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I know that Stack Exchange sites are controlled by moderators of that site. However, I am curious to know more about hierarchy levels in Stack Exchange, and who are all above moderators and what they do.

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2 Answers 2

up vote 25 down vote accepted

Strictly speaking, every site is controlled by its community. The moderators are there to help out and perform certain tasks that the community cannot, but on the whole... think of them more as janitors, helpers, or maybe the police force, rather than rulers. The heart of every community is its meta site, where everyone can contribute to how the site runs.

Moving on to the team behind Stack-Exchange-the-company, and without going into the minutiae, it goes roughly like this:

There's the community growth team that is built of two groups. The first is the community managers who oversee the day-to-day on all sites, help out moderators, moderate moderators, etc. The other is a few folks working on specialized tasks including (but not limited to) user experience or promotion.

Then there's the development team. Some of them work on Careers, and some work on the Q&A sites themselves. This includes developers and product managers.

And then there's sysadmins who keep our server hamsters fed and the servers running, sales (for ads and Careers), and office administrators who help make sure that we never run out of snacks and other comforts. :)

You can see the whole team here. That list is usually mostly complete.

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"office administrator" - isn't that just a fancy title to "secretary"? :-D –  Shadow Wizard Dec 30 '12 at 15:05
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@ShaWizDowArd No. –  Anna Lear Dec 30 '12 at 19:07
    
@ShaWizDowArd, our office administrator is a combination of babysitter, secretary, internal systems whizz, hr guru and God. The office literally falls apart when she goes on holiday. Couldn't operate without her... –  ben is uǝq backwards Dec 30 '12 at 21:33

To my knowledge, there are:

SE Employees that are hired by StackExchange to make things work

Community Managers that are also hired by StackExchange, and I think are kind of like your foreign diplomats. They're seen in all parts of the SE sites working to keep things running smoothly

Elected Moderators that are usually users elected by the site's community, and that have access to additional tools to moderate the sites

Trusted Users which are regular users that have earned enough reputation to gain access to some limited moderation tools to help moderate the site. The more reputation regular users have, the more moderation tools are available to them.

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There is no CHAOS team any more, at least not in the same incarnation as it once was. –  Anna Lear Dec 28 '12 at 16:09
    
I guess Tyler finally came to his senses. –  Frédéric Hamidi Dec 28 '12 at 16:11
    
@AnnaLear I just saw your answer now, and it seems to answer the question better than my answer does (and you're a SE employee, so can speak better on the subject than I can) :) I deleted the CHAOS Team line though - didn't realize they no longer exist. –  Rachel Dec 28 '12 at 16:12
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@Rachel We're all now just one big happy "community growth" family. :) –  Anna Lear Dec 28 '12 at 16:14

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