OK, since you want to toss this can around again, let's have a look at your claims:
In this previous meta discussion about the moderator team two
conclusions appear to have been made:
"Something should be done" - The majority of the community. "Nothing
should be done, we're fiiiine" ...
You know the point of this meta post is to ask the moderators to be more visible, the rest is backing for why I believe they should be. I feel like you've latched onto the backing rather than the main point of the post.
@TheLethalCarrot I don't think the mods need to be more visible. I think they are very visible indeed. Which is why I tried to refute the arguments you used to claim they are not visible. Those arguments are the main point of the post since without them, it's just a baseless claim.
@TheLethalCarrot - if your reasoning/backing for why you believe that they should be more active can be argued against, then that's arguing against the main point. Saying "you're attacking my foundations, not the main point" doesn't really make sense.
@TheLethalCarrot I did. Please read the post again. They have all logged on in the past month and all but one in the past few hours. And, again, if you want to claim that a mod doesn't have the right to take a vacation every now and then, you will have to provide some pretty strong arguments. This is not a jail and people have the right to take a breather.
@TheLethalCarrot then I am struggling to understand why you have decided that they are not moderating since the only thing you used to define "active" is now not enough and given that you don't actually have any way of seeing what moderators do since most of their work is behind the scenes. Could it be that you don't have any evidence and this is all idle speculation?
@terdon Or could it be that I can't see them doing anything? No edits, comments, flag handling times are slower than the average quoted by a mod (2.5 times in fact), spam and R/A posts are generally handled by the community...
@TheLethalCarrot but that's the thing. When a community is working well, the edits, comments, spam and R/A flags are all handled by the community. This is a good thing, not a problem! Since you haven't given any data about the flag-handling times, I have no way of answering that one, but I can tell you that the average flag handling times of the two non-beta sites I can speak about are at around 4h. So again, I don't see a problem.
@terdon You may want to take a step back because it seems like you're taking this post personally for some reason. The OP asked for more visible mod activity. I don't see where he implied anything about vacations or putting people in jail.
@terdon A community also works well when the moderators are involved in it, it's great we as a community can handle the site well. But that doesn't mean we should do it alone, the moderators were elected to do that for us.
@zabeus this is a continuation of the linked meta post. The mods here all seem perfectly active, with the "least active" one last seen on the 31st of May. The OP here seems to feel that the mods are not present enough, so since they've all been around in the past few days, it seems like they don't want the mods to ever take a holiday.
And to clarify again I am not asking for elections, mods to step down or anything. I am asking them to become involved in the community again. After all they are a part of it.
@TheLethalCarrot but that's just it: they were not elected to do it for us! What a strange idea! The moderators are supposed to act as "human exception handlers". They should only step in when the community fails to do its job and should not get involved when the community is working.
@TheLethalCarrot no, they are elected to moderate. They are not elected to post, comment, edit or do any of the things you can do without being a mod. They are elected to do the things the community cannot do, not those that the community can deal with. That's why they're moderators.
TLC, I think you and terdon are using different definitions of "moderate". Mods aren't supposed to deal with every issue that comes up on the site; they're there to handle the things that the regular users can't deal with using the tools they have available to them.
@TheLethalCarrot since you're here, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate how civil you've been here and the way you stepped back from further argument on my answer (as I probably should have done earlier myself). Thanks.
It's okay, all I want is the best for the site. As I see it having the moderators more involved in the community should be in everyone's best interest.
you have yet to provide evidence that they are not involved. And you also have yet to argue the point that moderators should do what basically everbody else can also do
This. While this may not have been your intention @TheLethalCarrot, your post makes all sorts of accusations without any evidence to back any of them up. I still don't understand what you would like to change, to be honest. Do you want mods to post more comments and questions/answers?
It is very common for users who become mods to post fewer Q/As since modding takes up a lot of the time you'd previously spend puttering about the site answering stuff.
@TheLethalCarrot In that case, I am honestly having trouble understanding why you think there's a problem. You say you have no evidence, so why do you feel there's anything wrong? I'm not saying there isn't, I'm just saying that if you want to come and start a big bruhaha on meta, then you should really have some evidence to back up your claims.
@TheLethalCarrot Indeed. Ok, so what do you want the mods to do? The only specific modly things I can see in your question are i) faster flag handling and ii) more meta posts. Is that about right?
@terdon Well there's no physical evidence I can have, by definition as a regular user I can't see anything else. My main complaint is the moderators are all practically removed from the community as a whole. How do you get them back into the community? By showing them you're around and to show people you're around you have to be visible.
@terdon Well no, comments are a part of modding, i,e, why I did what I did, editing is something mods can do, indeed Mith is active editing here even though he's a mod elsewhere. There are plenty of moderation activities they can do even if those activities overlap with what the community can do.
@terdon Look at the majority of their profiles, when was the last time they interacted with the community?
@TheLethalCarrot Of course. And I am a very active editor on sites where I'm not a mod too. My point is that being a moderator does not mean you should edit more. If anything, you might want to edit less so that you don't get accused of power abuse.
@TheLethalCarrot Define interact.
You mean posted on meta?
Also, don't forget that mod's comments are often perceived as carrying more weight, so it might make sense for them to back off a bit.
Finally, bear in mind that a very small but extremely vocal part of this community has been making the mod team's life pretty unpleasant for a while now. Why would they want to interact if they fear that would only make them the target for more attacks on meta?
I guess this boils down to a basic difference in the way we see what mods do, as Mith pointed out. On SE, mods aren't supposed to be anything more than glorified janitors. And, as I found out when I first became a mod, 90% of a mod's job is not seen by users.
I actually used to think one of the mods on Unix & Linux wasn't active and wasn't doing anything and so on. And then I became a mod and had access to the flag stats and mod messages and community manager escalations and deletions and comment deletions and realized he'd been working his ass off to keep the site clean for me but I had just never seen it.
@TheLethalCarrot You don't and that is indeed something that makes your post hard to defend. What I don't get is why, in the absence of evidence, you choose to assume the worst.
2
I mean, if we have no way of knowing what the mods are doing, why not assume they're doing their job instead of assuming they aren't?
@TheLethalCarrot But the only way they could do that would be to leave pointless comments around? Do you have a large collection of situations where the mods took action and failed to leave a helpful comment explaining it?
@Skooba OK, that is a very different situation. If the community has issues with a specific moderator, then that should be raised as an issue and see what can be done about it.
@Skooba You can do it politely. If you really have an issue, a clear one, and you explain your position with civility, I don't see why you'd be called anything. However, posts like that previous one with the out-of-context quotes and outright lies are passive aggressive BS at best, and trolling at worst. Far better to come out and say "I don't like this, what can we do about it?"
@TheLethalCarrot You should also bear in mind that these invisible things take a lot of work and are often emotionally draining. As a result, you don't always have the time or energy to also be a regular user. All of your time and energy allocated for SE have been eaten up by the mod work.
@Skooba Not really. The tone of the post (e.g. the unnecessary sarcasm of "we're fiiiiiiiiiiine" or the claim that the "majority" of the community believes something, the complete lack of any sort of evidence etc) was not very helpful.
@terdon Don't worry I appreciate a lot of what goes on behind the scenes and I'm not saying nothing is happening. My point is if everything is done behind the scenes how do we as users know it is being done?
Also, if your complaint isn't shared by others or at least supported by evidence, having someone post an answer refuting your claims is hardly "shutting you down". What, is everyone supposed to just accept any complaint posted on meta?
@TheLethalCarrot You could ask the mod team to release some stats, perhaps.
But, personally, I find the entire thing pointless. If mods are doing things you object to, that is a good reason to raise a complaint. If mods are doing their job but just not visibly enough for you, I really don't see the point.
It's like complaining that the cops are just silently arresting criminals instead of announcing every thing they do so you know they're busy.
@Vogel612 You're an off site mod who has come in to challenge my meta and you don't even have a SFF profile, I don't see what other reason you would have to chime in
@Skooba Let's not get sidetracked by the simile, yeah? Point is, most of what cops do you never hear about, just like most of what mods do you never hear about.
The average flag handling time in the last month was just barely below 2 hours. A bit higher than normal, but I was on vacation for ~1 week of that. It's closer to 1.5 hours for the past week.
@TheLethalCarrot It depends on what your ultimate goal is. Does it matter how quickly flags are handled specifically by moderators, or is the goal simply that all flags are handled quickly whether by the community or moderators? Given the SE community moderation model, I think the goal is the latter.
@TheLethalCarrot Note that nobody has any better flag stats than that. And other sites have an average flag handling time of days, and yes, including the automated stuff. So an average time of ~2h is really impressive and much better than most.
But are we really discussing flag handling times as a problem? When they're just a few hours?
Flag handling times aren't a problem, I never actually said they were, I just mentioned it because it rose by 2.5 times a few weeks after the stats were shown.
Seriously, if a user's issue with the mods is that flag times are N instead of N-1 hours, then this is a non problem. We've had mods before who have actually abused their power, been rude, aggressive, biased, unfair and generally unpleasant, gone on rampages against their least favorite tag etc. Flag times don't even register.
I'll make it clear again. I have no problem with the moderators. The meta is asking them to be more visible and involved in the community. The bullet points are examples of how this can be done.
@TheLethalCarrot Well, every time we focus on one of the issues you have raised, you seem to say that that isn't the problem. I get that something is bugging you and you are having trouble expressing it clearly, but maybe it would be best if you just took the time to build up a more coherent complaint.
Don't get me wrong, I know how hard it can be to articulate a vague feeling of unease, and the more we discuss it, the more it seems like you feel something's wrong but can't put your finger on exactly what.
And that's completely understandable. Just maybe, you know, sort it out before posting on meta?
I did sort it out before posting to meta and in my mind it was clear. I'm sorry if I can't convey that clear enough to you. But saying I should sort it out before posting it to meta isn't exactly helpful, especially as I can't preview the post anywhere.
@TheLethalCarrot Well, you are claiming that the mods aren't active, but when pressed to give evidence of that lack of activity you don't seem to be able to. So it doesn't seem too sorted, I'm afraid, no.
@terdon I'm claiming they aren't visible not that they aren't active. Those are related but different things. Just go to their profiles and see their "All Actions" pages and you'll see they are not visible.
@TheLethalCarrot Yes, and only one of the two is really needed. Look, for example, on Unix & Linux, I am the only mod who's active in chat. The other two are both very busy IRL and yet still take the time to deal with flags. They just don't chat much and neither of them posts much.
So users might think they don't pull their weight. They'd be very wrong.
And if you really want to be constructive and are actually not trying to attack the mods, then you could i) at least remove the passive aggressive stuff like "were fiiiiiine" and "emerged from the cracks" and the like. They really don't help you come across as non confrontational. ii) ask what the mods are doing instead of leading with accusation.
@terdon I'm not accusing anyone, I'm asking them to be involved again. As for the "passive aggressive stuff" that probably wasn't the best thing to do but it was an attempt to add a bit of humour
But the way you approached this wouldn't have made me feel like I am being talked to by a friend or colleague, a member of the same community. It reads like an attack. And saying "thisis not an attack" isn't enough to make it so, I'm afraid.
@TheLethalCarrot Well, I can tell you that when I read it, my reaction was "Great, here we go again with the SFF posse acting like jerks all over again"
@terdon It's not an attack it's a suggestion to look closer... if mods are questioned and they all of a sudden re-emerge something looks odd there. It makes you think wait do they there's a problem if they've all come back again
@terdon Well majority of active users was likely a more accurate statement
@Vogel612 Can we stop with the passive aggressive comments?
And lastly I will say....
Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me but we're going round in circles here, if you have something new to mention ping me and I'll nip back in, if not I don't see the point continuing this
@TheLethalCarrot You should also bear in mind that these invisible things take a lot of work and are often emotionally draining. As a result, you don't always have the time or energy to also be a regular user. All of your time and energy allocated for SE have been eaten up by the mod work.
This ^^, by the way, is absolutely true. I basically had to take a week-plus off of moderating my site the last time I was dealing with a user talking about suicide.
Other days you'll find yourself having spent an hour or two in discussions about a possible suspension, drafting and editing a mod-message, and then who's got time/energy to go do some simple re-tagging or VtROs?
@TheLethalCarrot At the risk of stepping on a beehive, perhaps request they post a "community check-in" like we've started doing over on RPG? That is: if you want to know what the moderators are doing, go ahead and ask them?
@Null I also wonder how much flag-speed is a red herring, here. Plenty of times I and my team will let a flag sit for hours, days, or longer for any number of reasons. 1. We'll sometimes drop a note in mod-chat saying "don't think there's anything actionable here, raising a flag just 'cause I'd like the rest of you to take a look at your leisure so you can keep it in the back of your mind" and flag, because that's an easy way to have it in our workflow unobtrusively, and we can see who-else has examined the flag.
@nitsua60 Sometimes we do let a flag sit for maybe a day or two while we wait to consult with another mod, a mod more experienced in the tag(s) in question handle it, and/or to just let the community decide as a group on a more controversial NAA or VLQ flag.
@Null Yeah--same here. I'm just trying to provide alternatives to the notion that flag-handling times and site health are in some super-tight correlation. I'd be looking many other places first if I were concerned something were amiss.
It sounds like flag-handling isn't the problem according to @TheLethalCarrot and others concerned (it's more a "lack of visibility"), but then we hear complaints about "moderator only flags seemed to take ~5 hours on average to handle" and that makes it sound like it is a concern so we point to the fact that our handling times are good compared to the rest of the network.
Discussion on answer by terdon: A req…
Discussion on answer by terdon: A req…