@Spevacus Yes! Thanks for checking in!

new look, @hyper-neutrino ! I like it. Is it a first of the month tradition for you to change your "look"? ;-)

it's cuz of this; it got a pin and 5 stars in my site's main chat room lol

@hyper-neutrino Hah! You seem to know, intrinsically, when to lighten up and have a bit of fun.

Not many mods seem to have mastered such a skill/attitude.

It seems (from some Stack Exchange Data Explorer queries) that only around 15% of our questions that enter the HNQ age away on their own. If 85% of the questions that become hot require kicking, maybe it's better to simply remove our site from the HNQ completely?

@soupless Oh, and you can suggest a few posts to CURED. No problem! (The "quota" we suggest, for each users, 12 close requests, and 12 delete requests.) I seldom use all my quota. The quota is just to allow the many participants in CURED, to have a chance that others can act on it. Since I don't use all mine, it allows those posting such lists, a better chance of being addressed by other users. Since there are limits for every user, wrt #close votes, or #delete votes available.

@TheAmplitwist What queries did you use?

@BillDubuque The ones linked in the comments under the Meta discussions regarding creating a blocklist, etc. I recall that Martin Sleziak had linked some, and you had, too.

I don't have any knowledge of SQL, so I can't really write queries of my own.

Could you please give a link.

@TheAmplitwist Did you see this discussion on Meta math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/30671/42969? Asaf explained his rationale for removing questions from the HNQ (lazy, badly phrased, or clickbait titles), and concluded with “This, to me, at least, is a justification to remove any and all questions from the HNQ list, which I would gladly do.”

I had mentioned before that I am not happy with the fact that (apparently) a single moderator removes almost all questions from the HNQ. (For full disclosure: I started that discussion after my own question was removed.)

@MartinR Oh, but mods will swoon down that every action by one mod is in fact, an action by all mods. But you will likely be spared that fiction. I agree, that no one mod should unilaterally delete comments, nor remove such posts from the HNQ. I do have to say that many of the HNQ posts from math.se, I'd agree with their removal, but not necessarily all. But users on this site have no voice in the matter.

@BillDubuque Martin Sleziak has given plenty of details regarding useful queries here: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/98467/2019/9/10. In case all of that is overwhelming (I'm not sure of your own proficiency with SEDE, so please don't take my words in the wrong way), the following rudimentary one might also be good enough for gathering basic data (which I found simply by searching for "hnq"):

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1459697/…. Unless I'm mistaken, switching "53" with "52" will list the posts that entered the HNQ. The output viewer in SEDE is limited to a certain number of rows, so downloading the CSV file might be useful to compare the data.

@MartinR Yes, I have seen that post, but I missed that you had brought up this matter before in this very room. It did not occur to me to search chat in addition to Meta. (I'll probably make it a point to do so from now on.)

@TheAmplitwist In that chatroom I found a link to Glorfindel's answer with a SEDE query showing the number of times the moderators have used the ability to remove a question from the HNQ list.

Running that query now shows that 63% are deleted on Mathematics, 23% on Workplace, all other numbers are below 10%. Interestingly only 0.3% were deleted on our sister site MathOverflow.

@MartinR Ah, I see! I was looking only upto the latest 3k HNQ questions, for which I got ~85% removal.

But whether it is 60% or 80% or something else in this range, it's still a pretty high number. It might be worth taking another look to see what (if anything) can/needs to be done about it.

@TheAmplitwist Sorry for bring unclear. I was asking for the specific queries you used to support your claim. Obviously we cannot infer that from what you have written so far.

@TheAmplitwist I also find that those numbers are far too high. Of course we don't want bad questions on the HNQ, but not all questions without MathJax in their title are bad. But I had mentioned that before, and eventually concluded with

@BillDubuque I fiddled around with this one that I linked in my reply above: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1459697/…. Sorry for being unclear about that, on my part as well.

I think part of the issue here is that the community cannot effectively keep track of HNQ entries, nor can the community remove HNQ'd questions on their own (without resorting to adding MathJax to the titles), leaving the burden of auditing the HNQ entries solely upon the moderators.

If the algorithm that picks questions for HNQs is getting it "wrong" at least half the time, to be generous, and removing a poor post from the HNQ needs to be done sooner rather than later, well... maybe it's just simpler to err on the side of removing rather than retaining.

(There is a chat feed for HNQ entries, but I don't know how effective it is in terms of curation. Maybe if it's added to CURED — even as a ticker feed — it may help. But that's for the mods and the regular participants of CURED to decide, of course.)

Sigh, just as I wrote here it appears Asaf is still single-handedly removing all these HNQs (I checked the latest 25 in Martin's query linked there and they were all removed by Asaf). I don't agree that any user should have that much power of censorship. Probably time to revisit this on meta after collecting more data, e.g. what did Asaf allow to go to HNQ (if anything)?

Exactly, @Bill, and @TheAmplitwist, and @MartinR. Just be prepared for mods swooping in to claim, "what one mod does, we all support. Or, Asaf is only acting upon consensus from all mods." But I'm willing to support any such meta post.

@amWhy I'd be quite surprised if - after careful review - all the mods supported Asaf's very heavy handed HNQ removals. In fact I'd be surprised if even a majority did. The problem with such actions is that there is no review - they are hidden even to other mods. It is very wrong that one of the major functions of this site has been almost completely inhibited because of one user's very narrow views.

Data point: at the moment we currently have zero questions on the HNQ. The is likely rare for a site our size (even MO currently has two questions there). Have any of our questions survived on HNQ recently?

@BillDubuque I agree, but they will likely claim he has their support. That would make sense, if mods didn't protect one another, as they do now. No need to convince me this is wrong, but ultimately, as always, per my experience, mods defend other mods, above all else.

@BillDubuque Probably not. I am agreeing this needs to be addressed. All I am saying is that I am doubtful anything will change. That's not to say we shouldn't try changing. We should stand up to inappropriate use of mod powers. Just because they can ....., rarely means they should. More of us need to expose this matter. And consistently.

@BillDubuque Please understand, I am not at all disagreeing with you. It's just that I'm in jeopardy, if I say too much, and knowing that, alone, has lead me to have almost no faith in change. But that does not negate the importance of suggestions here, with which I fully agree.