The Water Cooler

10:35 AM

@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"

Magisch

@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

Mister Positive

12:37 PM

@JoeStrazzere I think you would be a great Moderator at Joe. And apparently you have time now. ;-}

Good morning all....

@avazula How is my fav bee keeper?

Magisch

morning (is noon here)

Mister Positive

@Magisch Hello sir

avazula

@MisterPositive blushes I'm great :D I signed for a house last night. Big yard on which to put big hives!

How are you?

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

Guten Morgen, mein Herr

avazula

Wie geht es Sie?

Magisch

12:51 PM

@avazula you could get a hivemind going

an unstoppable bee army

avazula

The child of Chaos arms herself with stinging soldiers ... Lovely

motosubatsu

@avazula Entschuldigung, wie geht es bitte am besten zum Hauptbahnhof?

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@avazula not too bad, other than doing to work of five and being paid for the work of 1/2

Magisch

@avazula almost

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@avazula Hail Loki!

avazula

12:53 PM

@Magisch haha, I know the "du" form but not the formal one :p

Magisch

Wie geht es ihnen

Sie is singular formal, or informal feminine singular indirect

avazula

@Magisch ha, that's the genitive I was looking for

Magisch

or "Wie geht es dir?" for informal

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@Magisch it was still understandable though :D

avazula

@motosubatsu Ich weiss es night. Ich kenne diese Stadt nicht sehr gut.

motosubatsu

1:01 PM

@avazula Kein Problem :D

avazula

:D

motosubatsu

@avazula One day, someone will know.

Magisch

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica indeed

Mister Positive

@avazula Doing great thanks. Will be grateful for a new Mod to join the team.

avazula

@MisterPositive I bet it'll be a relief

Mister Positive

1:05 PM

@avazula Congrats on the house!

@avazula Just an FYI -- I purged a lot of my stack accounts. I only have TWP, SO, and Meta.

part of my "Keep myself sane and focused" plan

Magisch

@MisterPositive I'm rather surprised y'all going for 1 more when you lost 3

Mister Positive

@Magisch Well, @Lilienthal and I have held the fort down pretty good. If we get one more we'll see how that goes and respond accordingly.

Magisch

fair enough

Joe Strazzere

@MisterPositive Thanks. I have less time now in retirement, than I did while working. I'm about to head off and play pickleball.

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@MisterPositive TWP is calmer than most stacks I've encountered

Mister Positive

1:12 PM

@JoeStrazzere Good for you. I hope you enjoy retirement. I am a long ways from that goal

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica Agreed.

Magisch

@MisterPositive you just reminded me I'll have to work for another 45 years

:(

Mister Positive

@Magisch Wow your really young! I am really old, so I don't have that long to go.

motosubatsu

wait.. people get to retire?!

Magisch

@MisterPositive I'm 25

Mister Positive

I plan to

retire that is at some point.

@motosubatsu at least on this side of the pond we do. [hello sir}

Magisch

1:15 PM

My full job title is senior software developer and data protection officer though

that sounds more important then it is and contacts at customers regularly get confused

@motosubatsu I'm honestly not so sure, 45 years from now I might not get to

Mister Positive

Time to work....

[Entering Sleep Mode] /ignore @motosubatsu

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

1:41 PM

@Magisch, I'll probably have to work another 45 years too... I'll be a centenarian programmer.

Nzall

1:57 PM

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?

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@Nzall no, but we have a few close-happy folks around here.

Nzall

@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

Magisch

@Nzall nah, imo

it's a pretty decent question

clear, concise, can be answered properly

Mister Positive

2:25 PM

@Nzall In my mind, that question is opinion based.

Nzall

@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

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@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.

Nzall

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.

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@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....

Nzall

but it doesn't work as well on sites that focus on social interactions

Magisch

2:35 PM

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.

Nzall

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.

Arthur Havlicek

@Nzall could you link me your question ?

Nzall

3

Q: Does the general advice to not date coworkers also apply to employees of companies your company does business with?

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...

Mister Positive

well, if enough people disagree with me it can be reopened. ;-}

Arthur Havlicek

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)

Mister Positive

2:47 PM

@ArthurHavlicek Yup that is exactly why I cast what I thought was the last Close vote. ( it was the next to last close vote )

Arthur Havlicek

Interestingly enough, I'm with Pieter B here, I don't think it's that bad of an idea in itself

Nzall

AFAIK it's not closed yet

like, it's still open on my end

Arthur Havlicek

Player One sumed it up nicely. Reminded me when i said there is no problem in finding good answers there

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

3:16 PM

@Nzall we tend to fall evenly between "close everything" and "close nothing". Joe and I fall more in the "close nothing" category

Magisch

I fall into close some things

but fewer then a few months ago

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@Magisch is it my imagination, or have we been getting fewer questions and of lower quality than previously.

Nzall

3:36 PM

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica It's probably the case. The past couple months have caused a lot of high rep users to stop using the site as much

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

3:57 PM

@Nzall I know I don't use it as much anymore. I don't do much voting, and don't check the queue any longer either.

Nzall

Same. I'm pretty much only active in Arqade chat these days

and if I need to ask something for work, but the last 3 questions I asked all had no interaction beyond votes

Magisch

@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

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

5:09 PM

@Magisch looks like we're starting to drop off.

motosubatsu

5:40 PM

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica actually if you ignore Feb '20 (which is far from being a complete data point) it doesn't look that way at all

Magisch

looks rather stable

granted this is a very simple set of results, but I had that query laying around, so I quickly put it for TWP to see

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

No, it doesn't look stable at all. We are down in answers by 50% over last year.

motosubatsu

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica erm.. whut?

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

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.

motosubatsu

@RichardSaysReinstateMonica don't worry.. I'm sure you won't let us forget anything

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

5:50 PM

@motosubatsu I get no joy in it any more than Cassandra rejoiced when the walls of Troy fell.

motosubatsu

haha.. I needed a laugh today. "get no joy".. yeah right. Pull the other one, it's got bells on :D

Magisch

oh you mean month to month

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@motosubatsu No, I feel like I am watching an old friend die from a slow, terminal illness and can do nothing to stop it.

@Magisch the way to trend data is not month over month, but year over year, at least in this case.

motosubatsu

sorry I can't hear over all the melodramatic violins

Richard Says Reinstate Monica

@motosubatsu okayyyyyyyyyy......

On that note, Cheers, mate

Mister Positive

6:16 PM

@motosubatsu have you decided whether or not your gonna run?

Lilienthal

8:37 PM

@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.

Magisch

iirc the community team has been calling the runner up in elections that happened less then 4(?) months ago when additional need was asserted

rather then holding another one

given that the runner up didn't come in last (e.g an election with only 2 candidates)

Lilienthal

Can't recall the cutoff but that is the procedure yes.

Magisch

catija talked about it in the tavern at some point

going off memory

Lilienthal

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.)

Magisch

ok, I looked it up, it's less then 6 months after the election from what she said in the tavern

did not mention a specific time frame

Lilienthal

8:50 PM

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.

Magisch

this was in the context of me suggesting she call up darkcygnus when everyone had resigned

Lilienthal

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.

Magisch

I'm fully expecting it

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

Lilienthal

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.

Magisch

and well, if you're a mod, you lose the ability to look away

whatever people will throw, you will see it

I think within our small place right now people are thankful that you two are holding things up

Lilienthal

9:01 PM

Of course. There's occasional vitriol from certain users but that's nothing unexpected. That is indeed part of the package.

Magisch

personally, I'm expecting to be targeted for attacks both on and off site

it wouldn't be the first time in the last couple of months, some people take everything as a slight

Lilienthal

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.

Magisch

there is a very large sentiment of helping out being seen as enabling

snow has literally deleted his account over it

Joe Strazzere

@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.

Lilienthal

@JoeStrazzere We do. All our actions are instant.

Magisch

9:07 PM

joe, if you ran, I'm pretty sure you would take #1 uncontested

so if you think you want it, go for it

Lilienthal

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.

Magisch

basically when you do that prepare for a meta post

:P

Joe Strazzere

Hmm.

Lilienthal

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.

Magisch

mods can also hand out review bans

Lilienthal

9:09 PM

But I could see it causing closure wars if you decide to use it as a way to protest site mechanics.

We can? :D

Magisch

yea

there's a whole UI for it. You can manually suspend people from reviewing for up to a year

one thing I'm not too hot on about becoming a mod is it basically precludes me from reviewing in the CVQ

every closure is seen as a mod closure and every leave open instantly closes the review task

Lilienthal

Hah, ok, finally found it. It's hidden in mod tools so no wonder I never saw it before.

But yes that's true, I haven't really touched review queues since being elected.

That said, I didn't much before either, I just looked at new posts and VTCd from there on anything new. :)

Magisch

joe running means the rest of us are competing for runner up :p

Lilienthal

@JoeStrazzere On time commitments see:

78

Q: What is a day in the life of a Stack Exchange moderator like?

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...

discussion stack-overflow moderation moderators

^ But this is talking about SO where there is a time commitment expected. Other sites don't have that. See also:

-3

Q: How much time do moderators spend on Stack Overflow?

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...

discussion moderators

For good measure:

stackoverflow.com/help/site-moderators

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.

Pointy Haired Boss

10:26 PM

2

Q: What are the day-to-day activities of Moderators?

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...

discussion moderators

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