@linksassin @Sandra @JohnP @Rubiksmoose @V2Blast How much time are you going to invest into complex moderator-tasks beyond the issues that are reported by the community, such as reviewing the answers and question of high-traffic questions that were created and answered years ago when the rpg.se environment had different standards and enforcement?

@Akixkisu well firstly, I'd expect to spend exactly no time just surfing through ancient questions for the purpose of reviewing if they need to be closed or deleted. If it's an old question we generally let it be unless it comes up naturally by flags or edits. Once that happens, I'm willing to spend as much time as the task requires. And if I don't have enough time to handle it properly, I'll leave it in case another mod does and/or deal with it later.

And that’s probably for the best - @Akixkisu I’ll be honest the mod team is not thrilled by the bunches of old-question flags right now. If you want to go curate old questions feel free but do it within your own powers (edit vote comment, get others to help on chat/meta) not by flagging to make us go do it please.

But I already tend to read through and think about just about everything on this site fairly thoroughly. I don't expect that will change if I get elected. And if I see problems that a moderator needs to handle I'll handle it.

The current team doesn't do that at all. There's little gain in it proportionate to the considerable amount of energy it takes, and we are volunteers with lives. My own viewing patterns are almost no different to when I was a normal member. Old questions are sometimes not good examples of current practices, but because they're so old we're unlikely to see any improvement.

Although content and moderation are essentially timeless, we still do pay attention to timing because it matters for the context of what we can do and what we can expect. Mostly we let old stuff be, unless it's egregious or causing current problems.

Do you @mxyzplk want to take this stage to warn me about my flagging behaviour in particular as you are alluding to in your comment? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Years ago? A little, just to see the difference between what was accepted then, what is accepted now, and if there are any relevant meta questions. To be honest, I would probably spend more time reviewing highly voted meta questions rather than main. Main generates the meta, meta generates the policy. If I don't understand a decision, then I can ask the current moderators why the decision was made the way it was.

@JohnP @JohnP thank you, that is an interesting answer that pushes you on the podium in my current estimation of my preliminary ranking.

@JohnP this is a good point. I had read the question slightly differently.

@Akixkisu if it helps at all, I've spent a considerable amount of time on here and I've actually read through every question on the site for every system I play. I did so before seriously getting involved with asking or answering questions. I didn't do so for the purpose of closing them of course, but as I read through them I made improvements and VTCd as was needed.

(I previously answered with moderation only in mind, not just general browsing. I still browse and improve old questions quite a bit)

@Rubiksmoose yes that helps, I take all answers into consideration, even when I am not responding to them.

Naturally. And there's no need for you to respond.

Just as a note, Sandra's answer could use a few votes to bring it up to everyone else's (and the top answer could use a downvote)

(I really do wish we could prevent people from voting on them here to keep everyone on a level playing ground)

I will release my preliminary ranking of moderators tomorrow that includes any current rpg.se moderator who took the liberty to address one or more of my questions. This ranking will be accompanied by a brief description of selected qualities that most impacted my decision-making. I hope to see similar rankings by other none-moderators and moderator applicants.

@Akixkisu We three are asking you to exhaust the options you have available to you--votes, comments, and meta--before making work for others when evaluating posts that are not on the front page. It's not a "warning," it's a request. It's a reasonable one, and feel free to open a meta or find one of us in chat if you have further questions.

@nitsua60 I heard your request. If you have any particularly helpful meta in mind about when to flag and edit posts that are not on the 50 most recently active questions feed, then I would appreciate any such topics if you linked to them addressed at me in the rpg.se not-a-bar-but-plays-one-on-tv chat-channel.

@Akixkisu As the others have said, there's no real benefit in sifting through old questions unprompted. If an old question pops up to the front page naturally (e.g. through new answers or edits), it's worth revisiting the issue (e.g. closing game/tool recommendations, cleaning up bad answers/non-answers), but otherwise, it's not really worth the effort to retroactively seek out old threads that haven't been bumped just to moderate them.

Of course, if there's a particularly egregious issue that's brought to the mod team's attention, it's worth handling no matter when it was posted (e.g. abusive/harassing content - though I imagine that usually gets handled pretty promptly since it'd always be unacceptable regardless of RPG.SE-specific policies)

@Akixkisu Before I joined the site I read through every question and answer that has earned a gold badge in the history of the site. I believe this qualifies as your "high traffic questions"? Therefore I no longer regularly review old questions. If in my natural browsing I come across one I will VTC, edit or act according to current standards. I won't however go out of my way to find old things to fix up. There is far too much content for it to be worth my time and energy for very limited value.

Old questions that get bumped to the homepage by other users I treat as if they are a active question and vote accordingly. Yes site policy has changed over the years but if no one is looking at the old questions it isn't worth my effort to improve them.

For example I VTC a designer reasons question from 2014 yesterday. However a new user had answered it. Bumping it onto the review queue and homepage. Which is what brought it to my attention.