2015 Workplace Moderator Election

jmac

00:28

@Malachi One of the reasons for the lower number of candidates is that there's only one slot. It's a lot easier to think of ways you can win when there are multiple slots.

@smci One of the benefits of community moderation is that the community (rather than the mods) can handle most issues of question quality. The community can edit, downvote, close, and even delete. What do you think a mod could do in these cases that the community cannot?

Shog9

Go mad with power.

jmac

@Shog9 Isn't that what you hired me to do? Unfortunately people don't realize the breadth of my power since it is demonstrated in Japanese.

Shog9

You just need to rant here in Japanese more often.

Nothing says "mad with power" like megalomaniacal speeches in Japanese.

jmac

Japanese politician cries. ryutaro nonomura

►

Shog9

chilling

smci

02:40

@jmac: I never suggested mods have magical powers to do things we can't. I did expect they would have a seasoned take on posting, answering, commenting behavior, so I expect each of them to have a concrete recommendation on those examples. Also the questionnaire specifically complained/asked candidates about unconstructive comments. Also I'm suggesting that downvoting is not the cure to all ills (or even most of the ills).

jmac

@smci Normal people can't moderate comments unless they are spam/offensive. This site also gets a real huge number of comments compared to other sites. So the combination of a large volume and the inability of the community to handle them is why they get brought up in the election questionnaires.

Monica Cellio

Some recent MSE posts of mine about comments and the moderation thereof, just for some background:

24

Q: C'mon, please give us a hint: how authoritative is that "obsolete comment" flag?

Comment flags do not show who did the flagging, which is usually fine -- as a moderator reviewing such flags I can evaluate whether something is "not constructive" or "too chatty" or "offensive" without knowing the history. But "obsolete" flags require more work, enough that when I see them I us...

21

Q: How has "move comments to chat" affected users' behavior?

For a while now, moderators have had the ability to move long comment threads to new chat rooms. "Out of the box", this is only possible when an automatic flag is raised after a certain number of comments are posted in a short time, though there exists a workaround that moderators can use to for...

support comments chat moderator-tools

See also:

72

Q: Make comment flags less stupid

I'm sick of comment flags, and I'm pretty sure everyone else is too. They've been a problem for five years, and they're just getting worse. Don't get me wrong: rude/vulgar/stupid comments are a plague. We don't want this to be YouTube, and know good and well it could easily go that route. But th...

feature-request comments flags 10k-tools comment-flags

smci

06:24

@jmac: I'm expecting the mods to have way more profound insights on how to improve the whole question-answer-comment process than simply a binary 'Delete comment X' or 'Let comment X stand'. Such as: when the question (or answer) itself is at fault for causing confusion. Or when multiple edits to the question cause that. When titles or tags are at fault. When a question needs rewording. When a repeat asker of vague questions needs a talking to. etc.

GodEmperorDune

@smci mods are human too

they have anti-troll tools and such

but you can query most of the other data through SEDE and post to meta if you have these insights

you don't need to be a mod to participate

smci

06:55

@GodEmperorDune ??? You're not understanding me. I'm simply asking the three candidates for moderator whether they have any intelligent comments or not on specific scenarios of suboptimal user behavior (not outright trolling, but suboptimal interactions, ambiguity, subjectivity etc.) - since guiding that will be a large part of their job. I want to hear their take. Ok?

I'm not expecting the Kwisatz Haderach

GodEmperorDune

@smci sorry, I saw that it was addressed to jmac and not to the mod candidates. My apologies

smci

Okey doke

GodEmperorDune

@smci :D

Rory Alsop

@venidividicivicini So far, it actually does work quite well - the range of sites I mod is very broad, but the core that comes through is the community integration. With very few exceptions, the decision of the community as a whole is going to be right, and the mods need to support that constructively, and flow with that community

GodEmperorDune

07:23

@RoryAlsop do you find it difficult to stay up to date on all the meta discussions across your communities? surely there are nuances between each of them? For example I know that workplace is much more strict on comments than most other sites

jmac

@smci I feel like we're talking by each other here. Asking for "insights" or "constructive comments" without clarifying what you're looking for, especially when those comments would be on questions on another site which seem to have been handled by the community already, doesn't seem to offer any real information on the candidates. Would you mind clarifying what you're looking for, and finding equivalent questions on this site where these mods would be serving?

If you just want a general overview of what the candidates have said on question quality, then I suggest taking a look at their meta profiles. That will tell you what they have said on various situations in the past. As a former mod for this site, my answer to your question as-is would be "I would do nothing. They were handled by the community and are on a separate site I don't actively participate on." And I don't think that's what you're looking for.

Rory Alsop

@GodEmperorDune I load in all my sites every morning and do a first sweep across those I mod, and their chat rooms, and then I tend to dip in and out through the day, with another sweep at lunchtime. Then in the evening I tend to be on for about 5 hours or so. Additionally, I do try to stay up to speed using the mobile app during my commute - not as reliable though

Workplace's view on comments seems to meet mine. Quick stats from one of my other sites - I am the top destroyer of comments, with 20 times more deleted than any other mod there...whether that is bad or good :-)

@smci - on any mature community, mods really are exception handlers and janitors. Trusted users can do almost everything, and your examples all come within that scope. If the community disagrees over edits/rollbacks then sure, it makes sense to have a mod make a definitive stance, but even there, if I did that and the community view was that I was wrong I'd edit/change it

Things are different in early beta days, much more guidance is needed, and working with the community before there are enough trusted users is essential, but we don't really have that same issue here

Malachi

13:21

@jmac very true

Malachi

15:42

@RoryAlsop I like your answers the best, but what can we say about Reputation? maybe you have already addressed this in chat somewhere I haven't read yet.

Rory Alsop

@Malachi oh - which specific question? My low rep here? Yep, that is my main problem in this election - how to give anyone any assurance that a) I know enough about Workplace, b) I'm committed, and c) how I behave here

I can probably answer c) by pointing people at my other modding, but a) and b) are harder

I guess some assurance for b) can be taken from the fact that of all the sites I either volunteered for, was voted for, or was asked to look after, I have remained committed

Malachi

@RoryAlsop I was talking about the answers to the questionnaire

Rory Alsop

15:58

@Malachi oh - I must have missed a bit then, hang on - I'll go and update.

Malachi

I don't think that reputation was really one of the questions.... I was speed reading though....

Rory Alsop

@Malachi No - I don't see a specific question on rep, but am happy to answer one if you have one

Malachi

16:42

@RoryAlsop well obviously you would gain a lot of privileges that you don't already have here on The Workplace, how will you make that transition? Will the instant power of the Ban Hammer corrupt you?

Rory Alsop

@Malachi hahahaha - it certainly hasn't on my other sites. Like I said, my preferred mod style is Peacekeeper, and I think on my 7 sites across the last 4 years I have only ever banned obvious spammers.

Even our most devout troll on security only earned himself a suspension - admittedly by the 6th or 7th suspension I had (by agreement with other mods) moved it to a maximum term (possibly 9999 days) as each time he returned his behaviour was not improved, and was possibly worse. #trollsgonnatroll

I always try and encourage improvement in behaviour rather than punish, and when punishment is necessary, I like to confirm - either because enough members of the community have flagged or commented, or because chat with community and other mods comes to agreement

In both my paid day job, and some of my voluntary work, the coaching and mentoring I do is to lead to a position where someone I coached or some community I helped is a success - then on my personal CV I can know that part of that success was down to me, and that makes me content and happy

Malachi

you have fairly high rep on several other sites, your top 4 rep accounts you are a moderator. will your involvement asking and answering questions increase or decrease because of being a moderator?

Rory Alsop

@Malachi On my top one, Security, my answering questions has reduced a wee bit as I've taken on other mod duties. Part of that though is when the site was young I was a very prolific answerer, and now we have a good sized community there, we have a lot of smart folks who provide good answers, so like the other mods there, we often hang back a wee bit - as some people won't answer if they see an answer already there from a high rep user or a mod

Aside from that site though, I answer as much as ever on my other sites, and when I come up with a question that needs an answer I'll happily go to whatever site is best and ask it

smci

21:28

@RoryAlsop: you didn't address any of the context about vague titles, vague or misapplied tags. Cranky comments are often the terminal symptom of user disagreement/lack of clarity/consensus about a site's purpose - in which case the mods and other senior users should be responsible for Doing Something To Make Things Better, not just hiding behind the delete button. Did you bother to read my examples?

Monica Cellio

@smci perhaps if you used examples from this site you would get better responses. If you can't find any examples here, that too is informative. (I'm sure we've got some, but the community does actually do a really good job with editing, closing, and reopening as needed.)

2

smci

I don't have time to collate some before the election ends, but why don't you guys?

enderland

You are the one asking the question and, ah, demanding that the candidates go and research questions on an entirely different Stack Exchange site

2

smci

Wrong. I requested the candidates click on two links I provided and give me their brief take. Takes all of like 3 min. Nothing whatsoever about "researching on another site". The issues I mentioned are canonical SE issues: lazy titles, misapplied tags, site grows and you get more tags and worse-quality tag definition. Unless you want to claim those aren't canonical issues. And Academia.SE is not too far off TheWorkplace - it has shared themes with TW. Not like judaism.stackexchange.com

I didn't "demand" anything, in particular, I didn't "demand" they "research on another site". I had already researched and found decent examples on Ac.SE, written up why they were canonically relevant to TW, and provided the links. All that I asked was that the three candidates look at those two links. No need for misrepresenting that simple request.

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2015 Workplace Moderator Election