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In connection with the moderator elections, we are providing a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.

Not every question was selected. As we received a haiku-based submission, I've arbitrarily opted to select an additional question, bringing our total number, along with our pre-set questions, to 11 questions.

As a candidate, your job is simple—post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes.Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!

Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.

To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):


  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

  2. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

  3. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

  4. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

  5. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

  6. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

  7. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

  8. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

  9. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

  10. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

  11. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

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    I strongly suggest editing question 10 ("not proud of's"), either a reword or simply use the clearer version of it (but negated). The "In other words" especially makes no sense as the first sentence simply isn't equivalent to the second one (not proud of post vs scenario of hypothetical reaction to your own bad meta question) – Mat Mar 4 at 20:31
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    I'm saddened to see all candidates support the code of conduct and are generally rather zealous about deleting people's comments (including old ones). I would expect candidates to answer, say, regarding Q1: "The question has a built-in assumption that these comments are uncalled for; I would be hesitant to adopt this position and would probably limit myself to commenting on their comments." Or for Q5: "I would not delete any of those comments, and if others tried to delete them because of the new CoC, I would consider countermanding that." and so on. – einpoklum Mar 5 at 17:48
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    @einpoklum Agree with it or not, the CoC is part of the rules of this site. Shouldn't we elect moderators that support it? Otherwise why have the CoC if even the mods don't follow it? – GBlodgett Mar 5 at 17:53
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    @einpoklum "The question has a built-in assumption that these comments are uncalled for". Are we reading the same CoC ? No Harassment: [...], vulgar language, [...]. If the line (as defined by the community itself) was clearly crossed in terms of language and repeated offence, why would you still only comment ? Even if that wasn't in the CoC, why would you support strong language anyway ? – Mat Mar 5 at 19:42
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    I guess my point is that although "rude behavior/strong language" is vague at best, regardless of CoC or not, if there is consensus on the rudeness of multiple comments, action should be taken. Furthermore, the question explicitely states: "When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments.". In my book at least, that is most definitely in the bounds of Uncalled for; no assumption is made there. – Mat Mar 5 at 19:59
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    @Mat: You're just reading the less onerous parts: No subtle put-downs or No unfriendly language. and of course, a moderator gets to decide what's considered friendly, or what text, which is not a put-down per se, is actually a "subtle put-down". As for "strong language" - it depends on the specifics. But on principle and as a rule, I would assume that Q1 is blowing the issue out of proportion, and that the person involved was not chain-cursing or referring to family members' sexual practices etc. As for Q5, the question specifically states it's borderline comments. – einpoklum Mar 5 at 21:20
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    Since you assume such things about Q1, I suppose it's fair I assume there's a fairly clear existing consensus concerning "a user who uses strong language because they thought a post was low-quality, and simply won't listen to warnings" (it is Heavily implied in the question that the user is agreeing that their comments use strong language). That user is free to go on Meta or chat and ask why a warning was given, so that things can be discussed. This is as far as I'll debate, as this is getting quite lengthy. You can always post a discussion if you still disagree with the questions. – Mat Mar 5 at 21:43
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    @einpoklum If a comment lends nothing to clarifying a question or to a solution, then it should be deleted regardless of the flagged reason. As far as how to handle the user: I think there's been enough consensus in Meta that poor questions should be down-voted and vote-to-close, not commented in a provocative, non-constructive manner. FWIW I'm not for the "cuddly, help the poor clueless with no programming knowledge", either. But a certain standard of decorum can still be expected from long-standing members of the site. – Cindy Meister Mar 7 at 5:49
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    @CindyMeister: But we're talking about comments which lent enough to clarification so that nobody complained about them on the merits. In Q5 specifically, nobody had even thought of removing them. Don't slant the questions in hindsight. – einpoklum Mar 7 at 14:52
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    @einpoklum I'm not slanting the question. How do you know these comments "lent enough clarification"? Just because they still exist does not say anything about how they relate to the contribution on which they were posted and whether they were worthwhile to begin with. The question here gives no information in this regard, only an indication of the tone in which they were composed. There are lots of old comments on the site that don't get removed and would no longer be needed (or were not pertinent to begin with). I see them regularly in review queues. – Cindy Meister Mar 7 at 15:13
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    @CindyMeister: in dubio pro reo. If you have no information to the contrary, and you are both a judge and a verdict enforcer, then you'll make that assumption. At the very least, an answer would begin with an intention to determine those facts before acting. – einpoklum Mar 7 at 17:07
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    Personally, I struggled with answering the question because of precisely that problem, @MarkAmery. – Josh Caswell Mar 11 at 19:40
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    In my interpretation of the original question, it was to tease out the candidates’ understanding of precisely that difference, @Mark. However, in a later revision, it got clarified to harsh language in clear violation of the CoC. For what it’s worth, I do not—at all—read the CoC as prohibiting attacks on content or ideas. Just people. I enforce it in precisely that same way. A code of conduct prohibiting criticism would be not only worthless, but actively harmful. And while a moderator might reach out to a user regarding their tone in such comments, I would not consider this suspension worthy. – Cody Gray Mar 11 at 20:07
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    @CodyGray Much comes down to whether you think blunt criticism is inherently "unfriendly language", given that such language is prohibited by the CoC and repeated use of it is notionally suspension-worthy. Much of the controversy around the CoC during your absence from the site (I'm glad you're back, by the way!) hinged around the meaning of that term (and its equally ambiguous sisters, "unwelcoming" and "unkind" language), especially given that some of the examples the staff showed us this forbidden conduct truly were just plain criticism. – Mark Amery Mar 11 at 20:25
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    @Mark Those interpretations/examples of the CoC don't appear in the document itself. I find very little that I disagree with in the document, and I see very little there that I or the rest of the mod team refuses to enforce. I agree those examples are thoroughly ridiculous, and I don't enforce anything like that. I decline what seems like a large number of "unfriendly or unkind" flags on comments. If I really felt like I was disobeying the letter or spirit of the CoC, I'd say so, but I don't see it as anything new. – Cody Gray Mar 11 at 20:48

10 Answers 10

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  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

I've seen several users like this. I hope most people would take a hint after just a warning, but small cooldown bans building to a long one are sometimes necessary. I hate seeing any users leave (I know of one in particular who made several great answers, but was overly cynical and often faced some really long bans, even warring with CMs at one point), but sometimes parting ways is best for a repeat offender.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

As a moderator, we're entrusted with the tools to take actions like this. I've seen mods take direct actions on questions (Meta and otherwise) when they felt the community was taking incorrect action. If the question looks useful, I would reopen it and answer, especially if there's no clear reason the community closed it.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

Flags keep Stack clean for

Users to get good answers

Keep the bad stuff out

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

The first thing here is to invalidate any not-obvious spam/offensive (red) flags (i.e. they're not rude on their face) so nobody is sitting under the gun of a 30 min chat ban via mob action(see chat moderation tools are terrible). Then you go into the channel and try to find out what's going on. Once you have a handle on the situation, then you can delete chat messages that don't belong and, if needed, hand out chat bans.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes a user is just really cynical, and a simple warning will do (possible with deletion if the comment isn't constructive). But if it's not rude (or at least condescending) I'm not inclined to sustain a flag that can lead to discipline later, especially if there's not a history of that person being overly cynical.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

As with the first question, I would hope a simple correction will help bring that user back in line, but I'm not opposed to bans to help otherwise useful posters calm down.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would talk directly to that mod to find out why they took that action. This happens from time to time in SOCVR. Good, open discussion clears a lot up and can often lead to pain free resolution. I would avoid warring with a fellow mod at all costs.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

Depends on what is going on with the questions. Blatantly off-topic questions that are current can, and should, be deleted. I would quietly let the user know to stop, or if they could be made on-topic, I would give them advice on how to improve.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I've taken note that many moderators with gold badges still actively use their gold badges, and I'm of the mindset that gold badges are an earned tool we were all meant to use. If the duplicate doesn't fit, either edit the duplicate list or reopen the question, mod or not.

  1. Are there any meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a meta post, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

I once goofed up pretty bad on an answer about Triage. The Requires Editing button is still very confusing, and I don't think SO gets their money's worth out of that queue because of that. I spoke way too soon and didn't fully understand the topic at hand.

I don't think I would ever ask for a disassociation. It's hard, but I try to own my mistakes.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

I've been helping Bhargav Rao out with the burnination process, a fairly time intensive process that needs a moderator to shine a spotlight () on the proposals (so there's ample community feedback) and then add the appropriate tags ( or ) once the process is complete. I hope I can better assist in tag cleanups as a moderator.

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    Happy to see you stepping up, you'd make a great mod, we'd be lucky to have you on the team. Level headed and great contributor. – Yvette Colomb Mar 4 at 21:53
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    IIRC, Haiku count syllables, not words. Minor nitpick. Maybe a small rewrite is in order? – ryanyuyu Mar 4 at 22:37
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    @ryanyuyu The general guideline is to have 5-7-5 syllables, but it's not actually a requirement: Does a Haiku needs to have exactly 17 syllables? – Davy M Mar 4 at 22:51
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    Poetry is hard. – ryanyuyu Mar 4 at 22:53
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    @ryanyuyu Just for you – Machavity Mar 4 at 23:00
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    My support for moderators who listen to the community. – ryanyuyu Mar 4 at 23:07
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    What I have seen in SO (and not other communities) so far is the "opposing" to upvote well asked questions or good answers. Even if someone has asked a good question, with all the process, tries, coding, and personal insight, and it might get answers, not upvotes. Other communities will upvote if it is well asked. What do you think or plan to do? @Machavity – M.K Mar 5 at 10:54
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    @M.K I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but if you're asking about upvotes in general, I certainly believe in upvoting good content and I do so when I see it. Heck, I've even found diamonds in the rough in tags I watch and, when I see them go unanswered, I've plugged them to other members of the community. Moderators, though, don't have that much to do with voting (except for a limit tool for detecting vote fraud). I'm one up or down vote in an ocean. Incidentally, I feel the upvote pain. I answered a lot of questions without any upvotes at all. – Machavity Mar 5 at 13:05
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    @M.K Not sure what you expect moderators to do about that at all. You cant push the community to vote up more ... so, just vote up yourself, and maybe leave comments explaining why exactly, to encourage others to follow your example. – GhostCat Mar 5 at 15:36
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    I wanted to know what you thought about it. And I liked your answer. Thanks! @Machavity – M.K Mar 5 at 16:42
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    @TylerH I should probably clarify I'm talking about red (spam/offensive) chat flags, not mod chat flags. I would clear any red chat flags first, so you don't have potential mob actions happening that would create an unecessary ban (which you might have to undo just to sort things out). – Machavity Mar 5 at 17:31
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    The tangentially related conversation about free speech and the Code of Conduct has been moved to chat. There's a fair amount of misinformation that's been bandied about there. If you have a question about the CoC as relates to your free speech rights, laws in your jurisdiction, or capriciousness of moderators, please ask a new question about it. – Cody Gray Mar 5 at 21:55
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    Regarding #1, do you feel it is of higher importance to tend to high-rep violators versus low-rep violators on the grounds that high-rep users are received as strong influencers of new users? As I reflect on my earliest memories as a volunteer, I posted [php][mysql] content under the razor-like scrutiny of YCS (1yr ban to be lifted this month) and while it sharpened the quality of my posts, I adopted a cynical attitude for a long time because "I thought this is how it works here" (sort of like Gordon Ramsay in a professional kitchen setting). Can you speak on your philosophy on this? – mickmackusa Mar 6 at 0:06
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    YCS is is indeed an example of extreme cynicism (even his user profile is cynical). And I hate to say I had the same early experience you did. It was a former mod who hangs out in the PHP channel (gordon) who showed me we didn't have to be cynical at all. I think we need to combat cynicism, but it's more than just a challenge for moderators. As long as other high rep users keep tamping down the cynicism, I hope it remains rare. Mod tools should only come in when warning flags are ignored, or lines are crossed. – Machavity Mar 6 at 1:02
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    "It's hard, but I try to own my mistakes." I believe a moderator who owns their mistakes will be empathetic and honest in dealing with the mistakes of others. – Steve Boyd Mar 10 at 19:13
267

I'm Jean-François Fabre and here are my answers to your questions:

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

I've seen several high rep users suspended in the past. Why changing techniques that work? I'd first issue a 1 week suspension "to cool down", then increase until the user understands. On meta, well, it's tougher to answer. I have the feeling that users visiting meta are more accustomed to the site and can "defend themselves". Looks that the general consensus on meta is to let more aggressive comments be (some example where the "bullying" went so far some other high rep user wrote a meta post about it: How to handle persistent bullying which was heavily downvoted).

So it's just a question of threshold between main site and meta, but in the end we just cannot let people bully others because they've got more experience.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

I would move pile-on comments to chat. If the question is clear and I have the answer, I would reopen it and answer it. Maybe it would get some "revenge" downvotes for having reopened and answered, but hey, mods are there to take the heat (and I would have to be super-careful when answering to avoid too much downvotes...) (also being a mod gives access to more information, like deleted comments, that may help answering)

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

okay, bear in mind that non-native english speakers (comme moi) are disavantaged.

flagging is easy
handling those flags is a chore
no bot can do it
  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

I'm not used to many chat rooms, only visiting SOCVR. I know that when a moderator says something in this chatroom, this is taken very seriously. They generally just have to speak and things tend to cool down. I don't see why it wouldn't work. Else, kick the offending users out of the room for a while, even 30 seconds sends a strong signal. Also delete really inappropriate messages.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

Of course, I would delete the comments, but if those comments went unnoticed all this time, is this really useful to get this user suspended? I'd send this user a warning to give them a heads up first.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Since the user contributes greatly to the site, a warning or two is the least I could do, before starting some suspension periods which could increase with time (similar question above)

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Well, first, if I'm elected, I'll be new, and by default, I respect experience (until proven wrong) so I think I'll do nothing, possibly chat with this moderator to try to make him/her change their decision. Even if I'm competent in the technology the answer relates to, and I'm pretty sure that the question should be undeleted, mods should speak as one, so since undoing the work from some other mod would look bad, I'll use more persuasive arguments with the mod in private chat. I'll also expect a meta question from the asker / someone else so the community can take part to the decision.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

This case defeats the system because of the history of this user. A nice, non-threatening moderator private message is probably a good way to try to change things with this user. They're rare enough to be noticed. (I think we can answer a lot of questions here & above by: "first warn the user, then warn a little louder, then suspend for a short time, then increase the suspension" until the behaviour changes)

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I already have gold badges in my fields of expertise (more accurately the ones where I know my duplicates :)). So I'm already doing this with the duplicates (and I tend to answer when I know the answer just after that). For other questions, well, you have to be more careful, specially if you want to answer the question. That could be poorly recieved that a moderator reopens an off-topic question just to answer it. If I'm not sure, I can either discuss with the people who closed the question, or edit the post and let it be reopened.

Countering the judgement of 5 people isn't to be done lightly, unless there has been a huge misunderstanding

One example where I could reopen:

  • user doesn't post their code at first
  • question gets closed as too broad/unclear
  • user adds the code, which is clear and not a dump of their github

In that case I would reopen (that's what I vote in the reopen queue)

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

I think it's the same answer as last year. The very first question (?) I have asked was Automatic downvoting bad questions It was more like a rant, and shows that I didn't know how the site worked like at all.

But new people make mistakes, and even more on meta. Let's keep it, I think there are good jokes in it anyway.

I also posted a couple of very dumb questions that I have deleted, since it attracted only downvotes and no answers.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

The objective has always been "Create a high quality Q&A site", with some interesting individual problem solving on the side, that breathe life into what would become the Encyclopedia Universalis after some time.

The main site faces many "noise" issues: endless duplicates, homework dumps with teacher text as image, and so on. I already have to power to make those questions (& answers) go away with help from others. Not sure that a moderator could do more than that, except by deleting blatantly off-topic/abusive questions to avoid other people waste their votes on it and nuke it instantly.

To be honest, I don't know what's ahead but I feel I can face it as much as other experienced power-users. Probably a lot of comment flags, that only moderators can clean up, and an endless "low quality" queue. Other items will probably pop up if I'm elected, but for now I'm not aware of them.

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    To reiterate what I wrote under your election post: "I've always supported your candidacy. Although you're relatively new, you have an impeccable record, are a great contributor on main and meta and always willing to learn. To top it off, you're just a really nice person. A breath of fresh air. I hope you join the mod team, if not in this election at some point," – Yvette Colomb Mar 5 at 3:13
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    I believe that your constant choice to hammer something you know is a duplicate as opposed to answering it and getting a bunch of easy rep shows your commitment to the quality of the content of this site. This is also especially impressive with your almost 40k reputation per year average and the amount of votes you have cast (delete, closure, etc). I fully support your nomination. Best of luck! – GBlodgett Mar 5 at 3:16
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    You have certainly come a long way in a short time, and I think you would make a very capable moderator. Good luck! :) – Travis J Mar 5 at 3:31
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    thanks. I see you're jumping the wagon too. That'll be interesting. Good luck yourself :) – Jean-François Fabre Mar 5 at 6:46
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    @jpp I think Meta does need lighter moderation than main. Since we talk about rules and moderation actions here, it frequently contains morally loaded commentary on behaviours and people - like suggestions that an action was an abuse of power, or arguments about whether some turn of phrase was punishably rude or the offended parties are oversensitive. All of that is inherently adversarial and involves criticising (often implicitly, but sometimes explicitly) the decency and judgement shown by other people. Greater combativeness here than main is inevitable, and to some extent, necessary. – Mark Amery Mar 11 at 12:37
  • 3
    @jpp I agree that newbies often receive a needlessly brutal welcome here. I don't agree that we should have literally the same standards here as on main. If, for instance, your comment criticising an answerer for "succumbing to peer pressure" had been posted on main, I'd firmly disapprove and would at least contemplate a rude flag, since it leads with a needlessly uncharitable characterisation of the author's motivations rather than immediately addressing the substantive point. Here on Meta? Clearly within the bounds of acceptability. I don't think it's wrong to apply a different standard. – Mark Amery Mar 11 at 12:57
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    @jpp To my last comment, you might reasonably protest "But that's not the same! The entire point of this thread is to discuss the moderator candidates, and of course commenting upon their judgement and character falls within the bounds of that discussion!". And I'd agree - that's kind of my point. When the core subject matter of Meta involves topics that it'd be inherently rude to even bring up on main, you can't reasonably apply the same standards. – Mark Amery Mar 11 at 13:01
  • 3
    Hey Jean, a few years ago I (a very new SO user) asked a question that I believed was well within the bounds of a fair question and was berated by non constructive criticism and insults by mostly you and couple of highly reputable users which resulted in an altercation where a mod had to remove comments from both you and I. As a newcomer to both SO and programming in general I felt really disheartened and defeated since my intentions [1/2] – Morty C-137 Mar 13 at 11:34
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    @Jean-FrançoisFabre If you're elected to be a moderator, you will have unilateral ability to delete posts, with little or no review by others. When you do so, it will be impossible for anyone other than another moderator to undelete the post. Over the last few days, a couple of your requests for delete-votes (del-pls requests) in SOCVR have brought some concerns I have about your delete-voting to the forefront of my thinking. Basically, I'm wondering how, or if, your delete-voting will change if you're elected as a moderator. The specific issues that are on my mind are: – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:29
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    A) Over the last few days, you posted 2 del-pls requests in SOCVR (1, 2). Both questions (1, 2) were closed as duplicates (the 2nd hammered closed by you). The first dup-target has no other duplicates. The second dup-target has a single other duplicate. Both of the questions you del-plsed had answers which were plagiarism, and the answers either were deleted, or should have been deleted. – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:29
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    However, you requested deletion of the questions, not those answers, and the reason you gave for asking for deletion was that the questions were duplicates that won't be deleted by Roomba. [Note: As you know, plagiarism is a mod-flag issue, not a SOCVR request issue and you didn't mention the plagiarism until later. Thus, while the plagiarism existed, it did not appear to be motivating your del-pls.] – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:29
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    B) In this meta answer you state that you "have a shortlist of high-rep users (>100k) in mind" that gain rep from answering duplicates, and that the solution is to delete the duplicates that they answer, with the hoped-for result of "Maybe it will educate some people... Let's have hope." Is it your intent to continue, or increase, the number of questions you close and delete in order to "teach" users not to answer duplicate questions? – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:29
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    Do you really feel it's appropriate to delete a question based on who the users are that answer it, or even on if that duplicate was answered at all? Do you intend take other actions to "teach" this lessen to these users? Do you plan to look through the answers of the users on this "shortlist" and delete the duplicate questions they have answered? Do you plan to apply these actions to more users as time goes on? – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:30
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    Notes: (re: A) I agree we don't need 1,000's of duplicates of the same question, but a reasonable quantity of duplicates is beneficial. Those questions which are closed as a duplicate serve as a signpost for users to get to the duplicate-target, which is something we definitely want. Having 1,000s of duplicates is harmful, as it clutters up search results, but that's rarely the case for a more reasonable number of duplicate questions. – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:30
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    (re: B) I also dislike users, particularly high-rep users, answering duplicate questions, rather than closing them. However, I feel it's inappropriate for the questions to be deleted because someone answered a duplicate, or even worse, that someone from a specific set of people answered the duplicate. A question might be appropriate to delete for other reasons, but not because specific users, who are in good standing, have answered it. – Makyen Mar 15 at 18:30
206

I am Baum mit Augen (find my nomination here) and these are my answers to the election questionnaire:

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

To be very clear, the first thing which I care about on the site, is quality. That said, maintaining high quality doesn't imply that we need to be abusive to users. If a high reputation user is leaving abusive comments, the first thing I would do is to send them a moderator warning, containing the list of comments which they have used (I think moderators have access to the deleted comments of a user) and then explain them what alternatives they could take. (For example, advising to use close votes instead of commenting, letting them know that a low quality question isn't worth their time to even comment). If the user resorts to abusive remarks even after kindly asking them to refraining from it, I would suspend them for a while, in order for them to reflect upon their actions and come back as a better person. Remember that suspensions are just to allow the user to take some time off the site. Usually taking some time off will help a user to understand where they went wrong. In this case, if the user threatens to quit, I will again try to initiate a conversation with them and find out why they feel the need to be abusive instead of just closing. I am sure that I will be able to understand their point of view as well. Finally, even after all these attempts, if they don't budge, I will increase the suspension to larger durations. It comes down to the point where their good contributions to the site is masked by their abusiveness.

If this happens on meta, I would not change my stance. Meta is a place where the users are quite aware of the site already, and would be aware of the CoC. They certainly should have been more careful in their comments. Meta does get heated from time to time, but that is no reason for users to get abusive. That said, if users do get abusive on meta, it might also imply that there is some "dumpster fire" (as Tim Post calls it) somewhere. I would probably be more interested in putting out that fire first before getting on to warning/suspending this user.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

On meta I have seen many poor quality questions being actively edited into shape by many users who then vote to reopen it. I would certainly do the same. As a moderator, I would also clean up the obsolete comments, remove the duplicate concerns which might be the result of the pile on and try to bring back the comments into discussing the primary issue which the poster had original wanted to ask. If I feel that I can suitably address the concerns of the poster, then I will try to write an answer for them. Usually, the new users aren't aware of the meta culture, and therefore try to vent out their frustration at some incident. These may seem like rants, but when edited into shape would also bring forth very valid points. Many new users might also not be native English speakers, which might make their questions seem of poor quality. However, I would not directly open a question closed by the community, without addressing the concerns with the questions first. Editing the post is a good way to bring out the pearls among the sand.

This question also reminds me of the Red Baron hat from a few years back (Did the Red Baron hat motivate you to be a better Stack Overflow user?), where users were awarded a hat if the question they answered went from -3 to +3. While many users were competing for that hat, the side effect was that there were a set of beautiful answers provided for negatively scored questions. I feel that users should be encouraged in general to read the negatively scored questions and try to improve them, not just here, but also on main.

On a tangential note, we should remember that meta voting is different. It just means that the users don't agree with the poster. Answering downvoted questions on meta is not a problem at all. In fact there is also a badge for it! The Reversal badge has been awarded more than 1000 times on meta.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

Many flags on the stall
The tree with eyes will never fall
I will clear them all

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

A chat room, no matter what topic, must necessarily follow the Code of Conduct. I will first see if the flags are of merit. If they are not, then I will talk to the user who is flagging them (moderators can see who flagged a message), and let them know that these are trivial messages and not flag worthy. However, if the messages are really violating the Code of Conduct, then I will first talk to the Room Owners and ask them to take control of the room properly. Every chat room has its own different culture, and the Room Owners must ensure that, while the room has fun, it does not overstep the limits of what Stack Exchange has set. If the Room Owners do not heed to the gentle talk and stern warnings, then I will be left with no choice but to freeze the room and give the users involved a time out. Chat moderation tools are hard to use. I would ask for the help of other moderators as well.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

If the flagged comments violate the Code of Conduct, then I will certainly delete them. Even before the new CoC, the old be-nice policy was very strict in not allowing the users to add abusive comments. That said, if the comments were really old, then I would just mark the additional automatic flag that is generated due to the flagged comments as helpful and move on. The user might have even forgotten that they had left such comments back then, and people do change. There are many users who were once abusive in comments, but matured over time. If the user has recent comments which are abusive, then I would take action on it, either warning them or suspending them, based on their previous history.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This is very similar to the first question, however, this depends on the type of arguments. If it is an intellectually stimulating argument, and the flags are from others who are wrong, then I would decline the wrong flags and move the conversation to chat, if it is very long. If the arguments have become heated and abusive comments are being thrown around, then I would certainly intervene there and clean up the comments. As I mentioned in the first question, I would not look away from a user's abusive comments, just because the user has been adding good answers. Users who produce good answers should be role models to the other users of the site, and not add abusive comments. I would be tailoring the warning sent to them completely to emphasize the fact that they are a valuable member of the community and should not engage in squabbles. I would ask them to walk away from a user if they feel that the situation is getting tense. If the user still misbehaves in the comments, after the warning, then I would be sending them a stronger warning and then suspend them.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would always ask the moderator in the private moderators room (Teachers' Lounge) about why they closed a question. It might be because they saw something that I did not, perhaps the poster was a sock puppet of another user, or something similar. It might also be the case that certain types of questions are closed by moderators, which I don't know, as I would still be a new moderator. I would certainly respect all my fellow moderators, and I do know that they would never close a question without a good reason. However, they are all human beings and might make mistakes as well. If that is the case, I would leave it to that moderator to reopen or undelete the question, rather than doing it myself.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

I feel that it is something which a moderator should take action on. If a particular user is posting a lot of poor quality questions recently, then I would contact them and ask them to check out the "How to Ask?" page, and let them know about what is on topic on the site. The site has changed a lot in the past 6 years, and users might not be aware of that. I will also go through their posts to see any patterns which indicate that they aren't aware of what is on-topic for the site, and then inform them about what exactly is. I will also try to encourage them to spend a few hours observing the new questions coming in, and ask them to see how they can improve.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I would first mention clearly in the comments that the said question is not a duplicate and edit the question to demonstrate to the users as to why the question is not a duplicate. In this way, the user might refrain from voting to close as a duplicate. Fortunately I do own a gold hammer in the tag which I am an expert in, and therefore I would reopen the question, if it is very clear that it is not a duplicate. This case does cover the scenario which Shog mentions that, as a moderator/gold hammer user, don't be afraid to vote on behalf of 5 people, as you have been given the tools because of the community's trust in you.

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

I must confess that I am not a very prolific meta user. I do visit meta a lot, and vote on posts a lot, but haven't posted much as we have many meta users who write beautiful answers, that are a treat for the eyes. That said, I don't have any meta post that I am not proud of.

One of the recent answers of mine, https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/380610, received a lot of negative feedback. I appreciate the negative feedback on my posts. As mentioned before, votes on meta just imply that a user does not like the idea that I proposed. Negative feedback give me a chance to not only correct my view point of that subject but also improve myself to handle similar situations in the future. I would certainly not ask for it to be dissociated. I would like to stand by my posts, no matter how downvoted they are. It is those posts that have helped me to mold myself into a better person, and I don't want to erase the shapers of my character.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

Stack Overflow's goals was always to be a library of high quality posts. The moderating actions that I will mainly focus on would be curating the questions and answers as they come in. I have been using the New Answers to Old Questions tool a lot. There has been many bad answers that are continuously being posted, those need to be curated. I have been downvoting and commenting on many of the new answers on the old questions which are just duplicates of the already present ones. Similarly I have been trying my best to edit the incoming questions in my tag into shape. I will continue to work on these as a moderator, albeit, I will be able to close the low quality questions immediately, instead of voting to close them. I will try to extend my activities to the other tags, and keep my site as a whole, clean.

Quality aspect aside, something which does need focus is the abusive comments. I have been working on a few tools to check abusive comments, and will try to make the full use of them. If there is any abusive comments being added, it means that the post might also need to be taken care of, and I will close the question/ delete the answer if required. I will try to maintain quality, while not ignoring the the concerns of the new users about abusive comments. Therefore my motto would be "Quality with Civility".

Thank you all!

  • 36
    The detail you've put into answering each question really shows your commitment to the site and your will to serve well as a moderator. It's also really cool that we share the same goal with #11 (the last one). You are one of the candidates I will be secretly rooting for. Good luck! – cs95 Mar 6 at 8:50
  • 14
    You're my number one vote! I'm happy to see you standing up again and hope you're elected this time. You have steadily been moderating the site for years now, you make steady contributions and have an impeccable history. – Yvette Colomb Mar 6 at 8:55
  • 7
    The thought and effort you have put into this answer show that you are serious and thorough. Good qualities for a mod! – hat Mar 6 at 8:59
  • 1
    @coldspeed he's a hard candidate to run against. As it's almost impossible not to want him to win. – Yvette Colomb Mar 6 at 10:21
  • 4
    @YvetteColomb too bad the elections are determined by random people not even trying to educate themselves about candidates. At least Baum has 40/40 which most robos should appreciate :P – Andras Deak Mar 6 at 10:25
  • 1
    @AndrasDeak yes I understand that. Fortunately we have so many strong candidates we should be safe. – Yvette Colomb Mar 6 at 10:52
  • 3
    @YvetteColomb I though I was your number one vote. Well, as long as I am number two ... :) Good luck Baum. Let's be realistic, you ended up 4th last time with 3 positions available, so you're probably going to win. – Jean-François Fabre Mar 6 at 11:57
  • 5
    @Jean-FrançoisFabre Well, the last two elections, (and also before that, but then I wasn't running) great candidates won. I'm sure this will be the outcome again. :) Thanks everybody for the support! – Baum mit Augen Mar 6 at 12:24
  • 1
    @Jean-FrançoisFabre yes it was a faithless remark. We ran together twice and tree with eyes was such a good candidate both times and we were neck and neck. It's a dilemma, there's 4 people I'd like to see elected and you're one of them. – Yvette Colomb Mar 6 at 16:47
  • 7
    Dangit, up until now I knew which two candidates I wanted to vote for. Now I have three and have to make an actual decision. – Davy M Mar 6 at 17:42
  • 1
    @saifali For the former, please refer to my answer to question 11. Concerning the latter: I mostly do C, C++, and Python for scientific computing and machine learning. – Baum mit Augen Mar 7 at 14:35
  • 12
    I considered voting for you above myself in the 2017 election. It’s way past time you joined the mod team, and reading your thoughtful answers here only makes me more certain. I can’t endorse strongly enough someone who has quality as their #1 concern and understands that moderation actions need to be taken in moderation, including customizing & tailoring the way you reach out to highly valued contributors. You already recognize that problematic content (low-quality answers, abusive comments, etc.) is often caused by other problematic content. You’ll be able to step into the role right away. – Cody Gray Mar 7 at 20:44
  • 6
    @CodyGray Thank you the kind words! Given the work I have seen you do for the community, you getting elected was far from a loss; I voted for you and was happy to see you win. If elected, I'll be happy to try my best to fit in your team. – Baum mit Augen Mar 7 at 22:51
  • 1
    thanks Yvette that means a lot. – Jean-François Fabre Mar 9 at 16:29
  • 3
    Hi Baum, good luck with the elections, you are my tree (again) @BaummitAugen – Vickel Mar 9 at 23:45
192

Nomination for coldspeed

I'll try to keep these short and to the point. Please let me know if you have any questions!

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

If the user is non-responsive to a warning and is consistently accruing rude/abusive flags, then the next step would be a temporary suspension/ban to cool down. Regardless of whether the offences were on meta or main. Repeat offences would result in increased suspension periods. If the user threatens to quit, then that is unfortunate, but it is their choice to do so since they are clearly no longer enjoying their experience on the site.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

These situations need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. In any case, the comment flags will need to be appropriately handled. Now, if it is clear the question is non-duplicate, non-trivial, and on-topic, then perhaps the question is worded in a way that could be misunderstood or be confusing. If I am capable of answering the question, I edit the question for clarity, reopen, and write my answer. Otherwise, seek advice/wait for someone with more experience to weigh in before doing anything else.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

A mod flag a day
Keeps the poor content away
Nothing else to say.

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

This really depends on the topic under discussion as well as the room (its rules and guidelines). Chatroom ecosystems are different from the main site, and users regularly have off topic, non-programming related conversations. That being said, if the discussion is in clear violation of the site's guidelines/CoC, or if the situation escalates into an all out mud slinging match, then the best course of action would be to place the room in a 1-minute timeout for everyone to cool down, and suggest a change of subject.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

Since the comments are very old, it should be enough to simply mark the flag helpful and remove the comments, nothing more.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

9 times out of 10, these comments are simply that user lashing out in frustration, having been exposed to a steady stream of garbage on a daily/regular basis, and I understand that.

I would start with a gentle comment/warning advising the user to take a break. Repeat offences would result in an official warning, or more severe punishment if it does not reduce/cease...

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Ping that mod for clarification. Do not act without listening to what they have to say first.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

I would usually not get involved unless this happened inside a tag I contribute to (such as python or pandas). In that situation, I'd want to understand what is going through this user's mind as they ask these questions, so I invite them to the python chatroom for a discussion. If the user is non-responsive, it may be necessary to impose a temporary question ban.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

In most clear-cut situations, if the question is well-asked and on topic, I'd post a comment explaining why I do not think the question is a duplicate and reopen it. In ambiguous cases (or if I am not an expert of that tag sub-domain), I either get a second opinion, or leave it alone.

10b. If you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

This depends on what "negative feedback" means. Feature requests that are negatively received and duplicate questions are simply removed, as they are not worth keeping around. Other posts that receive negative criticism are retained because I believe in having my actions be transparent and open to all. Besides, these posts convey my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion on Meta.

10a. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of?

If I were to single out one particular instance where there was a lapse in my judgment, it would be this answer of mine. Particularly, the language used to initially convey my views (as can be seen from the edit history) could be seen as quite inflammatory against other users. If I had a do-over, I'd definitely have considered more gentle and diplomatic wording, and will aim to do so going forward.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

Question and answer quality. Stack Overflow receives a steady stream of daily questions, and many of them are very poor—either duplicates, lacking reproducible examples, or just plain homework dumps. Unfortunately, there are just as many users willing to answer these questions.

While trying to moderate and curate QnA quality, I very frequently find myself running out of votes. Furthermore, as a regular user, I am unable to close questions quickly enough before they are answered, despite making cv-pls requests in the Python chatroom. I am aware that moderators have binding close votes, and I have seen moderators such as Martijn and deceze using them very effectively. I am currently ranked 4th for number of posts hammered with a gold badge, and I have seen thousands of questions, so I fully believe this is one mod privilege I can make full use of. On the flip side, I am responsible enough to understand that I should not abuse my privilege if I am not sure the question deserves closure (since my vote would be binding).

  • 3
    Solid. Is there no meta post of yours you feel was subpar according to your definition of good, whatever that may be ? (Just asking to make sure because #10 is kinda like two questions. This isnt a test) – Mat Mar 5 at 2:12
  • @Mat Thanks for pointing that out, yea I definitely didn't notice they were two separate questions before. I've edited my answer, thanks :) – cs95 Mar 5 at 2:20
  • 1
    I am glad you are running :) Good luck in the election! The community would be lucky to have you. – Travis J Mar 5 at 3:30
  • 12
    #8 "I would usually not get involved unless this happened inside a tag I contribute to" I'm sure there are flags that no mods contribute to, what do you do then? – Passer By Mar 5 at 6:55
  • 1
    @PasserBy That is a fair question, and I think I'd approach it the same way (i.e., seek out a constructive discussion with said user). Of course, what I'd ideally like to do would be to defer to a more senior moderator and learn from their example. – cs95 Mar 5 at 8:33
  • 2
    On #5, I think you're misunderstanding what effect marking a flag helpful has. You say you would mark the flag helpful, delete the comment, and nothing more, which makes me think you mean that you wouldn't want any consequences to fall on the author of the ancient comments. In When is a comment hostile or unfriendly?, Yvette clarifies "Unfriendly and Rude flags that are marked helpful carry consequences. A few of them will raise an auto mod flag for mods to check out a user's activity. These flags stay on a person's history as red flags." – Davy M Mar 6 at 3:08
  • 1
    @DavyMI Yeah, perhaps I should have clarified. When I said "nothing more", I meant that there was no point in issuing warnings or suspensions for comments made years ago. It is certainly a good idea to keep these flags on record so that we can watch out for this user (if they're still active) moving forward. – cs95 Mar 6 at 3:15
  • Here's a question I wish I could ask all applicants, but since my vote is probably going to you, I'll simply ask here if that's ok: In a scenario where you and another mod simply cannot reach an agreement concerning a certain decision to make, what would you do ? – Mat Mar 6 at 14:00
  • 3
    @Mat either get a second opinion (another mod), or defer to the mod I had the disagreement with if they are more senior (since they likely know what they're doing better than I am). Again, it would probably also depend on the situation. – cs95 Mar 6 at 14:25
  • 3
    Remarkable, you would consider taking on such a chore during your master studies. – Alvin Lepik Mar 12 at 13:04
  • +1 for the Haiku... – Gourav Mar 21 at 18:22
116

Nomination for Zoe


  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

I'd do exactly what the Code of Conduct says, regardless of rep. If warnings (note the plural here) don't work (the user ignores it, and continues the destructive behavior in spite of the warnings), the next step is suspension. Whether the question is low-quality or not doesn't really matter in that regard - the code of conduct still applies. As for meta, I'd do the same. While meta is slightly different when it comes to comments (there's a lot more discussion and other comments that likely would've been flagged as "no longer needed" on main), the code of conduct does still apply when it comes to plain out rude comments.

Tbh, I would likely end up using an additional warning or two before suspending anyone (while suspensions are necessary some times, it's in my opinion, a good idea attempting to avoid it where possible)

To clarify,

I'm not saying this can be applied everywhere all the time in a static pattern, but as a basis to go of, it seems like the best alternative. A second or even a third warning could be used assuming the comments themselves aren't so over the line they warrant a direct suspension, and assuming the user actually engages in a constructive way and doesn't end up having a toxic/heated conversation with the mod(s) involved instead. If any warnings just result in additional comments (or even worse ones) and the poster make no effort to not post that kind of comments, I consider a suspension to be close to necessary.

The rules in general exist with flexibility, but even then, if no action is taken (that actually works), they might end up continuing to post more of these comments and (worst case scenario) cause more of it around the site if it's noticed. Again, that doesn't mean "just ban and move on" - if additional warning(s) work, there's no need to take further action.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

First of all, the comments would need to be cleaned up. There's likely going to be a lot of non-constructive comments around. If any of them violate the CoC, I'd warn the users and, if there's a pattern of abuse, ban.

Given that it's on-topic, I'd reopen, vote on it, and if I actually know the answer, answer. Stuff does some times slip past moderation though, both in terms of good being closed and bad being left open.

I don't see a scenario in which everyone can win if the comments violate the CoC. If it's just regular non-rude piling on, deleting (NLN) is likely enough.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

I'm not specifically good with poetry, but I generally like keeping the site on-topic and clean. It won't always be fun (depends on the posts), but I find some satisfaction in moderating and keeping the site what it's intended to be.

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

I'd temporarily freeze the room. Timeouts only affect non-ROs which would still leave a window open for the conversation to partially continue. Then clearing the flags, before pinging the users involved and explaining that the discussion is too off-topic, and specifying the use of flags in the way they were used is wrong. While chat is still indented for certain topics, flagging such comments is wrong. Depending on the conversation, explicitly stating it's off-topic, and recommending to take the discussion somewhere else.

After the message(s) containing that, I'd unfreeze the room and stick around in case it grows toxic, or the same conversation continues.

if there's continued flag abuse after explaining why flags shouldn't be used that way and after enough of a warning, I'd go for a chat suspension instead. Anything CoC-violating and I'd aim for the main site instead.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

This depends on how old the comments are. If the comments are (relatively) old and the poster shows no continued pattern of rude behavior in newer time, I would say regular deletion is enough.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I'd warn them if the comments are over the line, and ban if warning isn't enough. While I do agree we need valuable and high-quality answers on the site, heated comments kinda destroy the value, especially if it's directly attacking one or more users.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I'd talk to the mod first. I may have missed something the other mod didn't, but also the other way around. Having a constructive discussion about it could be beneficial for both of us.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

It depends on the volume.

If there's a couple posts a month, the community can handle it without much problem. However, if there's several posts per week (or even per day), with the limited amount of close votes, I'd take action.

Informing the user of this pattern and attempting to constructively solve it seems like the best option, along with cleaning up the posts of course. Depending on the techs involved, talking to another mod might be a good idea too. Or, if that's something mods can do, banning the user from asking could be an option as well. But beyond that, suspending a user over low-quality questions seem like a horrible option that most likely will lead to socks and additional cleanup.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I'd vote to reopen, and notify the users it's not a duplicate, and why (however, not in capacity as a mod, but as an experienced developer in whatever tag is related). As long as there's no general pattern of abuse in this (i.e. voting circle), I don't see any need to take it any further.

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

Meta is different. I can survive some downvotes and negative feedback - it could also be used later if someone asks the same question. Even if it's downvoted, I see no reason to disassociate it from my account.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

Aside what I'm already doing (which I hope to do more of), I'd focus a lot on comments, and somewhat on chat as well.

With the new code of conduct and the general welcoming push, I'd focus on flags on R/A comments and chat messages, along with finding R/A comments that might not have been flagged. While I do believe SO has come a long way since these changes, there's still a lot more that can be done.

And of course handling mod- and deletion flags, along with the other diamond moderator-specific tasks.


Various clarifications

As I mentioned in one of the earlier revisions of this answer, I'm not sure to what the limits of the moderator tools are. I'm aware of (most of) the rules moderators have to follow, but when it comes to the apparently undocumented tools, I'm not as sure.

  • 28
    From your answer to 11, it's not clear to me what you want mod powers for. Most of what you describe focusing on doesn't obviously need them. Are you basically running to get the binding close vote, so that you can chomp through the review queue faster than us mortals can? Or do you think that the visible authority of a diamond next to your name will help you with your efforts to educate users? – Mark Amery Mar 4 at 22:45
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    @MarkAmery, that seems to be the case with all the answers on this page, no? – Sara Chipps Mar 4 at 23:52
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    @SaraChipps Not so; Machavity and Travis both listed specific things they would do that require moderator powers, like apply the moderator-only tags involved in the burnination process or handle deletion flags. – Mark Amery Mar 5 at 0:18
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    Honestly, I'd work on gaining more rep and giving more time before stepping up. It's not that you won't make a good mod at some point in the future, I don't think you're quite ready now. – Yvette Colomb Mar 5 at 3:15
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    If you're not sure what mods can and can't do, then why are you running to become a mod? And how do you expect to win? – Kaiser Keister Mar 5 at 7:18
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    @YvetteColomb Do you have any specific reason for that, or is it just rep and account age? Seems to me for one Zoe's flag stats show a good understanding of the site rules and a very active role in moderation, if she were to become a moderator that sounds like a very beneficial combination for the site. It would be a waste to delay just for the sake of imaginary internet points or age imo. – Erik A Mar 5 at 8:15
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    @KaiserKeister I might've phrased myself a little wrong, but I can't know the extent and limits of something that's apparently undocumented - I have a rough idea of the tools available, but I have no idea what the limits are. I'm aware of the general rules (more or less at least), but the tools are another issue. As for winning, I don't. I knew rep mattered to some people, but after seeing a bunch of discussions on rep and age, I realize it might be unlikely. I'm here because I want to try, not because I expect to win. – Zoe Mar 5 at 8:33
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    @ErikA personally from observations, mainly as a moderator. As a rule I much prefer higher rep users (closer to the 20k bar) with more years experience and a strong use case for modding that doesn't need to be explained in questions and answers, we can see it clearly from their activity on the site. I think Zoe has come a long way and may make a great mod one day, just not yet. I admire her bravery in standing up. – Yvette Colomb Mar 5 at 9:32
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    Hey there. You seem to cite the CoC as an inflexible and totally unambiguous bar for moderation. Given its somewhat rocky history, and its very generous space for interpretation, why do you believe that to be the best way to envision moderating the site? – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Mar 5 at 15:09
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    @FélixGagnon-Grenier I'm not saying it's not open and "do this or else", but if too different concerns are taken for the same issues with high-rep compared to low-rep users, then moderation suddenly tilts more towards rep and contribution value rather than the content itself. Moderation is supposed to be about content and not the user, but when it comes to repeated patterns of abuse (question one) or possibly emerging patterns (question 2), it seems like the best approach to handle it according to the ToS. – Zoe Mar 5 at 15:17
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    Not in a rigid "3 strikes and your out", but following that as a basis on all users would at least attempt to make the site in terms of moderation equal for all users, regardless of rep. Past history does of course matter, but not so much a pattern like in question 1 can go unnoticed and with a simple deletion. – Zoe Mar 5 at 15:17
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    I am sorry if this comes off a bit cold-hearted, but with SO being over 10 years old, being a user with 2y10m experience means that you might not fully comprehend "how far SO has come" and thus your judgments may not be colored by an appreciation of history. I don't know you, so my opinion can easily be discarded as unfair. I suppose I am supporting some of what Yvette has said. Essentially, you are on the right path, but before sitting in the highest electable position, perhaps it would be better to keep you in the oven for a little while longer. Again, no offense intended, just my opinion. – mickmackusa Mar 5 at 23:34
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    Have been a member for 7.5 years myself, and I can attest to the fact that Zoe has much more experience than I do when it comes to moderation in SO. Number of years really has nothing to do here. I also checked her edits and they seem, as I mentioned in a different place, concise and accurate. Good luck! Quick edit: I'd have to say I'm a bit disappointed when it comes to your first answer: a moderator must be flexible, empathetic, and not trigger happy (again, this is my opinion). Still, the very best of luck! – itoctopus Mar 6 at 22:17
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    @YvetteColomb I use a different criteria for candidate evaluation. Rep and site age are low on the scale of value for me. Performance gets more weight. In some cases I use rep and age in the negative column. Long-time members are can be jaded with patterns which can be a detriment to the site. I think the the activity on the site (in mod-related activities) is important, as you said, and despite the age of the account, there's plenty of that to evaluate for this candidate. High rep does not translate in to a good mod, or even ability to follow the rules, let alone apply them, see question #1. – Gypsy Spellweaver Mar 12 at 4:07
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    @itoctopus I concur with your comment; up to your quick edit. The answer seems anything but trigger happy, even in it's first version. My take-away was current behavior counts and rep doesn't excuse abuse, which I heartily agree with. – Gypsy Spellweaver Mar 12 at 4:12
85

Travis J's answers:

Nomination

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

It doesn't matter where the comments were left. Stack Overflow has a fairly clear Code of Conduct here, and it applies to all users regardless of the quality of the content they produce. If a user persists beyond a warning they should be suspended for a small period of time, I am not sure what the smallest is; I would go with 48 hours if this was the first instance.

At the same time, we shouldn't be pushing out members of the community either, and that isn't the goal of suspending. It is easy to get frustrated with certain situations here and that should also be taken into consideration.

I say this both ways because historically Stack Overflow has tried to walk a very fine line. We want to maintain high quality, and that means enforcing rules. Sometimes, that means that users have to hear unwanted truths; this can result in them calling out the messenger as rude or using "strong language". Users on both sides have quit: those on the side of not wanting to hear that the content they produce is off topic; as well as users feeling helpless and not wanting to see the degradation of quality on the site.

A very high rep user strongly considered leaving and took a hiatus as a result of this at one time. More than that, there has been a trend of high-reputation users answering fewer questions: 84% have been slowing their answering activity. As the site accumulates more and more questions, it becomes increasing important to moderate the questions being asked.

While it is important to be nice to your fellow users, it is also important that users understand they cannot simply post whatever they want to the site. We have rules, they need to be enforced. If users feel that their efforts of using the available tools are not enough, then they will begin using other means to express their frustration, such as comments. This primarily leads to the situation being described in this question.

A good moderator would consider both sides of this equation when choosing which action to take in order to both de-escalate as well as prevent future issues. This can mean simply taking action with regards to the singular users involved, however, I also believe that when there are issues with behavior at the site we as a community need to discuss them and figure out what ways if any we can remedy these situations (without pointing fingers at individual users, simply at the situations in general). Perhaps that means increased tooling for users to combat quality, and perhaps that means increased moderation tools for preventing actually abusive comments.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

There is really no general answer to this situation, because even with all of the given context, there are still many unknowns that play large factors. The question is on-topic is a given, so long as it does not fall into any other valid categories of closure, it should remain open. If it does fall into a valid category of closure, it should be closed.

If the comments warrant deletion, they should be removed, this is universal. If not, they should remain, regardless of the post's status.

The downvotes are there to stay, and that is just the way the site works.

That said, this does happen often. I have a gold tag badge in Discussion here at Meta and have already encountered this situation before. Here is an example of reopening a question which was met poorly at first and answering it: Is "give me a collection of books" an on-topic question on SO?, or here On Stack Overflow, aren't we supposed to downvote an incorrect answer?, or really, I will do this any time I see the need to allow an on topic question to remain. Sometimes, I will also ask for the advice of a CM if the post is closed after I reopen it, such as here: Are we collectively wired to be 'rude'? where Shog ended up posting an answer (his more eloquent than mine would have been).

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

Content quality.
Produce it or curate it,
we must uphold it.

Content quality is very important to me, and I spent a lot of time trying to create it, so it only makes to sense to also curate it.

I also spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways through tooling or through discussion to improve content quality here at Stack Overflow.

Some of the posts you can see this in action would be:

Some of these posts resulted in real action, or coincided with improved tooling such as the dupehammer and the throttling ban for users asking questions. Some of these posts set the stage for important discussion for the site. Overall, these are just representative of some of the ways I have tried to work with the community here at meta to improve the site for the rest of us.

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

Delicately. Chat is very nuanced.

I believe essentially all of these issues can be handled through conversation.

Often, users new to chat are rather unfamiliar with the slightly relaxed nature of chat here. It is important to look back at the creation of the feature and the general outlook by Jeff Atwood for what was intended with the "third place" of chat.

The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. -Ray Oldenburg

As such, new users can be a little zealous when first entering chat. Often through making demands or simply attempting to be in everyone's face (so to speak) in order to get their point across. This leads to tension in the room.

Room moderation is hard for Room Owners who have limited tooling.

First and foremost, the flagging needs to stop. If it is warranted, then a single flag for moderator (also available in chat) will do. There is no reason to spam chat flags, it is disruptive to every room at Stack Overflow.

Following that, the disruptive user needs to take a break from the room. They should be welcome to come back at a later time assuming that they are more willing to cooperate with other users in the future, but them being there was causing a significant amount of friction if a moderator needed to get involved.

Once the disruption is clear, the room should be able to return to its normal state of conduct.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

While comments are contributions, they should not be made in place of actual answers or questions. As such, they are especially susceptible to being removed.

With regards to this specific instance, it is certainly complicated, and depending on the situation may require deletion of the comments without validating the borderline flags of the material (while also not declining the flags). If it is borderline and rather old, perhaps in violation of an updated policy, it would be a little unfair to suspend a user as a result of that. If the comments are borderline rude, in the rude direction, they should definitely be deleted; that doesn't always mean there should be additional consequence for the user though.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

It just depends on the comments, it doesn't matter who posts them. In general though, I am a fan of trying to keep users in our community instead of driving them away.

This is similar to the first question, although slightly different. While the previous user was unwilling to change at first, this user only has their comments flagged.

It is very common for highly active members of the community to have their comments flagged if they are leaving them as a result of the review queue or as a result of indicating that content is problematic. These users should not be punished for simply generating flags if the flags are invalid.

Many times, users who have their posts actioned through closure, deletion, or downvote will start taking counter actions. This can lead to a steady stream of flags on comments by users attempting to use all of the user moderation tools available to them.

If there is an actual issue with the content of the comments then a private message should suffice at first. If comments persist, then stricter methods can begin to be used. If the comments are being flagged constantly, but are the result of a feature or community developed system of messaging, then that would be a good time to discuss with either the community managing the messaging or meta if any changes need to take place, and what those changes could look like.

I have had experience with this before, working with @rene and @TimPost on some of the recent auto generated comments the SOCVR uses. You can see that chat here: https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/187598/2019/1/30

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would just talk to them about it in chat, or move on. This is a minor issue, and I already converse with many of the mods here at various times anyway. It is just important to be cordial. For the most part, I agree with them. Sometimes, it happens that they close or delete a post where it wasn't warranted, but often the community will notice as well and there will be a meta discussion for it.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

Maybe some action gets taken, but it would take some serious doing by the user. It would probably come in the form of a verbal warning at first. This seems like something that is exceedingly rare, and would depend far more on the type of content produced than the user's background.

As for the existing content, moderator deletion would be a little heavy handed; more than likely the community deletes it along with its natural process of curation if it is truly terrible.

I really haven't seen any actual instance of this happening aside from maybe one or two users who earned all of their reputation through solely asking questions. For the most part, if a high rep user is asking questions which are closed they are probably trying out a new technology. Asking questions where you are unaware of the proper terminology can be difficult, and can lead to situations where it seems that low quality is being created on purpose.

High rep users can be question banned though through creating too many low quality questions, it just requires that they not have a history of high quality ones.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I have several gold tag badges, and am fairly experienced with this process. I also authored the feature request for the dupehammer. I would generally edit the list to include the proper duplicate. Rarely is a duplicate closure incorrect from my experience; it does happen though, and I have reopened in some rare cases.

I have also been on both sides of this. If the duplicate I chose (since my vote is already binding) does not properly answer the question then I will reopen the post. You can see an example of that here Rendering Image Blob Correctly along with some of my comments interacting with the question asker.

  1. Are there any meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a meta post, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

If one of my posts receives a lot of downvotes, I generally delete it since it probably is not adding any value to the site. I won't ask for it to be disassociated though. Here is one example: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/324088/1026459 (+9/-29), it is deleted (10k only), but basically it suggests with some evidence that perhaps we should allow higher rep users to ask more subjective questions. It didn't go over well. That's fine, there is nothing wrong with disagreement, it is a healthy part of discourse.

Overall though, my posts tend to do quite well. I am in the top users list for both the discussion tag and the feature-request tag.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

I would focus on solving difficult issues. At work, by the time something reaches me it is generally rather complicated; sometimes it is a simple solution, such as write ups, hearing people out, solving misunderstandings, etc.; sometimes it is complicated, and involves working with state or federal regulatory committees, legal teams, or local law enforcement. I am used to being as fair a mediator as possible to all those involved.

I am also fine with just going through and handling deletion/spam/vandalism/fraud flags. I am generally active on the site every day, although often Sundays I miss. For example, I was away on a conference last week and still managed to use the site every day.

  • 7
    I'm glad to see you throw your hat in the ring, you'd be a great mod. From everything I've seen of your participation you have the right skills set and motivation. – Yvette Colomb Mar 5 at 0:04
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    I think your second sentence on #6 could use some explanation, as it's not so clear what that implies given the scenario in question. Other than that (and ok maybe #4 even though that made me smile a little), these answers look appealing to me. Good luck ! – Mat Mar 5 at 1:04
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    Happy to see you running again, I think you'd make a great moderator. Hope it works out this time! Good luck! – cs95 Mar 5 at 2:12
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    @Mat - The second sentence in #6 was a reference to many situations where over moderation has led to users leaving the community. I don't really want to highlight the situations that have existed there, because some of those users did come back at some point. In respect of that, it is intentionally vague; however, those are real situations. I believe that it is possible to diffuse those types of situations in a manner which retains contributing members, and I would work hard to make sure that happens. With regards to 4, kind of the same deal, I added a minor edit there. – Travis J Mar 5 at 3:19
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    @coldspeed - I generally put my hat there just in case, but probably not needed this time. What a good group of candidates. I think you would make a great mod too. And Jean-François too who just nominated. Overall, I think we will be getting some great moderators here :) – Travis J Mar 5 at 3:29
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    your nomination certainly doesn't hurt. Aren't you the one who gave the idea of the gold badge single-closing dupe feature? – Jean-François Fabre Mar 5 at 7:05
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    @Jean-François Fabre Yup :) meta.stackexchange.com/questions/230865/… , I've worked with the CM team with trying to improve the site often, and will continue to do so. Definitely feel invested at Stack Overlow. – Travis J Mar 5 at 17:43
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    Stack Overlow that's an interesting typo :) – Jean-François Fabre Mar 6 at 8:43
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    @Jean-FrançoisFabre - F! ;) I left out the f. OVERFLOW. That's what I get for responding with a touch device instead of a keyboard. – Travis J Mar 6 at 19:50
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    @TravisJ we're supposed to leave the F out of stack overflow, it's part of the new welcoming drive :) dad joke – Yvette Colomb Mar 6 at 21:05
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    Really love your answer to #11. Good luck! – itoctopus Mar 6 at 22:11
78

My nomination

Answers from Makyen

I tend to be a bit verbose, so these answers are a bit long.

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

Violating the Code of Conduct is not acceptable, even for a high rep user who is very active. They have been warned and refused to modify their behavior. The normal procedure is to issue a suspension for a short time to allow the user to cool down. Then, if they do not correct their behavior, issue a series of progressively longer suspensions allowing the user to demonstrate that they have, or have not, changed their behavior after each one. In addition to the suspension, I would messages them with a note somewhat similar to:

"Your past contributions to Stack Overflow have been quite valuable. It would be unfortunate if you chose to leave the site. However, the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct is a set of rules which govern interaction with this site, and all Stack Exchange sites. It applies to all users, regardless of their other contributions, and regardless of the provocation. You have repeatedly violated the Code of Conduct and been warned about this behavior. You are receiving this suspension of [X time] in order to give you some time to cool down. After that time, we hope you choose to continue to participate on Stack Overflow within the Code of Conduct. To be clear, compliance with the Code of Conduct is required on Stack Overflow. Future failures on your part to comply with the Code of Conduct will result in progressively longer suspensions."

While there's some additional leeway for interactions on Meta, actual violations of the Code of Conduct are just as unacceptable on Meta as they are on the main site.

It's very desirable to have an active high-rep user as a contributor to Stack Overflow. However, ultimately, if they can't participate on SO in compliance with the Code of Conduct, then they need to not be interacting with SO.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

Taking the situation as stated:

  • Clean up the comments, as appropriate. Look at those that are flagged and all the rest. The comments can be deleted and/or moved to chat, depending on the situation.
  • Reopen the question and answer it.
  • Edit the question to improve it's quality and make it clearer that it's on-topic
  • Leave a comment explaining: to the OP about how things work on Meta (e.g. downvotes indicate disagreement), and to explain to other people as to why I feel the question is on-topic. Exactly what to say depends on the details of the situation.
  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

Flags raised willfully
Carefully evaluate
Diligently done

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

This question presupposes that the discussion in the chatroom is "an undesirable topic". The question appears to assume that there has already been a determination that the conversation is one that needs to stop. Thus, the potential scenario of a new user flagging things they didn't understand isn't considered in this answer. However, when entering a real-world situation, the first step, however brief, is to evaluate what is going on and the merits of the flags.

So, based on the assumptions in the question:

I would first, leave a message that the topic is inappropriate and that discussion of it must end. While waiting to see if people actually stop, start cleaning up (deleting) inappropriate messages. If a person or two continue the discussion, then they can be kicked or banned from chat for a short period. If it's a significant number of people, then the room can be frozen for a short period of time to get the point across. If that still doesn't result in the end of the discussion, then the room can be frozen for an extended time and/or more people can be kicked or banned from chat for a cooling off period.

Basically, the intent is to provide a measured response that is sufficient to get the behavior to stop. Most people will adjust their behavior with relatively gentile reminders. If they don't, then progressively stronger measures can be taken to get the point across, or, if needed, to just prevent the people who are refusing to modify their behavior from interacting with chat or SO until they cool down. As usual, the point is to apply only the amount of correction that's necessary to get the behavior to change, without over-reacting and being too heavy-handed.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do? If the comments are any of "unfriendly or unkind", "harassment, bigotry, or abuse", or "no longer needed", then delete the comments.

If the comments don't meet the criteria of "unfriendly or unkind" (UU) and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse" (HBA), then the flags can be declined, but the comments still deleted. However, doing either or both is a judgement call, based on at least: how close the comments really are to being U/U or HBA; the relative harm from the declined flag(s) vs. the harm to the user who made the not quite U/U or HBA comments when the flags are marked helpful; the benefit of positively reinforcing the flagging behavior vs. a potential out of the blue disciplinary action for the user who commented some time ago, possibly years ago; etc.

I would communicate with the flagger that "No longer needed" would be more appropriate for comments that don't quite reach the level of "unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse" flags and where the comments are actually no longer needed. I'd explain what the potential consequences are to the author of the comment and that a bit more leeway should be given for old comments, but that if the comment really does qualify as "unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse", then it should be flagged as such.

If the flags indicate a pattern of such comments authored by a specific individual, then review their comments, or a portion of them. Determine if it's only an issue with old comments, or if it's also on newer comments. Address any issues found with the author of the comments.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments? This sounds like the description of an interaction earlier in the process with a user similar to the one in question #1.

The requirement is that people who are participating on SO are doing so within the Code of Conduct. The desire is to retain valuable contributors.

Basically, we should try to use the least amount of coercion as is necessary to get them to change their behavior. Start with gentile nudges and progressively get more forceful, if their behavior does not change. This can start with discussing it with them using comments, inviting them to a mod-restricted chatroom, mod messages, and warnings. The discussions should explicitly inform them that their behavior must change; suggest that they just disengage from arguments; maybe they could take a break from SO for a few days; etc.).

If their behavior still doesn't change, then a brief suspension, followed by progressively longer ones, if the behavior continues. How fast to move through these options depends on the details of the situation and the user's reactions. As with many human interactions, it's a balance that depends on details. But, ultimately, the behavior must change, if the person wants to continue to participate on Stack Overflow.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Discuss it with the other mod in the/a mod-room. Reach an agreement as to if the question should be open/undeleted/locked. It's quite possible that either of us is wrong (e.g. misreading the question), or that we need to compromise. Given that I'm the one that thinks the question should be open/undeleted, it's likely that a prelude to the discussion with the other mod would be for me to edit the question to make it more clear, provide more focus, and address any other issues with the question, based on the close reason.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

This is something a moderator can help with, if it's become disruptive to the community. To a considerable extent, being disruptive depends on the volume of off-topic questions the user is posting. Is it one per month, one per week, several every day? There's a point where the sheer volume of low-quality questions becomes disruptive by itself. There's also a point below which the situation should be left to the community to handle. I don't have a specific volume at which this break-point exists. If this is a situation that's come to the attention of the moderator through flags, then, at a minimum, it's somewhat disruptive, at least to the user who flagged.

The first step, as is often the case, is investigating. What type of content are they posting? How is it off-topic/low-quality? The next step would be to have a conversation with the user, send a message, or leave comments to nudge the user to produce better quality content. Focusing on the benefits to the user (e.g. they can actually get good answers) is usually a good way to convince someone that it's in their interest to change. The moderator can explain the problem and provide specific ways the user can improve the quality of their questions. Is it that the user is just not putting effort into the questions? Do they have a misunderstanding about what is on-topic? Perhaps the issue is that they have not really internalized the changes over the years of what is on- and off-topic on SO. There is considerable content in the Help Center to which the user can be directed.

If the issue is actually disruptive, and the user continues to refuse to improve their contributions, then the response can become progressively more forceful, as is the normal response to users that continue to be disruptive, refusing to change their behavior. How that works was covered in the answers to #6 and #1 above.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

SO entrusts their demonstrated experts in tags with the ability to unilaterally close as duplicate, reopen a duplicate question, or edit the list of duplicates. Given that other members of the community have already spoken, I'd certainly double and triple checked that I'm reading the question correctly, then, assuming that my understanding of the question and the duplicate has not changed, I, as an expert, would A) find an appropriate duplicate(s) and edit the duplicate list. B) if there's no available duplicate, or duplicates, then I would reopen the question. In both cases, I'd leave a comment briefly explaining why it was not a duplicate. In addition, I would edit the question to clarify areas that may have lead the other users to misunderstand what the question was about (i.e. edit to make it clearer that it's not a duplicate).

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

I would not ask for my Meta posts to be disassociated from my account.

I believe in being accountable for my actions, which, importantly, includes accepting responsibility for making mistakes, correcting them, and learning from them. We're all human. We all make mistakes. IMO, it's significantly more important how you deal with having made a mistake than that you make none, because we will all make mistakes sometimes.

In the specific case of receiving a lot of negative feedback, I would seriously consider the negative feedback, thoughtfully examine my view of the topic, and, potentially, adjust my view on the topic, if the feedback was convincing. If it was a moderation issue, I would accept that my point of view did not fit the consensus and adjust how I moderated to match the rules and/or consensus. If I felt I could not do so in a specific situation, then I would request that other moderators to handle it.

As to Meta posts I'm not proud of, I have 3 deleted Meta posts. The first is an answer in which I made a copy/paste error that included some PII, which has since been redacted. The second was a question proposing a change for how Documentation awarded reputation. It made some arguments based on economics, which I explained poorly. I should have refined that proposal more prior to posting. That question was deleted by the Roomba. The third was an answer to a feature request. While I agree with the proposal, the way I worded the answer and my initial failure to get Markdown to format code as part of a list appeared to be detracting from the feature request, so I deleted my answer.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

Stack Overflow's goal is to create a repository of questions and answers that are helpful to future visitors. In addition to handling flags I plan to help shepherding burninations, responding to Meta requests, handling plagiarism, intervening in situations where users need to be guided away from destructive activity (e.g. repeated vandalism, and issues with users similar to those described in earlier questions here), etc.

In addition, I plan to continue to participate in content curation. However, my being a moderator would significantly change how I'd expect to do that. For closing questions, due to a moderator's vote being binding, I expect that I will primarily do so only on obviously off-topic questions, leaving many of the questions which I currently vote-to-close to the consensus of other users. So, while I do plan to close obvious off-topic questions, I'm not running for moderator to "Close All the Things"™

While my delete-voting will increase due to handling flags, I feel that content should not be deleted, unless it's causing harm in some way, and that authors of questions and answers should be given the opportunity to improve their posts. In particular, I feel that potentially salvageable, closed questions should not be deleted until at least the end of the on-hold period, if not the point the Roomba would normally delete them. Waiting to delete them allows the OP the opportunity to improve their question. Additionally, older, closed questions with a significant number of views shouldn't be deleted without evaluating their potential benefit to future visitors. Basically, each question or answer one should be evaluated individually.


Answers to questions in comments

You are perhaps the most dedicated, knowledgeable and helpful user I have ever encountered on SO. Of the activities I am aware of (not incuding answering questions and user-moderating on the main site), you are RO in several chat rooms, write userscripts, are active in Charcoal, active on meta, and spend a lot of time giving detailed helpful answers to people in chat. My questions are 1) What's to stop you burning out? 2) Which if any of the aforementioned activities, or others, will you give up? 3) Do you really need to be a moderator when you already do so much with the tools you have?

  1. Burnout potential: I have a very high tolerance for high workload situations over an extended period. In addition, I've previously gotten close to burn-out at work, so I know what getting close to my limits feels like and can adapt my activities to avoid it. The time I was close to being burned-out at work was after working for 5 years at an average of > 90 hours of work/week. Admittedly, I only actually kept records for how much I was working for the later 3 years, but my impression was that I worked more than that number of hours/week for the first couple of years.

    The impact on myself, wrt. burnout, of my activities on SO is much less than what might be expected because I enjoy the vast majority of what I do here. Some things are a chore, from time to time, but helping moderate SO is something I find quite fulfilling. Helping out on SO is actually one of my go-to things to do when I'm procrastinating on doing other things.

    Overall, I consider it unlikely that I'll burn out. However, it's always a possibility for anyone. In such cases, it's possible to take a break from moderating, or from SO entirely. For instance, at least one SO moderator took a couple/few months off last year. While they were missed, being able to have moderators do that is one of the reasons there are a several/many moderators for SO.

  2. Which activities might I give up to perform moderator duties
    Assuming I don't just increase the amount of time I spend on Stack Overflow related activities, I could do any or all of the following:

    1. There are considerable inefficiencies in some things I routinely do on SO. Those inefficiencies can be significantly reduced by various changes, which I plan to make. Some of the changes will be more improvements I've been planning to the various userscripts to further streamline review of *-pls requests and SD reports. Overall, I expect the total of these improvements to cover more than the time commitment for being a moderator. However, these, obviously, require some up-front time-investment to write/test code. OTOH, considerable portions of that code has already been written, as the improvements are ones I've been planning for some time.
      Obviously, once completed, I'd release the userscript improvements, so other people can use them too.

    2. I spend more time than I should browsing the Hot Network Questions, which is completely recreation. I can cut back on that, which would also save enough time for the moderator commitment, if not substantially more, without fully eliminating this recreational reading. Not eliminating it entirely is beneficial, as it's also, usually, a break from reviewing activity. Having a reasonable number of such breaks helps prevent burnout and review-fatigue.

    3. It's my expectation that I will, at least until acclimatized to being a moderator (if I'm elected), reduce the time I spend reviewing cv-pls requests in SOCVR, to an extent.
      Currently, on nearly every day, I review every cv-pls in SOCVR which is not complete as of about 23:00UTC. If there are more cv-pls requests which I want to vote on than I have remaining close-votes, I do the rest after 00:00UTC. A disproportionate amount of the time to review these requests are on cv-pls requests that are not immediately obvious that they should be closed, or where I'm less familiar with the technology involved. The requests for questions such as these usually take considerably longer to review, and often end up with me skipping them once I've learned enough about the technology being used to figure out that I'm not reasonably going to be able to make a close-vote determination (e.g. is it enough code to demonstrate the problem).
      For me, with a binding close-vote, I should stay away from close-voting things where it's somewhat more likely that I'm wrong in my evaluation. That means that I should be avoiding the above type of questions, where the fact that it's off-topic isn't quite clear. Given that these also take up a large chunk of time to evaluate, this saves considerable time over what I'm currently doing. It's not that large of a loss to SOCVR, as I eventually choose not to vote on many of these anyway.

    4. I can reduce the number of SmokeDetector reports which I review and/or investigate. This is easily accomplished, but I believe improvements in detections and tooling can make my doing so not impact Charcoal significantly.
  3. Do I need to be a moderator in order to contribute: No, none of us need to be a moderator. I nominated myself because I feel I can do significantly more to help the community, and help in different ways, by being a moderator than without being a moderator. If I don't get elected, then I will continue to contribute without the additional responsibility and abilities that come with being a moderator.

  • 1
    Regarding question 5, comment flags cannot be "disputed". Also, how would you contact the flagger without exposing that they flagged something? Flag declinations have a little room for custom explanations, but what if the flagger does not change their flagging pattern after a few such custom explanations? (Also, good luck on the election!) – S.L. Barth Mar 7 at 15:33
  • 2
    @S.L.Barth Thank you. The contact methods that are available to moderators, and when it is appropriate to use each type are, as far as I know, not shared in detail with non-moderators. As I understand it, the most appropriate way for a mod to contact someone for a discussion is to use a superping in chat and have the user join a mod-private room. Such rooms are only accessible to moderators and the users they authorize for that particular room. Using such rooms is a way for a moderator to have a conversation with a user that can only be seen by moderators and that user. – Makyen Mar 7 at 15:41
  • 5
    Reading your answers, it seems like you want to invest a lot of effort into every single issue, and often want to engage in dialog. Do you think you can keep that up with the large quantity of flags coming in? – Erik A Mar 7 at 15:41
  • 6
    @ErikA The questions are mostly written to be situations where there's significant benefit from putting in some additional effort to the specific situation described. I don't feel that every situation needs that effort, but potentially making the difference between keeping a "high-rep user" or "an established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts)" as an active and beneficial contributor to SO vs. them leaving or being suspended for a long period of time is worth a bit of extra effort, IMO. – Makyen Mar 7 at 15:49
  • 1
    Your stats (31000 close votes for example) are mighty impressive. I don't actually want you to be a moderator, you'll be splitting your time and efforts :) – Gimby Mar 7 at 16:07
  • 2
    @Gimby Thanks. Yeah, becoming a moderator will be a significant adjustment. I won't be close-voting the same things, and close-voting becomes a lower priority, because it's something the community can do. How exactly to adjust is something that I'll have to work on, if I'm elected. But, being a moderator is a commitment. It's one which I carefully thought about and thought about how it could/would fit with the other commitments in my life. I wouldn't have nominated myself if I didn't know I could meet or exceed that commitment. – Makyen Mar 7 at 16:20
  • 9
    You are perhaps the most dedicated, knowledgeable and helpful user I have ever encountered on SO. Of the activities I am aware of (not incuding answering questions and user-moderating on the main site), you are RO in several chat rooms, write userscripts, are active in Charcoal, active on meta, and spend a lot of time giving detailed helpful answers to people in chat. My questions are 1) What's to stop you burning out? 2) Which if any of the aforementioned activities, or others, will you give up? 3) Do you really need to be a moderator when you already do so much with the tools you have? – Stephen Kennedy Mar 7 at 16:23
  • 5
    The being verbose strategy worked well before. I hope it works well again. Best of luck to you; I’m glad to see your name here. The only thing I disagree with here is your plan to reduce the number of close votes you cast as a moderator. There’s no need for that; mods are still members of the community and should still vote as they see fit. Abstaining in true edge cases does make sense, but 99% of closures are not edge cases, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to lessen your participation in this critical function. Getting used to the diamond’s powers takes some time, I guess. :-) – Cody Gray Mar 7 at 20:30
  • 4
    Another strong candidate I'd like to vote for. Too many favourites and not enough spots. – Yvette Colomb Mar 8 at 5:47
  • 1
    @StephenKennedy Thank you very much, that's quite a complement. The questions you ask are important. I have answers for you, but they are neither short, nor yet complete. I need to be doing some stuff in RL for the next 12, or so, hours. I expect to complete the answers after that. I'll ping you again when I have them available. – Makyen Mar 8 at 6:40
  • 2
    How come you never asked any question? – Knu Mar 11 at 21:18
  • 4
    @Knu I've thought about asking a question from time to time. On each occasion, by the time I'd done enough research to start writing up a good question, I'd already solved the problem. – Makyen Mar 11 at 22:56
  • 6
    The majority of the site's users neiher ask nor answer, @Knu; they come from searches and they read. – Josh Caswell Mar 12 at 3:37
  • 4
    @Knu well then I'm not a real user. I signed up to answer a question. I did so poorly, but that's why I signed up. – Gimby Mar 13 at 9:22
  • 4
    People who answer questions are just as much users of StackOverflow as people who ask questions, as are people who find answers without having to ask new questions. They are all a part of the SO ecosystem; please do not disparage them @Knu. – Amber Mar 14 at 3:06
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Stack Overflow Questionnaire Answers

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

Being aggressive in comments because of the quality of the questions is not an excuse to be aggressive. It's a reason, but is neither an excuse or a justification.

I feel like there's an underlying frustration at the root of all of this - the big thing being that the person may feel like the low-quality questions are overwhelming to the degree that they have to react in this fashion. While that's unfortunate...there's a better way to handle this.

Irrespective of where it is - either on Meta or the main site - I'd recommend the user to calm down a bit or simply not comment. It's fine to shout at your monitor, so long as your neighbors are okay with that; it's not okay to choose to engage in a manner inconsistent with the Code of Conduct. If the warnings aren't getting through, then it's probably best to give them some involuntary time away from the site to get their head together.

I get it - being frustrated by low-quality questions is not an uncommon thing. But as I mentioned before, it may be best for all parties involved for the high-rep user to simply hold their tongue.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

Well, first and foremost, let's deal with the flags... If there's anything egregious in those comments that needs to be dealt with, let's make that the priority.

Now, there's two parts to this one - just because I know what an answer would look like to this question, that doesn't necessarily mean...

  • ...that it would be useful to the user in context, or
  • ...that it would be the right action to take.

Supposing that the question were actually on-topic, but was a dupe, I would close as a dupe instead. If it were on-topic and answerable, then I'd likely reopen it, leave an explanation as to why I think it's answerable, and answer it.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

Maintaining the site
Keeping the experts engaged
Eradicate noise!

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

The worst thing to do when you come into a circumstance like chat, especially when you're coming in absent context, is to charge in.

First and foremost, let's establish what's going on in the chatroom. I'd want to establish what's going on based on the conversation(s) in chat. At a minimum I'd take steps to try to calm the situation down - talk to the regulars and try to let cooler heads prevail in the room to get the whole situation sorted out.

If it turns out that the flags were legitimate - as in, the person who did the flagging in the first place had good reason to - I'd take appropriate and measured action according to what the flags were concerning. That is to say, if the topic really shouldn't be in chat, I'd want to make sure that stopped. I'd reach out to fellow moderators who have more experience in the fine art of Chat to be sure that I'm not doing anything inappropriate or overreaching.

I'd also likely talk to the person who started mass-flagging the room. I know that Chat is still a part of the site and is regulated by its rules, but starting a fight is the least constructive way to get things done here.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

To be clear, the Code of Conduct has not changed since before the Welcoming drive; as I see it, if the comments made in the past were rude or dismissive, then they would be subject to moderation today, just the same.

Depending on the circumstance, if I saw the comments more as borderline than objectively in violation, I may dispute the flag but take action against the comment anyway. If there's really a good nugget of information in the comment but it's weighted down by noise and unnecessary stuff which caused it to get flagged in the first place, I may edit that out. I'd also reach out to the commentator in question to establish some clarity on what's going on with their older comments. I know that sometimes, users are really looking to deliver the right message, but it comes out wrong.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I'd talk to them. Let's figure out what makes their interaction with the site so contested. There's probably an underlying frustration which is being expressed inappropriately here, and I'd like to tease it out if I can.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I'm going to want to talk to the moderator. I would want to see why they took the action they did. In this disagreement context, I would consider my appeal successful if the original moderator who took the action reversed their action. Consensus is important and I don't want to start up a fight with the team because I disagreed. They may have a different perspective than I do, and I need to see that.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

I can't delegate this to the community because the community is sending the signal through upvotes that the contributions are acceptable.

I can't rely on the system to handle this since, in this context, the automatic ban won't kick in.

This feels exactly like the exceptional circumstance in which moderators should be filling.

A simple three-part plan:

  • Approach them directly and inform them that their contributions on the site really haven't been that great, and that they should consider taking the advice of the community on how to improve.
  • If, after 3 or 4 contributions I don't notice any marked improvement, I would discuss with the moderator team what action would be appropriate. I don't wish to take unilateral action in this context because that can be dangerous, but I would strongly advocate for a week-long question ban just to rein the poor quality posts in.
  • I'd then relay the case upstream to the Community Moderation team to see if we could tighten up the parameters a bit for this circumstance.
  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

Here's how I would approach it:

  • If the question still is a duplicate, fine - I'll go find a better duplicate and change the list of dupe targets.
  • If the dupes provided don't actually cover the ground the OP is looking to, and there isn't exactly a dupe which would go to answer this question, then I would reopen it, leave a comment explaining why I reopened it, and answer the question.
  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

The times I got things wrong, sure - I've since deleted those posts. I don't want to leave incorrect or inappropriate advice out there on Meta, so if I am demonstrated to be in the wrong, I'd happily correct or remove my post.

I wouldn't disassociate it from my account, though. Some of my worst posts are a testament to this.

I've learned a few things from those - sometimes I get it wrong in how I read the community and in what I believe is appropriate, but I don't feel myself so proud that I can't admit that I made a mistake.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

I want to compile some separate thoughts on this, but I think we have an issue with how we retain experts on the site. My impression is that they're getting disillusioned - either through the deluge of poor questions on the site, or through the fact that they may have their own struggles and their own moments of exasperation (10k+ for full context) posting what should be questions which are answerable by experts. Through what privilege and power afforded to me by moderation, I would want to focus on minimizing the impact of poor questions, and lack of attention on good questions, by eliminating what cruft and noise can be from the standard questions we have today.

Much of that may start here at Meta, since we would require more than just tooling or automation; it would likely have to be a cultural revolution. I plan to lead that charge.


So a question came up in chat about what I meant by "being an ambassador", what it meant in the context of being a moderator, and why it's different to what I'm doing today.

In my mind, there's three parts to this:

  • Engaging the community
  • Celebrating and defending the brand and the site's purpose
  • Defend and champion efforts to properly curate the site

The most obvious piece is engaging the community. We get a lot of people who have had a negative impression of the site based on how we curate or moderate content. It's important to maintain an image of, "No we're really not against you, we just want good content here," and it can be the case that this message is lost in translation when someone disgruntled comes through and starts blaming everyone and throwing chairs around.

It would also mean engaging and bridging the gap with the veteran community. I can only speak for myself when I say that the scars are still raw, so I can understand what it feels like to be bowled over and not have anything to show for it. My belief is that a moderator should be championing those voices where and when appropriate.

While this is related to a moderator explaining why they took what action they did when asked about it on Meta, it's different in the sense that we have users who don't really understand the site, its goals or its justifications, and we have to somehow bridge that gap. It can be an exhausting effort and, for what I've witnessed, moderators could use that aspect shored up a bit.

In essence, this isn't radically different to what moderators do today, but I feel like this is a stronger rallying cry for what moderation should represent, rather than being a "janitor" - even if that's what the job actually is.

  • 11
    Gods, and another excellent candidate. Can we get four votes or something? – Félix Gagnon-Grenier Mar 8 at 19:00
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    @FélixGagnon-Grenier ikr. I'm torn, I don't know who to vote for anymore. – Yvette Colomb Mar 8 at 23:44
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    This is now a serious case of first world problem. Thank you Makoto for barging in like this with your outstanding answers... For real though, good luck. – Mat Mar 9 at 1:35
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    Anyone who reviews Makoto's answers and comments will find many instances where he has taken a heated situation, such as someone upset for votes or comments or a moderation decision, and calmed the situation down, usually soliciting a positive response from the previously altered user. I've had the pleasure of watching a few happen in real time, and seeing a person change from angry and upset to understanding thanks to Makoto's calming approach to helping users. I suggest people not underestimate the value of Makoto "talking to" a user, and how advantageous he will be to the team if elected. – Davy M Mar 9 at 2:43
  • Im not sure about others .This is the only person i have seen in java tags . so my first preference you :) – soorapadman Mar 11 at 5:14
  • "The times I got things wrong, sure - I've since deleted those posts." I think this is cowardly. Having a Meta post heavily downvoted doesn't mean it's wrong or in any way incorrect. Do the right thing, i.e. moderate as per the rules/guidelines to the best of your ability, don't just satisfy virtual friends. Moderating isn't a popularity contest. – jpp Mar 14 at 14:58
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    @jpp: I'm talking about patently incorrect or invalid information, or an answer coming from me which was misinformed or half-true. It isn't the case that I stated an answer to the best of my ability and was directly shouted down; it was the case that I genuinely goof'd and was misrepresenting something about the site. I don't call it cowardly to want to have accurate information out. – Makoto Mar 14 at 15:02
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    @jpp: In the interest of fairness, though, I'll drum up the posts which were deleted by myself and I'll let you point out which ones you believed were deleted through cowardice or through prudence. We'll want to set up a chat room for that a bit later, though. Interested? I'm interested in improving and would value this feedback. – Makoto Mar 14 at 15:03
  • @Makoto, That's a fair point. Except the question specifically asks "...it receives a lot of negative feedback". I would like to have heard an unequivocal "if this is what I want to say and it's not factually incorrect, I'd keep it", but instead your answer only deals with the case where you "goof'd up" with incorrect information. Meta is more often about opinion than fact. – jpp Mar 14 at 15:04
  • @jpp: I interpret the negative feedback on a Meta post of mine as, "Maybe you got this one wrong? Go back and double-check." If I did get it wrong, I definitely don't want to keep it out there and spread misinformation. If I didn't get it wrong, or I feel like this is something I feel should be discussed in spite of its reception, I'll keep it up. As I said, some of my worst posts on the site are a strong testament to this. I view a post which is factually correct in a different light than one which has a specific reception. – Makoto Mar 14 at 15:08
  • @jpp: Additionally a lot of the Meta posts I deal with do with policy or procedure on the site or mechanics of the site as is anyway. Those are posts I want to be sure are accurate. The opinionated stuff - I definitely do leave that there even if it's not received all that well. – Makoto Mar 14 at 15:08
  • Sorry, I just can't vote for you at this time. In your eagerness to appear fair, you seem to have left some of the site basics like MCVE in the dust. Can you speak to that particular answer? – mason Mar 19 at 0:47
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    @mason: I hold fast to that answer. If you're going to ask for more information, it's fine to ask for more information. What's not fine is berating an OP for it. If they're not forthright with it, then it's fine to close the question until they actually do it. Closing the question shows more of a willingness to give them a chance to actually catch up. – Makoto Mar 19 at 1:06
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    @mason: To your first point, if you want a clearer example of what I mean, you can look at my recent comments on questions. You can get at an MCVE without the need for the acronym since the goal is the same - the OP includes the relevant and necessary information for us to be in any position to help them. – Makoto Mar 19 at 2:48
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    @mason: Again, if you really want context into how I feel about MCVEs, you can peruse my Meta answers about it. I'm not hiding anything here. :) – Makoto Mar 19 at 2:51
45

Josh Caswell here; my nomination


  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Ping them, maybe in the special Moderator Chat, give my reasons, and ask them to clarify.

I'm having a hard time conceiving any other possible answer to this question; the one below about a duplicate is similar, though.

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

There is an old Meta answer that gives me some embarrassment from time to time when I remember it: What is there to gain by blocking permanently a user for making "bad" or "unpopular" questions?

In retrospect, I think that my tone there is somewhat harsh and definitely unnecessarily scolding. While I still agree with the content overall, I think it could have been expressed much better.

My responses to blacklisting the [design] tag and burninating it were not well-received, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't be when I posted them. I see no reason to get rid of them; I thought they needed to be said, and I'm okay with the disagreement.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

I question the premise here a little bit. If there's lots of comments, then "for unclear reasons" doesn't seem likely to hold. Someone has most likely said something that indicates why the question is closed.

Now, it does happen sometimes that a Meta post goes off the rails in comments and people vote to close in order to move quickly towards deletion. In that case, a mod has an extra tool that might be useful: locking the question, to let everyone involved chill the heck out. (It's really amazing how even a half day can lessen that someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet urgency.) If it doesn't seem like even that is going to reset the situation, then I'd favor just deleting, maybe leaving a comment for the poster asking them to reformulate what they want to say.

  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

I have to admit that I don't have a whole lot of experience with chat, or a clear idea of what the various mechanisms are or how they work.* This is something I would need help with from the other mods.

That said, from a straightforward reading of the question, that "new user" needs a time out. (From chat, if not from the site overall.) I doubt that there's a society on this planet in which it's not rude to suddenly jump into a place where people are conversing and tell them to stop talking,** never mind calling the police on them.

Whatever the user flagged can be dealt with on its own; maybe some of it does indeed need to be deleted. The "counter-flags" sound like misuses of flags, but justifiable, so I'd prefer to dismiss them without prejudice, however that works in chat.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!

399 flags gratefully acted on, as
a click of the mouse
prunes another dead end

I'm going to take this opportunity to hop up on my box again and make a quick allegory.

Someone's likely going to look at what I wrote there, and say "That's not a haiku; a haiku has a specific syllable count!" Bollocks, I say. The point of a haiku is the expression of a moment in time, not arithmetic.

Likewise, the point of moderation here is to dispense quickly and painlessly with the stuff that's not good, to make way for the stuff that is. It's not to worry endlessly about the labels, definitions, and legalese that we should apply to the stuff.

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

Last point first: no, I don't see a reason to differentiate between Meta and main here.

This is a rough situation, and it's taken me a while to compose my answer. This user has apparently spent a lot of time providing lots of good content, which is super valuable. We don't want to lose that.

Ultimately though, this place is like any other where folks gather around a shared practice. If there's someone in your motorcycle club or your reading group who's very very knowledgeable but makes everyone miserable because they're a jerk, what are you going to do? This is also a site for work, which means we need a certain element of professional behavior. If there's an engineer at the office who can write anything anyone needs, but nobody can bear to talk to them, what are you going to do?

It's painful, but a person's technical ability isn't the only thing they bring here or anywhere. If their interactions are outweighing their topical contributions and interfering with other users' abilities to do what they need to do, then they need to be taken aside. If they don't respond to that, then unfortunately, they need to be asked not to come to the clubhouse for a period of time.

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I'm not sure how this differs meaningfully from the previous question, so see that answer.

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

The nature of the site is that pages here are seen many times after their creation. Comments that don't make any contribution towards the technical problem at hand just distract. Comments that have a technical tidbit wrapped in a bitter cranky shell are usually even more distracting. So it sounds like deletion is indicated here.

That said, I have never seen a whole lot of agreement on the definitions of unfriendly/unkind; it varies quite a bit from reader to reader. Given the prescription in the question that I've judged these "borderline" (and assuming that means on the "okay" side of the border), I don't find it reasonable to impose a sanction on the commenter. If they're really right on the line, and one commenter shows a pattern, a private mod message seems like a good idea.

That's also on the assumption that both flagger and commenter(s) appear to be acting in good faith. If the flagger is really off the mark a lot of the time, sending them a mod message is also a possibility.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

You may be interested to know that this was a reason for manual suspension in the deep past. That practice evolved into the question ban system we have today. (Note Jeff's remark in that question "a pattern of negligent, irresponsible, failure-to-learn-anything-at-all questions [is] easily the #1 reason I mete out timed suspensions at this point").

But as stated, the automated ban doesn't work in a case like this, where the user has a bunch of rep. Well, when your laptop breaks, you pull out your typewriter.

"is this [...] something you should leave to the community to handle?" Folks are doing the best they can, closing and downvoting, but they clearly can't handle it. There's an exception to be handled here, and that's what a diamond mod is for. I believe it's entirely proper for a moderator to apply a manual question warning/ban: contact the user and point out the poor quality and reception, then use a suspension if there's no improvement.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I don't see much reason that moderator status changes the answer to this question. I do in fact have a couple of gold tag badges, and this situation happened to me about a year ago.

This is similar to my first reply above. If a fellow user chose a duplicate that didn't apply, I'd be likely to ping them in a comment to double-check their reasons: I could be mistaken! Then, the simplest resolution would be just to edit the duplicate links to add the correct duplicate, whether or not I removed the originally-chosen one.

If there was no known duplicate, I would be inclined to reopen only after someone -- me, for example -- edited to fix whatever caused the original misunderstanding and closure. And probably upvote, because in my experience such a question has a lot of potential to be one of those "Agh! Finally, someone actually has the same problem!" gems that you find buried under a pile of search sand.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

Well, the main task of a diamond moderator as I understand it is to handle flags, and particularly to deal with challenges the standard set of privileges can't meet. So I have to imagine that will take time away from the moderation (especially editing††) that I do now.

I'm not sure what is meant by "the goal of Meta"; as I said in my nomination post, Meta is just a tool to facilitate discussion and cooperation towards our goal.

That goal, the goal of all moderation, is to make it easy for people to find answers to their problems. That being so, my preference for my activities would be two-pronged: first, making sure the good search target questions shine by voting and editing, removing useless answers, and re-opening when necessary; and second, making bad questions disappear as quickly as possible.

I take deep satisfaction in helping with the good stuff, but also in clearing out the rest. With my fellow users pointing me to things that they need help to fix, and the ability (finally) to do that work, I will have a new dimension on which I can be proud of my contributions here.


*I'm one of those weirdos who thinks it's kind of weird that we have a bunch of chat rooms attached to a Q&A site.
**Unless there's a good reason like a T-Rex coming down the road or something.
Not all of us are soulless robots, though; the occasional humorous comment isn't the end of the world.
††My Copy Editor is the non-tag badge I'm most proud of; Illuminator is the one I most covet.

  • 2
    The competition is so stiff, we have so many good candidates, I'm really pleased to see you step up. You'd be a great asset to the mod team and the site as a moderator. – Yvette Colomb Mar 8 at 5:30
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    Those macOS programmers and their "Think Different" mottos... you can't even get the numbers in the right order! – Cody Gray Mar 8 at 5:35
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    There are an awful lot of good choices, @YvetteColomb! I'm not even sure I should vote for myself. Thank you, though. – Josh Caswell Mar 8 at 5:35
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    @JoshCaswell there's too many people I want to vote for and you're one of them. It's better than having the opposite conundrum. Good luck :) – Yvette Colomb Mar 8 at 5:43
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    Any specific reason you're not answering questions in order? It makes it a bit harder to compare your answers to the others, and to follow your references within the answer (when you refer back to question 1 that's in the middle of your answer, for example). – Erik A Mar 8 at 9:22
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    The answers being the important part here, I think that what I ended up saying progresses better from one to the next like this, @ErikA. I understand your points, though; let me reconsider based on what you've said. – Josh Caswell Mar 8 at 17:11
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    @Josh When you say "removing useless answers", would you consider the answers mentioned in this Meta Q to fit the bill? If not, could you expand on what you consider a useless answer? – TylerH Mar 8 at 17:24
  • They most definitely fit the bill, @TylerH. I would love to be able to help with that problem; it is such a timewaster when you're searching. I have a pretty fair number of downvotes on answers like those. – Josh Caswell Mar 8 at 17:30
  • Just another great candidate in @Josh, good luck! – Travis J Mar 8 at 19:34
  • " They may have a different perspective than I do, and I need to see that. " Like+1 || "Any specific reason you're not answering questions in order?" <-- IMHO, If I were to answer things.. I'd like to share the one that I have answers 1st.. | It is up to the examiner ( in this case voter/reader) to judge/gauge . But as long as I've completed all the task (in this case the 11 Qs). It is considered done. || p/s : Snowden did the same in his qualification test (unstructured, but achieved all goal/completed). – p._phidot_ Mar 12 at 5:19
12

Here are my responses to the Questionnaire. :)

  1. There is a high-rep user who is very active on the site, but frequently uses strong language which violates the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct, in their comments. When you warned them, they replied stating that the questions are of low quality which is why they left those comments. They also threatened to quit the site. Despite the warning, they continue to post similar comments. What steps, if any, will you take in order to address this situation? What if the comments were on Meta instead of main? Does that change your approach at all?

This is a very tender topic, in which I see most people are (in question) quick to ban the established offender. Lines are criss-crossed on this site between established users, the code of conduct, and "The Welcoming". The Code of Conduct has placed an emphasis on vagueness, so every violation needs to be looked at logically, as every situation is different. Of course multiple offenses would be suspended, but I believe we shouldn't be so quick to alienate a well established user. That being said, this is also dependent on the severity of the violation.

  1. A new, low-rep user asks a non-duplicate, non-trivial, on-topic question on Meta. For unclear reasons, the question is met with downvotes and a pile-on of comments from multiple users. The question gets closed, and some comments get flagged. You have a pretty good idea of what an answer to said question would look like. What steps, if any, would you take to turn this situation around for the benefit of all parties?

On meta, a downvote is point-agnostic. I'm very pro "voting is not an emotional response" on both meta and main. If the comments, even though piled on, remain within civility, there's no need to remove them, but directing them to a chat room and (depending on the flood), lock the post from more comments to avoid distracting from the question. Of course, adding a comprehensive answer always helps. When comments get flagged, the validity of the flags will help determine if the question needs locking and moderating more than the community has the tools to handle.

  1. Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day. If you don't like Haiku feel free to use any another form of poetry or a bullet list to express how you will survive the "grind", but keep it very short!
  • Flags everywhere
  • Caffeination is the key
  • Keep a mindful head
  1. A chat room has taken to an undesirable topic (not necessarily ban-worthy, but something that Stack Overflow chat is not meant to discuss). A new user has entered the room and begins mass-flagging anything they consider bad and demanding the conversation stop by threatening more flags. Regulars in the room counter-flag the new user's threats. How would you handle this?

This is a type of issue I have hands on experience with. I am a room owner of the JavaScript room, which has a history of off topic banter (let's be honest, it can't always be JavaScript 24/7). Room rules are often very visible, and highlight this aspect. A quote from the JS room rules:

"The room title is JavaScript, which only implies we all have some interest in the language. That does not strictly limit the topic of conversation to JavaScript, and often it is not about JavaScript. Please do not interrupt and complain about this, if you have a comment about the language toss it in and if someone is interested they will stop and help."

There are obvious topics that should just be taken to a different media of chat, but in this example let's say the chatters are talking about a new game, or whatever. I believe it's not ok for a non-regular who hasn't been talking, or does not have a topic, to tell them to stop. It's always ok to ask a question, but simply arriving to say no will never fly (this also applies in real life as well).

  1. A user habitually flags old comments as being in violation of our Code of Conduct ("unfriendly or unkind" and/or "harassment, bigotry, or abuse"), which can lead to disciplinary action against the original commenter. In your judgment, the flagged comments are on the borderline of rude. What do you do?

Flagging something as unfriendly or unkind is very different than flagging as harassment, bigotry, or abuse. If the comments are blatantly harassing, bigotted, or abusive, and not a one off (I'm not saying "everybody gets one"), a suspension (with explanation) should be in order if they are the heinous. The other material may simply be removed, and while an explanation may be optional, I think it's always good to engage the user you are moderating (if possible).

  1. How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This question is entirely dependent on who is starting the comment war. If somebody is hounding them, or is generally aggressive towards their posts, it's hard to place "blame" on OP. Now, if OP is being defensive in their answer over and over, I would try to sit down with them and explain why their behavior could lead to a suspension. I am hesitant to hand out suspensions like girl scout cookies. This would cause established users to leave more frequently, and our knowledge base and community would suffer. People grow with time, and the community grows with people.

  1. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Absolutely confer with the other moderator first. Moderators should not publicly make statements of disagreement at that level (one that would disparage another moderator in front of users who would see it as a future excuse). Explain to them why I believe the question should be reopened, without attacking them. It's ok to disagree, it's not ok to attack them for it.

  1. An established user (say > 6 years tenure, > 10k reputation, > 100 posts) has developed a tendency to ask low-quality questions (e.g., debugging help without MCVE, too broad "write my project", POB security issues, etc). These low-quality questions are closed by the community, and comments are left suggesting ways to improve. The user does not heed this advice, and continues to ask poor questions. The automatic question ban won't kick in, since their old posts attract a few upvotes each week. As a moderator, is this something you should take action on, or something you should leave to the community to handle? If you do take action, what would you do?

I believe this is an issue with the system itself. A "help vampire" with high reputation can basically allow them to slip under the radar and the community just closes their questions. I would place my votes, and until the system is upgraded to a point where it can stop this, I believe it's up to the community to simply close, vote, and move on. Being suspended for asking low quality questions is not what we're about. Let the question ban take effect at every level.

  1. Moderators are not selected because they are domain experts in certain tags, but it so happens that you are an expert in one such tag. You see that several members of the community have elected to close a question as a duplicate, but you see that the duplicates don't actually answer the question as stated, nor do they provide a useful signpost for the asker. How do you proceed?

I believe this is an easy fix. A moderator can edit duplicates. Personally, I would first comment that "I believe 'this question' would be a better dupe target, as it [explain reasons]." If nobody greatly disagrees, edit away (unless it's just so obvious no dialog is needed, or just a mistake). No reprimanding required, just a simple fix.

  1. Are there any Meta posts which you are not proud of? In other words, if you ever ask a Meta question, and it receives a lot of negative feedback, what would you do? (Would you ask for it to be dissociated from your account?)

I am never not proud of my meta posts. Being disagreed with is never a reason to not be proud of your ideas, or ideals (don't read too deep into that, I'm talking about site ideas, etc, not social issues). It's also ok to change your mind when presented with good reasoning. That does not make you a flip flopper for seeing reason.

  1. Given your views of what Stack Overflow's (Main and Meta) goals are at this point in time, what moderating actions will you mainly focus on and why will/should that move the site toward those goals (or keep things as they are)?

My personal goals are to help the dialog between old users and new rules, and how we can live in harmony. Of course I have a Web Development tag bias, but I am always of the notion that Stack Overflow is for knowledge.

Thank you. Please clap.

  • 3
    For question 9, you assume there's a better duplicate out there. What if it actually was a good, on-topic question that hadn't been asked yet? – Erik A Mar 6 at 17:26
  • @ErikA of course that would merit a question re-open if it was closed. If it's been closed as an improper duplicate, that's something the community can remedy (but of course I would vote if I saw it, and comment on why it should be re-opened). Thank you for pointing out that scenario! – Sterling Archer Mar 6 at 17:28
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    Regarding question 5, I think the key here is that it's old comments. I think the purpose of the question is to find out, how you would deal with these flags, knowing that the commenter could face consequences - for something they did long ago. I'd be interested to see your answer to that aspect of the question. (That being said, good luck on the election!) – S.L. Barth Mar 7 at 8:04
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    On question #7 you raise the (somewhat likely) possibility of disagreeing with the other mod after explanation, but you have not answered how you would handle the situation from there. Would you leave the post alone? Do what seems best to you after explaining your actions to the other mod? I don't think you have sufficiently answered the question. – hat Mar 7 at 9:59
  • 1
    @S.L.Barth I am of the mindset that time doesn't dull a comment that violates the Code of Conduct, but I do see how it can be deemed silly to punish somebody for something said X years ago. I would never ban somebody outright, seeing as horrendous comments are typically cleaned up on the spot. I believe the main thing here is context being key, looking for missing comments (deleted from the past), etc. The best thing to due unless it's a serious violation, just remove the comment and move on unless it requires a private intervention. And Thank you! – Sterling Archer Mar 7 at 16:10
  • @hat the after action is dependent on the outcome of the heart to heart I think. It would be bad form to just up and edit another moderators actions, even after a disagreement. It's just bad form. That being said, the other mods are great people and have no issue being shown a mistake, and mitigating it. If they don't fix it, and vehemently deny it, a 3rd party may be needed until judgement is passed down. If I'm wrong? No big deal :) – Sterling Archer Mar 7 at 16:12
  • Thank you for mentioning the vagueness of the Code of Conduct. I agree it is vague. An impolite comment may actually have a reason - perhaps its author should have used the flag button instead. – danuker Mar 16 at 8:17

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