@Magisch @Magisch How do you mean? I've actually gathered the opposite of this - the company cares equally little about the moderators as the "community" (the masses of resignations seemed to have little to no effect on the subsequent events by the company). What have I not seen that shows that they listen to moderators?
Sorry, I seem to have messed up the linking there, it supposed to be in response to this: "the moderator council and the way stack exchange has been acting have made it abundantly clear that moderators aren't just users with some more tools anymore, they're our elected representatives to the company, they're (ideally) protecting us from their worst excesses, and they argue on our behalf to those that will only listen to them"
@PlayerOne They listen preciously little to everyone (outwarldy at least). But, several new features have been shared for comment and review with the moderators prior to release (latest example: featured tag policy). They also plan to create a moderator council to make policy-level decisions on how to handle conduct issues and issue guidance to that respect
In that sense, the traditional view of moderators as just judicious users with a few extra buttons is no longer fully operable.
also, it has been moderators who have had a significant positive impact on shaping the FAQ posts relating to the COC Updates to be less ... onerous. It has been them who have spoken up ahead of time on things we were told only later
liking it or not, the position has become more of a community ambassador type thing then it ever was before, explicit or not
So that question I just posted about dating people from companies your company does business with: Is the close vote for "company specific policies should be talked over with HR" really applicable to that question?
@RichardSaysReinstateMonica I thought as much. Is the question itself a good fit for the stack though? I noticed there have been some other questions regarding office relationships, so I thought it was okay
@MisterPositive in my experience a lot of questions on this stack are. Checking the highest voted questions, there are like 2 of the questions on the first page that can be objectively answered: "How do I prepare for getting hit by a bus" and "How do I deal with the 30 minutes problem"
I also disagree with the concept that you can't have opinion based questions on the softer stacks. it's one of the core problems I have with trying to apply the Stack Overflow mentality of "everything has 1 definitive answer that applies in every situation and everything else is wrong" to stuff like parenting, interpersonal relations, workplace, etc
@MisterPositive in reality, anything at TWP is going to be opinion based to one degree or another. What makes the distinction for me is if it can be answered from the perspective of someone who has had sufficient workplace experience.
The "this question is opinion based" reason to close something works fine on the technical stacks, because generally you're dealing with tech or science there, and most of that is codified into rules, either those that we created or those that we observed.
@Nzall "how do I deal with being put on a PIP", "How to handle birthdays", "Employer is asking personal questions, what do I do"..... plenty like that. Heck... this one qualifies....
mind, the opinion based close reason is in my mind for "too opinion based"
in some respect a lot of questions are. Doesn't stop a reasonable person with sufficient experience in the workplace from giving a useful and general answer.
For me, the opinion based close reason should be for questions where someone asks "what is your opinion on X" or something to that extent. On Stack Overflow it was originally created to solve a problem with discussion-based questions about favorite tech to use for a problem, or to essentially ask for reviews of content. Those can't really get a "this answer will help a lot of people" answer like "how do I solve this exception?"
Those questions also got an unhealthy amount of brigading and religious wars, where someone recommended something that went counter to the norm.
I understand that usually, it's not considered a good idea to date coworkers, because it can lead to personal problems spilling over into the office and negatively affecting the company.
My question is: does this advice also apply to employees of companies that your company does business with? T...
I'd understand why its tagged opinion based although its a fine question, because you ask indirect advice whether or not to do it (or at least it looks like it - maybe it could be reworded)
@RichardSaysReinstateMonica let me do some science
@RichardSaysReinstateMonica Average Questions and Answers per day and average post score on a monthly basis for the entire lifetime of the site: data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/1196241
Also, we are riding the wave of the controversy right now. The full effects won't be seen until June, where I expect we will be at about 20 answers and about 4 questions per day
We'll probably be at 2014 levels after that, where we will stabilize, unless a few things happen
1)A viable alternative crops up 2)Stack Exchange changes course 3)People just quietly walk away.
Fewer people "rage quit", and actually quit than you might thing. Angry people are still engaged. It's when they stop caring that things dry up.
SE is going to start to feel the effects of rage fatigue in the next 4 months
not that anyone will remember this prediction, but there you have it.
@JoeStrazzere Thank you for sharing. I understand your hesitance but I would argue that if anyone knows when not to engage or how to avoid rushing to judgement it would be you. I'd encourage you to post a new question on meta asking about the day-to-day of moderation tasks (we can discuss it here but it feels somewhat unfair to "hide" the discussion here during an active election).
The typical time spent on the site varies from person to person and there are not set rules. While we don't encourage people to run who will not have some level of activity, we also don't push people out for "not meeting the targets" as those don't exist.
I will add that while I agree with @MisterPositive that we are managing to hold down the fort, this is largely due to him taking up the brunt of the work. As mentioned my time is scarce unfortunately and I've stepped up engagement during this time. We have discussed opening 2 election slots before and the consensus between us (and the community team) was to arrive at 1 and go from there.
There is precedent in elevating the runner-up in a recent election to the diamond as well. I don't quite know if it's possible to open an additional slot during election but it's something I've been considering since I may be going through quite a change at work in the near future which would further restrict my time.
Honestly speaking, considering some of the people who have expressed interest in running so far it would seems we have a great field of candidates and I would personally be comfortable bringing in two new people. (One of the typical concerns in doing so is that it's easier for consistency to bring in only one person at a time until they "learn the ropes" but I could argue that point both ways.)
Makes sense. What I remember is essentially "not too long after". I could see going up to 5 months but any more and a new election would make more sense.
Ah right, that would be why it's fresh in memory as well.
So to conclude @JoeStrazzere (or anyone else considering running of course), if it turns out that after the newly elected moderator joins that we could still use an extra pair of hands (regardless of reason), we could bring in someone else to lighten the load.
As a final remark in regards to being "very opinionated": I don't see that as a bad thing. I'm absolutely sure that there were always points I disagreed on with fellow moderators but different viewpoints are a good thing. The moderation team should never become an "old boys' club".
We'd obviously prefer you not to start insta-closing everything left, right and centre but you've been able to do that to about 60% of the questions on our site for ages (thanks to your gold question badge) and I don't think that caused any issues. :)
@Magisch Just to respond to this, specifically that anyone who's elected will have anger directed at them: I have not noticed anything of the sort on this site. As moderators we have some private avenues of communication and I have not seen such attacks there nor am I aware of this happening in the public sections of our site. If it did, whether directed at the community, the moderation team or the Community Team members, it would be shut down and shut down quickly.
Considering how purely caustic people get when you call for meta to be a bit less angry, actually volunteering to help out SE (or thats how it'll be framed) in this time will draw more ire
Potentially @MisterPositive has been getting to it before me and shielding me from it (in which case thank you :)) but I really haven't noticed this reach our site. Moderators are free to engage on the wider moderation network (a special chat and Teams site exist for this) but that is entirely optional as well and both I and I believe @MisterPositive have been restricting our activity to this site and its community which has for the most part remained unaffected.
But to be clear a moderator is someone who steps up to support the site first and foremost. In my personal view, that is also all that I do in the sense that I don't engage with the broader SE network. I guess I follow you in the sense that anyone running should be prepared for caustic users who take offence at deciding to help a site but anyone opting into a moderation position anywhere on the web should be prepared to get flack occasionally.
@Lilienthal Do Moderators have "insta-reopen" power? That's the one that would tempt me. As I've written before I think we close far too many questions.
I will caution you that it's one power to use with, well, caution. If 5 members of the community opt to close something and it remains unedited then reopening it as-is may spark trouble.
Potentially. It's essentially reversing community action unilaterally. If a user edited a post to clarify certain details and what have you then by all means instant open.
What is it like to be a Stack Exchange moderator? Do you have to be on the site 24/7? Are there certain expectations of you every day (answering set amount of questions, reviewing set amount of items, etc.)?
What is working in that position like? Is it time-demanding? Or is it something you ca...
Based on the amount of reputation they need to have, it seems like you'd have to spend a ton of time on Stack Overflow or get lucky on those "answers that keep on giving" to become a moderator (you know what I mean, that one question that gets like 450 upvotes even though it's a really boring sim...
I would say that that "30 minutes at few days a week" is closer to "5-10 minutes a few days". I'd wager I spend less than 5 minutes a day on flags these days. I would guess @MisterPositive spends more.
Now that moderator elections are upcoming, it would be nice to know: just what do moderators do?
How much time per day does it take?
What are you expected to do each day?
I know that moderators move comment threads to Chat. I understand that they have "moderator super powers". But I honestly do...