@scottbb that can depend on the mod but I think most try to take a somewhat step back at least on Too Broad and Opinion type of questions to let the community weigh in and then only hammer after multiple votes and reasons have been established. Otherwise users would think the mods are abusing their status

But no it doesn't feel at all like my voice is taken out of the day-to-day as I can still do comments, mod messages (when necessary which is exceedingly rare), private chats regarding behavior, make my voice heard on meta, in chat, etc. But even that depends on what the goal of the mod is

Some mods solely deal with flags and that's it. Which is fine and essential. Other mods may take a very active role in welcome new members. Or in maintaining the Help, Close Reasons, FAQ, etc. There's all sorts of things a mod can do and not all mods do all of them.

@Ryan thanks for your insights. On your 1st part, at least here at Photo.SE, I am under the impression that Off-Topic and Duplicate are the most frequent close reasons, much more than Too Broad and Opinion. Other than some really obvious clunker questions, it seems that the Photo.SE mods don't weigh in on closing often at all. I agree, some self-moderation (pun) on the mods' part is good, in order to not come across as throwing their weight around too much.

Out of curiosity, how often are you compelled / called upon to engage in private chats regarding behavior?

@scottbb not often but it can take up some serious time when those things do come up. Like stressful and kills a day maybe two. Shog9 actually just gave us some serious insight to the Moderation of the GDSE community if you want to take a look. Obviously its not a 1 to 1 comparison but might be of interest to you (I'm guessing you're considering running)

Insight to GDSE Moderator vs Community activity

@ryan thanks for the link. that's a very interesting thread over at meta.GDSE. I can totally understand the stressful aspect of having to deal with situations in private chat. I imagine that rarely ends with "hey, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll consider what we discussed and adjust accordingly".

No, I'm not considering running. I just want to know more how things work. shog9's answer was really interesting, but I still disagree on a minor point, that moderator tools aren't an additional power tool to active contributors — it still feels to me that they replace the ability to just be one of 3 or 5 voices coming to consensus. That's why I asked about the "sudo" ability for mods. I'd consider running if mod powers (at least when it comes to voting in the review queues)...

... would default to off, and then could be used on a case-by-case basis.

@scottbb as for the consensus point. If you trust the moderators you trust they're only acting in the best interest of the community. If you see them closing things you frequently disagree with than just make a meta or bring it up in chat and see what they say.

most mods are very cautious with their hammer because they want to let the community weigh in first if there's any doubt and I mean any

@Ryan oh, totally. I assume that's the case, and frankly, I bristle whenever I see even a whiff of "mods are getting power crazy" -type meta posts (which thankfully rarely happens here).

I'm really just projecting my preconceived notions that being a mod results in some less degree of participation (I believe being a conscientious mod requires restraint, and absolutely, I've only observed impressive restraint on this and any other SE I've spent any time poking around). And that part of being a mod doesn't seem appealing to me.

@scottbb that is correct and is somewhat intentional. As a mod, you are basically taking off your personal opinion hat and putting on the "community's opinion" hat

there's some meta posts about it on meta.stackexchange.com but it's been a while since I read them

the idea of a moderator being able to not cast a binding close vote before has been discussed many times and always rejected

and honestly, I agree with that because practically, if people see a moderator doing something as a non-mod, they are much more likely to go along with it anyway

so better to encourage the mods to be very thoughtful about their actions rather than have them carry around an overstated influence

@scottbb a lot of that we can only talk about pretty broadly, but generally chat has more problems than sites in my experience, but it depends what kind of stuff you tend to focus on reviewing too

it is, however, much more common for mods to talk amongst themselves, even across sites, to help figure out the best course of action on things that aren't clear

each site is different, and it's good that each site has it's own mods, but at the same time there is enough commonality between atleast some of the sites that the common pool of knowledge between moderators is a helpful resource

@scottbb it honestly depends on the person. Most of the worst cases are simply trolls that you can just boot and be done with it. The hard cases are the ones where someone is valuable but also problematic, but atleast as often as not you can work with them because they also genuinely care about the site

you have to be diplomatic with them, but it's often possible to get a good resolution

@scottbb I honestly don't see it as less participation, but it is different and it certainly isn't for everybody

I like the people aspect of it. As a normal user, you don't often deal with direct conflicts (either emotional or conceptual) where as you end up either directly or indirectly working with those kinds of situations a lot more as a moderator and I personally enjoy dealing with those things. I like the helping people figure out things they need or want to know, but lots of people can do that. There's a smaller number of people who are good at dealing with forming consensus and keeping things

civil

it does mean exercising my own will less, but I also see it as a more valuable service to the community to be able to help the community run smoothly as a representative of the community as a whole vs being able to participate as a normal member

it's a sacrifice in some regards to be able to have a bigger impact overall

if I was setting up the system myself, I'd probably structure things a little bit differently, but I think for the scale that SE deals with, it needs to be a slightly more constricted structure like they have vs how I run something like my WoW guild

which only has to deal with 100 to 150 people and a team of about 10-12 leaders vs well over 100 communities with millions of users and hundreds of moderators

my wow guild can run with a finer line between participant and moderator because we're super cautious with who we give leadership to and monitor things more closely. It's much more difficult to do with something the size of SE

@AJHenderson Wow, thanks for your thoughtful responses.

@scottbb no problem, wouldn't be much of a community building mod if I didn't like discussions about community building :)