removed AJ Henderson from the list of this room's owners.

jwacalex

and thous the change is complete?

AJ Henderson

@MonicaCellio I just need a couple upvotes more :)

;) ;)

hichris123

@Pops You forgot to purge the history. sigh CM's these days.

AJ Henderson

8:01 PM

granted, two non mods can't do much other than get stuff in queue for the mods to look at since we don't even have enough for a delete vote, let alone a close vote

FEichinger

But you'd be able to edit.

AJ Henderson

true

FEichinger

Which, to be fair, is pretty pointless when half the edits now are bulk retags, but hey.

It's the thought that counts or something.

AJ Henderson

retags are important at this phase though

good categorization impacts ability to tell where things are

jwacalex

and if an active user retags things - hey who cares if it gets more edit?

Monica Cellio

8:09 PM

@AJHenderson getting edits approved faster was actually the case I had in mind. I saw some griping in here a few days back about edit approvals not happening, and I had an edit block on somebody else's pending edit for several days, so I figured that's something you and I can help with. Soon.

AJ Henderson

@MonicaCellio how many people have to approve suggested edits if non-mods?

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger I'd been thinking of starting to populate tag wikis, but that led to the "argh, our tags are a mess, rethink!" reaction.

I can't remember

@AJHenderson 2

@AJHenderson two.

8:10 PM

ah, good

FEichinger

@MonicaCellio Well, yeh, we have a bit to comb through now.

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger some of which have come up on meta, but some not (yet). Tag sets are hard and nobody gets it right on the first couple tries. We're early in beta; we should expect churn here. But if there are any core tags we can settle on, it's worth building them properly -- retag to put them in the right places, write tag wikis explaining when and when not to use them, etc.

FEichinger

7

Q: What tagging guidelines do we want to establish?

Now that we have gathered some questions (and are closing in on the one-week-mark), it's time to evaluate the tags we have created. Some statistics (as of writing): We have created a total of 93 tags. Out of these, 45 have only been used once. 5 tags also have tag wiki excerpts. Most of our ...

discussion tags tagging-guidelines

Alright, we're left with three bad-moderation questions, all of which are about incorrect moderator actions.

We have mistakes, and I'm going to use that instead now, but I think we can find a better tag for that.

AJ Henderson

yeah, some of them are not mistakes

abuse

perhaps

do we have an abuse tag yet

FEichinger

I don't think any of the questions now tagged mistakes directly imply malicious intend on the moderator's end, so I figure we might as well assume mistakes - but there has to be a more fitting tag than that.

AJ Henderson

8:23 PM

of course, Monica, we shouldn't overlook the other awesome privilege we get at 1000 rep. It'll let us create gallery chat rooms...

Monica Cellio

@AJHenderson (psst! You and I can already do that! :-) )

FEichinger

Why, yes, that is such a new and impressive and you-never-could-have-done-it-otherwise privilege!

Monica Cellio

(Also, when's the last time anybody used a gallery chat room? :-) )

AJ Henderson

@MonicaCellio yeah, but I won't have to feel like it's mod abuse when I never do it... ever...

Monica Cellio

@AJHenderson I don't think so. We have bias, which is related, but some sort of abuse-of-power tag is probably warranted. (When naming it, make it clear that it's abuse by mods, not abuse by users toward other users. The power imbalance is key here.)

AJ Henderson

8:25 PM

yeah

abuse-of-power sounds good

I was trying to figure out a good way to distinguish

I'm running on too little sleep atm

Braiam

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! To much blue!

FEichinger

Yes, indeed, too much blue.

We need more users from outside.

3

Braiam

takes @FEichinger outside so users can enter

>:)

Monica Cellio

@FEichinger thanks (but there went 12 easy rep for me :-) j/k).

AJ Henderson

@FEichinger kind of like giving up being owner of the chatroom... cause that makes so much difference other than being mildly less confusing to anyone that wanders in

AirThomas

8:28 PM

@MonicaCellio I kid, I kid :)

AJ Henderson

yeah, what's with all the Moderator mods being SE mods

we need some way to make moderator mods not se mods

err...

Gilles

when discussion tag names, keep in mind that this site is not about moderators, but about community building

Monica Cellio

@AirThomas I know, I know. :-)

Gilles

for example bias should be moderator-bias or moderation-bias

Braiam

@Gilles despite the name, huh? ;)

Monica Cellio

8:30 PM

@Gilles actually, I created that one, and I did it in light of a question (real or anticipated I don't now remember) about users taking actions against mods. Bias cuts both ways, though more damage comes in one direction.

AJ Henderson

@Gilles does Bias have a meaning outside the context of moderator-bias when it comes to the site though?

Andy

@Gilles This is something we need to advertise more too. The "moderators" name may be throwing off users that are interested in the community building aspect

7

Gilles

@AJHenderson yes, e.g. who you accept in your community

Andy

@AJHenderson Definitely. Pro/anti <issue> sentiment vs Moderator preference toward a user

Gilles

@Andy the name “moderators” is a bad choice

Monica Cellio

8:32 PM

I think it's better (where we can) to have tags about actions or conditions, not about roles (users and moderators).

FEichinger

@Gilles We've held the debate plenty of times, and I'm not sure if bringing it up again will get us anywhere.

Monica Cellio

Conflict-resolution, for example -- that encompasses all sorts of issues involving different parties. That's a good tag IMO.

FEichinger

Also, one thing that always bugs me about the moderator prefix idea is that we'd be splitting the site into two big sections: Moderation, and Community Building.

Gilles

Moderation is just one aspect of community building

FEichinger

I'm not sure if that's necessary. And if it is, we need to be consistent in it, which will just lead to headaches down the road.

Gilles

8:35 PM

but, the same way many SE sites started out with a strong bias towards programmers (cough The Workplace cough), this one is starting with a strong bias towards moderators

AJ Henderson

@FEichinger yeah, it can cause major issues too. Sound Design has issues in part because Sound Design is not a correct description of the site, it is a partial description of the site which also covers a wide array of sound oriented stuff, not just the specific field of sound design (even if it tends to favor the more design oriented aspects of the other portions of the audio field)

Braiam

@Gilles are you saying that we will start like that so in time people will discover the other (broader) aspect of our scope?

Gilles

Success story in scoping and naming: Science Fiction & Fantasy started out as science fiction only. It got rescoped to all speculative fiction and renamed to “science fiction and fantasy” after a few weeks of beta.

Failure story: Information Security started out as “IT security” and slowly generalized to all information security (which it got renamed to after much lobbying) but never past that because “it says IT in the name”

and there are now proposals like lockpicking on Area 51, even though the current Sec.SE community would welcome the topic, nobody's asking because of the name

so the time to get the name right is now

4

and ditto with the scope

AJ Henderson

@Gilles even if we all call it sec.se

Gilles

@Braiam no, people won't discover the broader aspects of the scope naturally

it's buried in a help page

AJ Henderson

8:44 PM

most people don't look at help pages, they look at the subdomain... and if you are very, VERY lucky the actual site name... and go from there

assuming their assumptions about the site are correct

the number of home theater questions we get on video.stackexchange.com is astounding, despite the fact that it is "Video Production" and home theater is explicitly mentioned as off topic in the help page

Braiam

@Gilles there' you go

FEichinger

@Gilles Then bring it up on meta again, and we'll see what happens.

jwacalex

@AJHenderson: the people just read video.sx and then starting the question=

Braiam

should we change our name???

2

FEichinger

I stand by my notion from a few months back that I don't think we're being unnecessarily exclusive with the namer Moderators, while Community Management (the suggestion at the time) felt too ... how do I put this? ... "must actually get paid for this somewhere to contribute".

AJ Henderson

8:49 PM

@jwacalex yes, that was my evidence of my previous statement about having to be very lucky for them to even read the site name

Gilles

on Computer Science people read “computer” and not “science”. Whaddyamean fixing my windows isn't on-topic?

AJ Henderson

never under-estimate the laziness of people on the internet

3

you can't do it

Gilles

@FEichinger Community Building

AJ Henderson

it simply is not possible

Braiam

@Gilles but but... I got a blue screen in my moms pc after seeing porn, HALP!

AJ Henderson

8:52 PM

@Braiam best question ever

was that Comp Sci

I thought that one showed up on Sec.SE

or was it double posted

Meta Moderators

1

Q: Should we change our name to make implicit that our scope goes beyond mere moderation?

On chat per a moments ago, we were having a discussion about the choice of "Moderators" as our site name, and what implications does this have to our scope. Right now, the name implies that this site is for moderation questions that moderators have, yet the tour gives a broader scope including co...

discussion featured scope

AirThomas

@Gilles I think that goes too far in the opposite direction as people strongly associate moderation with communities that are already built

Gilles

@AirThomas ???

AirThomas

@Gilles If "Moderators" is no good because it neglects the community aspect, "Community Building" is not much better because it neglects the moderation aspect... is what I am saying.

Gilles

@AirThomas moderation is part of regulating a community

I don't understand the problem

AirThomas

9:02 PM

@Gilles Not everyone thinks that way.

Monica Cellio

@Gilles "community building" makes me think of political activism and the like (even though that should be closer to "community organizing", but organizing -> building seems to happen in my brain).

Gilles

@MonicaCellio huh. I don't associate community building to political activism at all. I don't see the connection (except insofar as a political party is a community of course, but in the same way that a chess club is a community, and a site about community building isn't about politics any more than it's about chess)

AirThomas

Brainstorming: What about Moderated Communities?

jwacalex

it sounds to me like gated communities thinks

Monica Cellio

@AirThomas that could work. Throw it out as an answer so people can vote?

AirThomas

9:12 PM

If (and this is a BIG "if") we were to expand our scope beyond purely online communities, that might be a good way to indicate it.

Braiam

@AJHenderson I remember something similar, but it wasn't cs

Annonomus Penguin

Wow, a million things that I've done in the past ten minutes.

Gilles

@MonicaCellio A poll is a bad idea at this stage. We need ideas, not populism.

AirThomas

@Gilles How do you propose to remove the populist element from a site like this?

Gilles

@AirThomas try to decouple sharing ideas from voting

In particular, don't choose based on votes on the thread where the debate is happening. If there's to be a poll, start a separate thread once the debate has settled down.

AirThomas

9:16 PM

@Gilles Sure, that's fine. But in the interim, it's worth polling the community to create that short list.

It's not as though the whole community is even going to participate.

Monica Cellio

@Gilles the question already exists and is getting answers. Being on meta, we can hope for discussion in comments, not just votes.

AJ Henderson

I know digital communities didn't sit well with me because I'm not sure that we want to limit to digital

Community Management?

that implies both building and running

and owning for that matter

I actually no longer like my own suggestion on the meta post, but I'll leave it be since it has 2 up votes

Annonomus Penguin

I think Community Administration adds pizzazz.... status completed

FEichinger

32 mins ago, by FEichinger

I stand by my notion from a few months back that I don't think we're being unnecessarily exclusive with the namer Moderators, while Community Management (the suggestion at the time) felt too ... how do I put this? ... "must actually get paid for this somewhere to contribute".

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