hi all ... congratulations on apparent high engagement by the community for the elections.

a few suggestions to new mods based on very limited involvement on this site

* plz be very tolerant/ flexible in chat & of new users

* plz allow some flexibility of citing stuff on the internet eg personal blogs. dont think its a major crime.

got dinged hard on both these criteria in past on this site. have chatted in many rooms across se & feel mod(s) overreacted unusually on this site compared to other sites.

another item

* a few of my questions have been dinged as "asking for recommendations". feel that asking for refs that fit an objective criteria as in a few of my q's, focused on literary research , is a lot different than requests like "can you recommend some cool stories on [x]"

its fine if nobody wants to answer them, but closing them again seems like an overreaction to me.

(would be able to point to my questions in these areas but they got deleted so whatever easy come easy go)

anyway, wishing you all the best in the elections & future mod/ mgt of the site; its defn a great & engaging site, one of the standout sites on stackexchange as far as content & user activity/ dedication. :)

@vzn - Recommendation are discouraged on the main site because they don't really fit the primary purpose of the site (e.g. questions have answers) but I'd always encourage people to ask them in chat. If you want to ask something but you're not quite sure how to phrase it, again, feel free to ask in the chatroom. There's invariably someone around who can help.

@vzn Take it to Meta. Asking for new mods to ignore the established rules of the site is pointless.

think this is on topic for this chat room as initiated by grace note.

meta is just another place to shoot down suggestions.

nobody is asking anyone to "ignore established rules of the site". straw man argument.

am talking about interpretation of the rules.

re this interesting/ apropos statement by pearson

have noticed a tendency by mods across se. they sometimes seem to get a bit "drunk with power" & sometimes think their opinions inherently always overrule the unwashed masses, so to speak. this is coupled with an extremely lassaiz faire attitude by se mgt wrt mod power/ choices.

then there is the "circle the wagons"/ "groupthink" mentality of high rep users etc.... it is rarely challenged.

re recommendations, my pt is, have ask questions that are reasonably interpreted as not asking for recommendations, just asking for refs fitting a totally objective, probably narrow criteria, for purposes of literary research.

agreed this is not a common use of the site, but neither does it seem reasonably forbidden.

there seems to be some pattern of "1st occurrence of [x]" type questions but havent gotten hang of how to ask it "correctly" yet.

@vzn A good start would be not having a contrived introduction to promote your blog.

It's one thing to occasionally and sparingly link to other people's blogs, quite another to construct a largely unnecessary paragraph linking to two of your blog posts and not mentioning that they're yours.

the blog linking policy is ambiguous. its not clear.

the questions were not contrived. had real questions. they were sparked by blog entries. the blog pointers were offhand refs. & frankly theres so little traffic on most se questions on average, even if the links stayed, it would lead to minimal )( hits. its just a (rather weak) way to occasionally hook up with like minded thinkers/ enthusiasts etc.

eg there is a lot of overlap between scifi enthusiasts, coders, robot/ tech enthusiasts, etc. whatever.

its strange, anecdotal observation: a lot of se users seem to have blogs but dont even put links to them on their profiles, where it is allowed & even somewhat encouraged afaik. not sure why that is.

tried asking some seemingly simple/ straightfwd q's combining literary-analysis and history-of but they got shut down as "recommendations requests". was aiming more for something like "reference-request" as found on some se science sites. agreed, 2020 hindsight, it doesnt fit too well with this audience.

@vzn Mods don't write the rules to the site, they just enforce them.

Believe you me, it's not a very glamorous job. Being a mod is more akin to a janitor than anything else.

hi P. am well familiar with mod action on se after over 3yrs of participation on multiple sites.

lets just all take to heart the se guidelines. paraphrased "the best mods are those who mod least"...

I've been a moderator on 4 sites, for an average of over 2 years on each of the 4 sites.

Each time when I started, I had a very different opinion than when it ended.

mods nec make interpretations of rules and not all modding is about "enforcement of rules"

In fact, the major thing that mods do is respond to site flags, and manage them.

agreed

I never had time beyond a few months to do much more moderating activities than manage the flags.

but the flags are invisible so its not clear if mods are sometimes (independently/ unilaterally) overreacting without the presence of flags.

Flag or no flag, the reaction by a moderator should be the same.

Flags just point the mods to a potential action, that's all.

some mod actions happen without flags.

This is true. The action the mod takes if they find a questionable question should be the same as they would if the question was flagged.

agreed it is a sometimes thxless job

that is all very theoretical. a nonflag is much different than a flag.

& both are invisible/ nontransparent to users.

That might be the case, but the action that should be taken should be very similar.

on some sites mods are much more active (than what you describe) eg here in chat rooms.

the scifi chat room is unusually active/ busy.

It's been 2 years since the last election.

It's normal for moderators to show a steady decline in activity over time.

There are two active mods at the moment, myself not included.

yes, like new elections, think its healthy for se in general & dont really like the lifetime mod policy partly for reasons you describe & others.

what "should" happen vs what "does" happen are often subj to hindsight rationalization. "if the mod did it, it must be correct"

Believe you me, many things I've done have been questioned.

And in fact, many things done by other moderators have also been questioned.

lol maybe so but have any been overturned? that is very, very rare on se in general.

questioning is just a formality with no effective significance.

It happens more than you think.

it is quite rare. & the reopen button on questions might as well be hooked up to nothing.

Re-opening questions is much rarer than closing, but it does happen.

a few times per year per site? max? whatever

More than that, I'm sure.

I'm seeing if I can find the statistics.

its not important. am interested in mod attitudes overall. think you summarized it well yourself that the best philosophy is in service to users.

4 questions have been re-opened in the last 48 hours.

that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle/ drudgery.

4 questions on what site? or across all se?

On this site.

SFF.

huh

The most recent was scifi.stackexchange.com/posts/79928/revisions

It's just that re-opened questions aren't as visible as closed questions.

ok. seems high. its possible this site is atypical wrt reopened questions.

elsewhere it seems low.

obviously not an authority on this particular site dynamics except in a few brief interactions in past that led to my suggestions.

On Stack Overflow, there has been around 20 in the last day.

re "questioning," mods rarely change their minds based on questioning.

SO is atypical wrt se, its the largest site/ highest traffic etc.

Change their minds? Maybe not. Change their actions: It happens all the time.

lol yeah hammering harder :p

Do you know how hard it is to re-open a question on SO? I've gotten a few of mine that were falsely closed, but I can tell you, it happens.

"false closed" makes no sense. it seems a lot of se is about denying inherent subjectivity.

Trust me, it happens all the time.

its the geek mindset/ bias.

In my case, it was closed as a duplicate, when it was clearly not a duplicate to anyone who knew the subject properly.

I haven't always agreed with the moderators, but there's only a very few times where I really disagreed with one.

The biggest case was a pro-temp moderator who was probably using some of his powers a bit strongly. It turned out that particular power was taken away from moderators.

mainly object to heavyhanded modding. have seen it. mods have so much power on the site. think it should be used wisely :p

Mods have very little power more than a high reputation user.

The biggest difference is the diamond by their name is binding, they have more information than a typical user, and their delete and close votes are binding. And they can migrate questions.

binding votes are a lot of power. also suspending/ blocking users.

"if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I forgot that one.

binding votes are like unilateral actions outside of general user consensus (or non care).

anyway you clearly have lots of experience & think you make many fair/ valid points from the mod pov.

Someone has to have the power.

lol ok

sounds like something darth vadar would say :p

If a question is controversial, it ends up on meta. Trust me.

In the 3 years I've been a mod here, I've probably had a dozen or more decisions that I personally made been questioned on meta.

thats not very many. anyway, it all works generally well. have minor suggestions.

If the community decides differently, then I have changed my action.

lol but that happens extremely rarely.

mods seem to talk about a lot of theoretical stuff that rarely happens.

It really isn't that many, because most of the time, the moderators know the policies of the community, and don't do stuff that's different than the communities will.

Most of the mod questions are very theoretical, but rarely happens.

policies are subjectively interpreted. that concept seems to be lost on a lot of mods & even se mgt at times.

That's why I tried to ask some questions that are more realistic.

we are all humans, we are not robots.

lets have mods that are not robots either.

Do you have an example?

have example questions that got deleted. oh well! life goes on!

If you have an example of a time where a mod did something that you don't think was the will of the community, feel free to bring it up on meta.

Anyways, I've got to run.

am speaking from experience also. yeah gotta go too. nice chatting.

am indeed bringing it up in chat where there is less chance of retribution wink ;)

the "will of the community" is a rather abstract, slippery concept at times.

the "community" often simply goes along with mod choices. ok!

an idea re your mentioning flags: if the software indicated to users whenever theyd been flagged, it might be more transparent & helpful overall.

Retribution should never happen, and there are safeguards to keep it from happening.

And questions are very rarely closed on meta. I only see 1 question closed in the last 30 days that wasn't a duplicate.

@PearsonArtPhoto 2:1 ratio between closed:reopened questions in the last month.