232

Candidate Index

Election candidates

deceze (nomination)
Ed Cottrell (nomination)
Jeremy Banks (nomination)
Jon Clements (nomination)
Martijn Pieters (nomination)
Matt (nomination)
meagar (nomination)
Paresh Mayani (nomination)
Raghav Sood (nomination)
Second Rikudo (nomination)

Eliminated in the primaries

Andy (nomination)
codeMagic (nomination)
hichris123 (nomination)
Jason C (nomination)
Michael Irigoyen (nomination)
Mooseman (nomination)
Moshe (nomination)
Qantas 94 Heavy (nomination)
rekire (nomination)
slugster (nomination)
Thomas Owens (nomination)
Undo (nomination)
vcsjones (nomination)

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding 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 compiled - however, we're having 12 questions this time due to some really nice questions right at the border that I felt were worth preserving without needing to sacrifice the existing. I adapted bluefeet's rewriting of one of the questions and yes, one of the questions is REALLY BIG even after condensing it somewhat.

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. Oh, and 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.

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!


  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

  2. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

  3. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

  4. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

  5. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

  6. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

  7. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

  8. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

  9. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

  10. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

  11. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

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

13
  • 28
    Any chance we can make the questions into a numerically bulleted list? This will help people single out specific answers in the comments for each nominee's answrs – meagar Apr 13 '15 at 20:39
  • 4
    As the candidates answer, could you edit your post and make links to all the candidates answers so we don't have to scroll to find them? – Michael Irigoyen Apr 13 '15 at 21:42
  • 1
    Also, could you please add the numbers to the copy and paste version to help those who haven't answered yet? Thanks! – Michael Irigoyen Apr 13 '15 at 22:15
  • 17
    This thread is rather unpleasant to read. It would help to directly compare the answers of the single candidates to a single question. Eg. I would like to compare the comments to the first question. The current thread format forces me to scroll heavily and loose oversight. Furthermore candidates cite the questions in different ways. – qwerty_so Apr 13 '15 at 23:02
  • 1
    @Thomas We considered posting single answers for each question, and then having the candidates edit their answers in. But crossing wires with multiple editing the same posts within varying spans of time was... pretty messy. It also is extremely bothersome for each candidate to tackle it question-by-question rather than typing it all at once on their end. That said, if the post char limit allows it, we might look into doing a sort of alternate thread that consolidates responses we get in here in a per-question fashion. Or some alternative option. – Grace Note Apr 14 '15 at 2:22
  • 24
    Even I can write Consult other moderaters in a fancy way 12 times. – jkd Apr 14 '15 at 5:29
  • 3
    @GraceNote Last year we included links to each of the candidate answers in the question, do we want to do that again? It would allow for quick jumps to each candidate. – Taryn Apr 14 '15 at 15:01
  • 2
    @bluefeet That would be a good idea, yeah. If someone's already been collecting to set that up, then go right ahead. Otherwise I'll get to it later today. – Grace Note Apr 14 '15 at 16:58
  • 2
    @GraceNote Added the index, hopefully that will make things a bit easier – Taryn Apr 14 '15 at 18:11
  • 3
    I see only 19 answers for 29 candidates. Is answering this questionnaire mandatory for all candidates? Is there a deadline for it? – Ram Apr 16 '15 at 14:21
  • 14
    I've put together a page that let's you browse by question. It's currently beta, and ugly (suggestions welcome), but gets the job done. It's easy on SO, same idea as the vote monitor, my server scrapes and caches this questionnaire page every 60 seconds and you view the cached copy. Hopefully it's useful. The "Introductions" section is just the responses people typed before they quoted the first question. Edits and new answers will be visible within 60 seconds. cc @ThomasKilian – Jason C Apr 17 '15 at 3:41
  • 1
    @JasonC Nice job. Made me change my vote. BUT - I wanted to see "Whom did I elect/add my vote" and could not see it. Only my last added vote was visible. Now if this is some kind of election I would expect my vote to be somehow permanent. – qwerty_so Apr 17 '15 at 9:04
  • These questions are so good! Nice job. – Leos Literak Apr 17 '15 at 15:34

10 Answers 10

229

meagar's answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

I would begin by advising the user that, once they have contributed content, the community owns it. It's unfair to the people who took time to read the question and answer to remove their contributions as well as the question.

I would ask the user what their actual problem is, and what kind of trouble they foresee getting into.

Depending on the severity, with increasing reluctance, I would:

  • First, advise the user modify their question so that the infringing code is no longer a direct copy-paste, so that the question and answers can be retained.
  • If absolutely required, clean up the edit history so the original infringing version does not exist
  • If still really not sufficient, advise the user that the next step is to disassociate the question from the user's account and that only an employee can do this.

Only as an absolute last resort would I consider removing the question. Removing questions is and needs to remain an extremely rare thing. We cannot normalize or encourage it, and I can't think of many cases where the above steps (altering question, optionally removing original version, optionally disassociating) would not be sufficient.


  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

The rule "Be Nice" (or some version there of) has been included in every version of Stack Overflow's FAQ since time out of mind. I would advise the user that if they are not going to be nice, they are at least required to be civil, and that while their contributions have been valued, absolutely nobody is above this rule, regardless of reputation. I would advise them that their current pattern of behavior must stop, and the path they're on now leads to timed suspensions and eventual bannings, and nobody is well-served by this.

I would also invite them to spend some time in chat if they're not already. Talking to people in (near) realtime, is generally more humanizing than leaving drive-by comments below submissions.


  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

I would immediately suspend them for some short interval, so that their vandalizing edits could be rolled back without new instances of vandalism being introduced. I would email the user something along the lines of the following (I assume SO has some boilerplate for this):

A series of vandalizing edits have been made to their posts by your account

We have temporarily suspended your account to stop these edits.

Please review your revision history.

If you are responsible for these edits, please stop. Your contributions belong to the community, and you lose the right to destroy them once they have been posted.

If you are not responsible for these edits, your account may have been compromised. Please review your account and whichever associated accounts you may be using to login to Stack Overflow.


  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

I've responded to this criticism repeatedly over the years:

Stack Overflow has very high standards, and we take those standards very seriously. Our high standards are the reason Stack Overflow remains the very best place on the Internet to find answers to all kinds of programming problems. Our high standards are are the reason Stack Overflow is usually the top result on Google for most programming-related searches. We set a very high bar because the site lives or dies by the quality of its content.

If your question was placed on hold, it was because a group of five high-reputation users voted to place it on hold. We trust these users to make these decisions. The closure was not a malicious act, and it was not targeted at you personally, it is simply and act of house-keeping that is completely normal on this site.

You will not get your question re-opened by arguing over the closure. Instead, ask how your question can be improved, edit it to improve it, and your question can be reopened in the same way that it was closed: A group of high-rep users, who we trust to make such decisions, will cast re-open votes.

Please don't let this early experience dissuade you from continuing to use Stack Overflow. Keep and open mind, don't take voting or closure personally, and you'll find that Stack Overflow is without a doubt the best place to find answers for your programming problems.

If I had to write this in a single comment:

@<username> Please don't take closure personally. This site has extremely high-standards - your contributions should strive for reference-quality writing, like you might find on Wikipedia. We're not trying to discourage you from posting, we're trying to give you feedback on how to improve your question to find better answers. Once you've edited your question, it can be re-opened. Please don't take it personally.


  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

Do the edits improve the posts in any measurable way? Even something as trivial as fixing a spelling mistake? If so, I would remind the user that the policy on edits is to fix all of the problems with a post, not just the low-hanging fruit. I would ask that they try to make their edits more substantial in the future.

If the edits don't actually improve the post (such arbitrarily rewording things for no benefit) then there is a larger problem, and I would advise the user to stop making such edits, and that continuing to do so will get their edit privileges revoked. Edits need to objectively improve the content being edited and edits that don't do so are just adding noise to the system.


  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

... Do the posts actually look ok? If so, there is no problem.

If they don't, I would pick an example of a post that should not have been marked "looks OK". I would contact the user and link them to that specific review and advise them that they need to carefully review that post, because "looks OK" wasn't the right answer. I'd ask them, when they aren't certain about their choice, to choose "skip".

I would add the user to my list of "problem users", and monitor their reviews for a few days to see if their behavior improves, and readdress the issue if it doesn't.


  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

Privately ask other moderators whether there is merit to the user's claims.

If there is, I would post a brief apology, advise the user that the rest of the moderation staff has been made aware of the problem, and work on improving whatever aspect of my moderation style the user is finding issue with.

If there is no merit, I would ask other moderators to keep an eye on my behavior in the future to make sure I'm not slowly sliding into whatever problem the user thinks they perceive. I would post a succinct response indicating that I don't believe there is a problem, and then ask one or more other moderators to post short statements in support, letting the user know that the moderation staff is aware of the user's issue and does not see a problem with my actions.

If the user continues posting the same criticism, I would ignore it. If it gets bad, I would ask another mod to step in and deal impartially with the user, not because I don't think I could be impartial, but because I don't believe a moderator should ever be seen as winning an "argument" by resorting to moderator powers.


  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I did run last election! I lost by ~20 votes. I will run next election if I don't win this one

I have spent years moderating Stack Overflow in everything but name. Consistency isn't going to be a problem in my future.

I feel like I've come pretty close to maximizing my contributions with my current toolset. I would love the opportunity to step up and do more for the community of this site.


  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

I think you're trying to describe a scenario in which a voting ring of sorts is abusing their power to delete questions?

There are a lot of unknowns though:

  • Are the deletions otherwise valid?
  • Are the deleting users present in the meta discussions?
  • If so, how have they justified their actions?
  • Have they been receptive to criticism?

It's pretty normal to see the same bunch of users delete questions. That's one of the side-effects of soliciting close and delete votes in chat.

If the deletions are invalid, obviously there is a larger problem, and the users would have be warned and the posts undeleted. If the behavior (meaning deletion of on-topic quesitons) persists, then potentially harsher penalties such as suspensions for the users involved.


  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged. First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

Longest question, shortest answer: Snark isn't constructive, and I'd advise the other user of this. Keep snark in Chat, keep things on SO itself constructive.


  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

I think answers need to be self-contained enough that any links can break without the answer becoming useless. I hate when our Q&A devolved into a series of edits to a JS fiddle with no useful information captured on SO.

At the same time, and this is potentially not a very popular opinion, I think Stack Overflow is for non-trivial questions. I don't think it's our job to recreate every API documentation in the world in Q&A format. I would rather see good questions and non-trivial answers than everything on MDN regurgitated here, which is at odds with questions that are so trivial that the only valid answers is to copy-and-paste a few lines directly from the documentation.

And it doesn't really matter whether the question is ancient or new, our standards have evolved over time and we come up with ways of keeping old questions around without encouraging such behavior.

At the end of the day, it's a pretty fine line, and I generally intend to bow to community consensus. In most of the important ways, the site is what the community makes it.


  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 to the mod in question, and argue it out in private. One of us would likely convince the other. At the end of the day, it's one single closure, and not worth either of us getting bent out of shape over. If there has been a pattern of disagreement, I might ask another moderator to step in and mediate between us; I would accept whatever the 3rd party judgement was, and I would expect the other moderator to do the same.

21
  • 2
    Your answer to question 4 seems like it'd go way over the character limit for a comment. Do you have a version that fits in a comment? Otherwise, how would you communicate to the user? Is this perhaps a meta answer? What if the user doesn't go to the meta? – nhgrif Apr 13 '15 at 22:49
  • 1
    @DavidThomas That may be true, actually. I'll find out and update my answer accordingly. – meagar Apr 13 '15 at 22:50
  • 6
    @nhgrif Please don't take closure personally. This site has extremely high-standards - your contributions should strive for reference-quality writing, like you might find on Wikipedia. We're not trying to discourage you from posting, we're trying to give you feedback on how to improve your question to find better answers. Once you've edited your question, it can be re-opened. Please don't take it personally. – meagar Apr 13 '15 at 23:02
  • To #12: What if he/she just called it a night? – Deduplicator Apr 13 '15 at 23:48
  • 2
    @Deduplicator It depends on how strongly I disagreed with the closure/deletion. In general I think the moderation team should present a more or less unified front, so unless I suspected it was a genuine mistake, I'd leave the question closed and let the community vote to re-open. Before using mod powers to reopen the question I'd try to find another moderator to sanity check my decision. – meagar Apr 14 '15 at 0:13
  • 23
    Very nice answers all around. – Benjamin Gruenbaum Apr 14 '15 at 0:39
  • 7
    You had me at "The rule 'Be Nice' (or some version thereof) has been included in every version of Stack Overflow's FAQ since time out of mind." If, as a moderator, you show half the common sense, civility and humility as you do in these responses, you've got my vote. – Amos M. Carpenter Apr 14 '15 at 8:52
  • 4
    "At the same time, and this is potentially not a very popular opinion, I think Stack Overflow is for non-trivial questions. I don't think it's our job to recreate every API documentation in the world in Q&A format." - I was already certain you'd be a good candidate after reading the first answer, but this one seals the deal. I'd love to see this opinion become more popular. – l4mpi Apr 14 '15 at 13:24
  • 2
    @l4mpi Obviously it is just my opinion, and if elected I won't unilaterally enforce it, but this is the point where democracy kicks in: If we share this ideal, electing me as moderator gives me a greater voice to try to sway the community's opinion. One of the founding ideas behind Stack Overflow is that not all questions are good questions. Figuring out where to draw that line between good and bad content is one the of hardest problems the site has faced and continues to face, and I look forward to doing my part to help shape the community's standards. – meagar Apr 14 '15 at 14:16
  • 8
    Also, that sounds pretty divisive: Drawing the line between good and bad content. I want to clearly state one of my core ideals: Stack Overflow is not about welcoming the good and rejecting the bad; it's about welcoming the good and making the bad stuff better. The emphasis isn't on culling the bad stuff, it's on collecting the good stuff and bringing the bad stuff up to the level where it's no longer bad. – meagar Apr 14 '15 at 14:18
  • Regarding #1, why would you not also advise the user that they can push the delete button themselves to delete the question, if that's really what they want to do? – aroth Apr 15 '15 at 12:40
  • 1
    @aroth because they can't. Once a question has received upvoted answers, the question cannot be deleted by its poster. – meagar Apr 15 '15 at 12:41
  • 6
    Ah, you're correct. I never actually tried clicking past that 'Delete this answered question?' prompt. I assumed that the blue button on the left would work as advertised. Talk about misleading UI. – aroth Apr 15 '15 at 12:49
  • Re: #4, what makes you think that the experienced users will never be wrong? (Or do you just expect them to concede to this during the ensuing discussion?) – SamB Apr 18 '15 at 19:39
  • 1
    @SamB given the question, I think it's very clearly implied that the experienced user is acting correctly. Otherwise, the question would be completely different, something along the lines of "how do you deal with experienced users who are inappropriately closing questions?" – meagar Apr 18 '15 at 19:46
185

Martijn Pieters's answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Questions plus answers make a collective work under the CC license, so deleting the post outright is not really an option. This means we'll have to work with the OP to see what we can do to limit the trouble they are in.

This means we can look at editing the post; perhaps the copyrighted material or assignment can be edited such that both the question and the answers are still useful, for example. Another option is to have the account disassociated from the post; the license specifically allows for this option, after all.

Depending on how much trouble the user is in, I may request that a developer removes a revision to excise material more permanently from the record.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Rude behaviour distracts from content, and no one, regardless of their contributions, is exempt from our code of conduct.

I'd work with the user to help them alter their behaviour; they must at the very least remain respectful and polite. But if the behaviour continues to cause disruptions then suspensions are a next step. Lets hope that it doesn't have to go this far!

It is sad to see that some people lose all empathy when there is a computer between them and the other side, but if long-term suspensions are the only way to protect the rest of the community then no expert contributions will make up for inexcusable behaviour.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

If the vandalism is ongoing, right now, then a short-term suspension is in order, just to limit the damage. And then I'd reach out to the user (the new moderator template is going to be helpful there) to see what is going on.

In the specific incident that triggered this, the deletions had taken place some time in the recent past and were not exactly on-going. The moderator acted in good faith but the template message they choose carries an automatic suspension that was overly harsh. If the moderator UI permits this I'd probably have disabled the suspension part of the process here.

That said, I do think the grounds for deleting the answers (some of which had upvotes) were dubious; answers are not just there for the OP, responsive or not. And the same considerations as for question 1 apply here; a question with answers form a collective work and deleting answers means you are materially altering that work.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

If the community hasn't yet stepped in to explain to the newcomer about our quality standards, or the new user had directed the complaint towards the moderators, I'd explain to the user about our quality model and goals (but making sure that the treatment they received was within our norms, of course).

Stack Overflow is aiming to be a repository of quality questions and answers, usable not just to the original question asker but to any future visitor with similar problems. To that end we have empowered experienced members of the community to help enforce the standards. I'd try to assure the disgruntled new user that the actions against their post are not personal and try and help them come to grips with how the site works, and how they can get the most out of this fantastic resource we have built.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

If a user is editing older posts for minor issues (fixing a specific spelling mistake, for example), then that's a problem and needs to be addressed. Editing bumps content up on the homepage, displacing posts that are actually active and more deserving of attention. Moreover, suggested edits also demand time from reviewers. If you are going to edit older posts, then at least make the edits count and address all issues in the post.

However, the proper way for such serial minor edits to be handled is through the suggested edit review queue. If the editor wasn't stopped automatically due to review rejections, then this is as much a problem with the way those edits were reviewed as with the editor themselves.

So, if we do get such a flag, I'd investigate if there was a pattern of robo-reviewing that enabled the streak, and hand out review bans as needed, in addition to helping the editor understand that their editing behaviour needs to be improved.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

I'd look more closely at their reviewing behaviour; perhaps they have been selectively skipping posts perhaps they have been robo-reviewing. I'd pick out a few choice reviews that were not OK in spite of their review decision and educate that user (through a review ban with specific examples as to where they went wrong).

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

As a high-rep and very active user, I already have a target on my back. I constantly re-evaluate my behaviour and ask for feedback from my peers. As a moderator that would not change.

I'd ask my fellow moderators to review my actions (pointing to specific actions) and ask for feedback. If I'm at fault, then that means I'd apologise (I am human, really!) and improve and learn. If I receive confirmation that my responses have been appropriate, I'd move on. You cannot please everyone.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I'm not someone to push myself forward, and have in the past felt somewhat guilty about the amount of time I dedicate to Stack Overflow. However, ever since we got our own Meta site last year I realised how much I really can and do contribute to the community. I've also received a number of encouragements to run, and frankly I'm overwhelmed by the positive response I've received so far!

My activity on the site has been fairly constant since I really got involved sometime mid 2012; I don't expect anything to change in those levels.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

This would require careful investigation; how many questions were deleted in error, should there be more community discussion about what kinds of questions deserve deletion, etc. Did those questions actively cause problems, for example?

It may be that there is a pattern of ill-considered deletion votes going on; if so then talking directly to those users may be required. How do they find questions to delete, by what criteria do they decide a post is worth deleting?

If there is a regular pattern of incorrect deletions, then as a community, we may need to decide if the deletion process needs rethinking.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I've never been tolerant of snark; I've always spoken out whenever someone in the Python chat room has left snarky comments on posts. I do not see any reason to change that behaviour if I were to be elected.

For incidental cases, I'd call out the specific case in the chat room, for patterns of snark, it'd be a private chat.

Moderation has to come first; friends are just easier to find and talk to if they crossed a line. :-)

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

I've written about this before here on Meta: When to flag an answer as "not an answer"?; in summary, any attempt to answer counts as an answer. The flag was intended to be used on anything that isn't an attempt to answer, e.g. asking a new question, commenting on another post or clarifications to the question by the OP. For wrong or otherwise unhelpful answers we have voting.

It doesn't matter when the answer was posted; we judge content by todays standards.

That said, if an answer consists almost entirely of a link, but received a lot of upvotes and is possibly even accepted, I'd rather see the answer salvaged. If editing can 'repair' the answer that is preferable over deletion here. All this provided there isn't already another, better answer that can stand in its place; the goal is to make sure no valuable information is lost.

I'd be happy to point to Meta posts to help users and reviewers understand.

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

I'd take this up with the moderator directly. It could be that I missed a nuance about the post, so I'd like to give them the opportunity to set me straight. At the same time, it could be they missed something and had made the wrong call. A direct discussion can easily clear that up.

If we both feel strongly about the issue, we may need to bring it to attention of the other moderators. I cannot think of a situation where the shared wisdom cannot help resolve differences of opinion, almost certainly someone will find an aspect about the post that would resolve the issue one way or another.

11
  • To #5, do you disagree with this position? (as long as some improvement is made, like a spelling mistake, it's a good edit.) Given that there is no longer a "too minor" button in the edit queue, this seems to be the official position, no? And so I'm unsure how robo-reviewing plays into it since minor edits should be accepted. – DanielST Apr 15 '15 at 19:23
  • 9
    @slicedtoad: Yes, the community stance on what constitutes as too minor or unhelpful is in some flux; as a community moderator I'd strive to stick to the concensus here. However, there are editors out there that make unhelpful, even harmful edits by going on a tag-adding spree, or are 'correcting' words where no corrections are needed (introducing errors by doing so). If and when I feel that the edits are inappropriate (and I have confirmed this with fellow moderators), then I feel a review of the reviewers is applicable too. – Martijn Pieters Apr 15 '15 at 20:13
  • 4
    The moderator UI does allow for the suspension to be waived when communicating to a user... as you will discover :) – Bohemian Apr 18 '15 at 16:05
  • I really like your answers except for #1. Many candidates answer this question relying on licences, as you do. Although, at least, you give a possible alternative... I know I'm a very low-rep member and I may not fully understand licence terms and post belongings, but I think people should be always over licences (some other answers to this questions are, in my humble opinion, completely uncalled-for). What if someone gets canned from its job because of post? (rhetorical). Sorry, but I have to say. Good luck. – Albert Apr 20 '15 at 9:24
  • @Albert: we cannot control how an employer enforces their own company policies; if someone is being fired over posting something on the internet that they shouldn't have, then that is between the employee and employer. Besides, the employee did create the post, so they cannot disclaim responsibility here and blame Stack Overflow for being fired. I don't quite see how moderators can avoid that here by outright deletion; if this is about specific content in the question it is still better to remove those parts if at all possible. – Martijn Pieters Apr 20 '15 at 9:29
  • @Albert: And note that for copyright infringement the copyright holder can still file a DMCA takedown notice, this usually results in the whole post being deleted anyway. If the matter is so serious as to result in someone being fired, then the matter is serious enough for handling the takedown properly. – Martijn Pieters Apr 20 '15 at 9:31
  • Of course, I'm not blaming SO. If that's what you understood, I'd apologize for my English (which I know it's terrible). Everyone is responsible for what they post, as well as what they do. My point is, as the question ask, if someone could get "a lot of trouble because of having it up", there are maybe some better alternatives than licences and who belongs the post. Despite the fact that each one of us are responsible for what they post, we also make mistakes and we should have the chance to fix them, when possible. – Albert Apr 20 '15 at 9:55
  • 1
    @Albert: at issue here is that there are some very good answers on the post. We have a responsibility to those answers too, which is where the license comes in and why it is important to realise that to delete the question would be to delete the collective work here. – Martijn Pieters Apr 20 '15 at 9:57
  • 1
    @Albert: that is why it would be far better to edit the post to avoid the OP being in trouble over deleting the post. If there is sensitive information in the post, we can request that the revision(s) with that information are removed from the post history, even though the cat is of course already out of the bag (many sites mirror the content on Stack Overflow). – Martijn Pieters Apr 20 '15 at 9:58
  • You convinced me. So, one of my votes is for you... still thinking of order ;) Good luck. – Albert Apr 20 '15 at 10:34
  • Very impressed answers.. Next few days surly you placed the moderator row.. Best of luck... – bgs Apr 21 '15 at 5:14
88

Jon Clements' answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

If the post contains sensitive data (passwords/api keys etc...) that have been posted by genuine mistake then the post can be edited and the community team could destroy a revision. If it's really sensitive and gaining attention then a compromise is to delete it while this can take place and restore it after.

If the post by itself is decent enough and has received useful answers that are generally useful to future visitors, then perhaps the post can be anonymised/disassociated from the user's account. After all - useful content shouldn't be removed if possible.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Everyone is expected to "be nice"/"respectful" to other users regardless of reputation. Sometimes everyone has off days. It might be that all's required is a quick word to point this out for someone to recognise those kinds of actions aren't on. If it persists, then a suspension to allow them to chill out, go for a walk, whatever... to hammer home the point being abusive to other users will not be tolerated - no matter what your imaginary internet points happen to be.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Depends on the rate - sometimes people do go back through old answers and delete them (mostly if they didn't score well) but sometimes even when they did if other answers have done better/are more up to date/or they believe theirs is only distracting from the "best one". It's also possible it's not the user themselves taking such actions (hijacked account or similar). I'd prefer to find out why such actions are taking place by contacting the user - if there's no reasonable response/actions continue, then yes, the account should be suspended until further information/discussion can be made as to the cause of vandalism and actual intent behind the actions.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

Sometimes close voters are a bit trigger happy, and of course it can be confusing to a new user why their post is closed. Some will be happy to answer comments and address suggested edits/improve their post to a state it can be re-opened and answered. Others will take it as a very personal insult and sometimes the situation then escalates to a level a moderator may need to step in, but normally the community does a fantastic job of managing themselves.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

Most of the time this'll be handled automatically by the review queue by having edits rejected. I prefer to assume that a user makes suggested edits in good faith. If they're getting their edits approved (in a way confirming they're doing "the right thing") just for capitalising a single letter when a lot more could have been done, then it's worth pointing out to them they could have done more - and that's what suggested edits are for and they'll be able to do minor edits when they acquire full edit privileges. Of course, if it's continuous trivial edits that are obviously just to rep-gain, then a note and suspension to bring them around to the correct way of doing things could be required. Of course, if these are all being accepted, then maybe the reviewers might need a word with as well...

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

Hopefully the audit system will work here to filter out the obviously not paying attention users. "Looks OK" is admittedly kind of subjective if you're relatively new so maybe there was a lot they thought was okay, then realised they could have edited, but now it's gone off screen etc... Again, I'd assume good intent, unless it's blatant badge hunting/carelessness etc... in which case, again, this can be communicated to help educate the user.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

Gladly I'm not perfect (that'd just be way too boring) so I'm sure some mistakes will happen. Apart from some quite extreme actions - most are fairly easily reversible - so it's not the end of the world. If I'm wrong, I'll stand up and say so, and it take it on the chin and assist in correcting whatever action is disputed. If right, then I'm happy to stand by the decision, explain the reasoning and justification for it.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I ran the last two elections (with varying levels of success). I have a passion for SO to be the best it can, have the time to spend in assisting doing so, and while I may not have the most prolific activity, I prefer to be steady and take time considering a course of action.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

Similar to cv-pls, there's also delv-pls call outs which can be coordinated in chat. Sometimes during a tag burnination/re-tag/update spree the really rubbishy stuff that hasn't been roomba'd also gets removed - that's likely to be by a small team doing a clean up job.

If it looks to be coordinated to a specific user(s) post(s) then that could suggest some motivation other than site maintenance so could require intervention.

Also, large/previous popular (but now off-topic) posts are also sometimes deleted (normally requiring a lot more than the usual 3 delete votes). Unless it's truly awful then it might be better served with a historic lock on it instead.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged. First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I'm one of the ROs for the Python room. Sometimes there's the occasional humorous comment (eg: "How do I make my Python run" then someone posts "have you tried giving it legs?" etc...) - but the team has never tolerated malicious/outright misleading/detrimental comments that are brought to their attention (eg: "you should just give up programming now and while you're at it learn English" or something to that effect). I've sometimes thought something has gone a little too far and flagged it despite considering the individual a mate/friend (we all have grumpy/bad days). In my book - everyone gets treated equally regardless of how long I've had the pleasure to have known them.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

The most obvious NAAs are what obviously are comments eg: "Could you provide some input and expected output?"... rather than just potentially low quality, short/not very well explained posts such as "have you tried x = 2 ** y instead?".

The community generally does a good job with voting accordingly/possibly even deleting bad/dangerous/completely wrong answers that's in their field of expertise. I'd tend to approach it as if it's blatantly NAA, that's fine - otherwise, the community can deal with it appropriately.

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

Politely query the rationale behind the other mods choice. It might well be I'm missing something that warranted such an action, or they're missing something that didn't.

4
  • To the last question: What if he/she just called it a night? – Deduplicator Apr 13 '15 at 23:45
  • 7
    @Deduplicator well - although I'd rather ask the individual directly, there is a whole experienced moderator team that are likely to have worked with the individual for a while/have more experience than me, that'd be able to alleviate any concern I may have – Jon Clements Apr 13 '15 at 23:47
  • 1
    I don't know if you can edit, but "Sometimes everyone has off days" on Q2 doesn't really make sense (I don't think). Anyways, awesome answers and good luck! – miradulo Apr 13 '15 at 23:57
  • 6
    @DonkeyKong what I mean by that is, sometimes, people have had a bad day/are in a bad mood... and aren't their usual pleasant self for instance... (I'm sure we've all had moments where we've said something than instantly regretted it/or just felt stroppy for a period of time etc...) - thanks for your best wishes :) – Jon Clements Apr 14 '15 at 0:01
62

deceze's answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Once content is posted on Stack Overflow, not only does it belong to Stack Exchange and the public in general, but it will also almost certainly have already been dispersed throughout the internet (caches, Google, third parties using the Stack API etc.). Even if removed from Stack Overflow proper, the content will almost certainly continue to live in a thousand places. That's the first thing I'd need to tell that asker.

Unless there's a clear security or privacy problem (sensitive details posted in the question), there's little reason for Stack Overflow to remove any content. This would be quite an exception and would require some very good reasoning. I'm sorry, but if you've been caught getting your homework done by SO, then it's your problem for letting SO do your homework in the first place.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Surely such things never happen! :-O
Well, okay, unfortunately they do. The first step here is obviously to try to talk to the person in question and point out that their behaviour is uncalled for. Ideally it'd be possible to talk the person down back to a normal behaviour. Everyone can blow a gasket every once in a while; it's unfortunate if it happens in public, but that's life.

If the user's behaviour continues and has a seriously detrimental effect on the community, then we'll have to erect security barriers between the community and that user; i.e. timed suspensions. It is very unfortunate when it comes to that, but you can't risk the health of the community over one person's eccentricities, however well respected they may have been.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Very close to the case above. Figure out why they're doing it and explain to them why it's bad. Hopefully this will suffice. It's anyone's prerogative to remove content they have contributed (within limits), that's what the delete buttons are there for. However, if a user does this en masse it may indicate that they misunderstand the purpose of SO, so clearing out any misunderstandings there is first priority.

I'd be very reluctant to pull a suspension trigger here, since the user is only vandalising their own content. But if it demonstrably affects the community (e.g. canonical, often cited references gone), it may have to come to this.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

New users often misunderstand SO's model and mistake it for a help forum. Clearing out that misunderstanding with the new user is first priority. This case takes a bit of domain knowledge though. If the closed question clearly has answers elsewhere or does otherwise fit any of the established close reasons, then what happened is fine and the user needs to be nudged into understanding that; alternatively they need to be asked to peruse the existing content and improve their question to make clear why it's supposedly different. Only if the question was legitimately closed in error and there really is a case to be made for it to reopen should it be reopened.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

This greatly depends on the level of "triviality". Editors which more or less randomly intersperse backtick markers are often unwanted; this rarely provides actual improvement, is sometimes destructive and can easily be seen as mere digging for points. However, discouraging certain types of grammar nerds is a bad idea, those can very well be a plus for the community. If the edits provide a real improvement, they're good, however trivial.

If they're really superfluous, the user should get a friendly talking to. If they're outright unwelcome, a bunch of rollbacks and a very close look at the rest of the user's activities are in order.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

Hopefully the audit mechanism should catch that particular type of behaviour. If it doesn't and the issue is brought to the attention of moderators, the first question is why the user is even bothering doing what they're doing. If the rest of the user's activities do not reveal any particular issues, this is hardly any offence. However, a friendly message pointing out their possible lack of scrutiny may be in order. If the rest of their profile does show irregularities, then this may just be the tip of the iceberg and anything could happen...

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

Every superhero needs an archenemy, don't they? ;)
As long as it's harmless quips, I've got a pretty thick skin. If it starts getting disruptive... you may have noticed that I'm a fan of trying to talk it out, so that'd be a first step. There's nothing much to be done really beyond that if it stays at a personal level and has no broader consequence to the community as a whole. You can't be liked by everybody equally.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I am not particularly power hungry and didn't particularly covet the position of a moderator as such. My personal life was also fraud with international household moves, babies born, work to do... as such I wasn't particularly keen on taking on even more tasks. However, turns out, I'm on SO a lot anyway, and I'm mostly closing questions and leaving meta comments and flags. And I'm getting very little flak back, so it appears I must be doing something right. It's actually gotten to a point where not having moderator tools feels inefficient sometimes. Personal and work lives have stabilised, so... might as well.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

This sounds like a scenario orchestrated by many individuals, and will likely require many individuals to resolve and clean up. It first needs to be brought to the attention of the moderator/meta community. If the origins of this "ring" can be traced back collaboratively so it can be cleaned out, all the better. Otherwise we'd better hope we don't have to play whack-a-mole with this for a while.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

This is a very hypothetical question, since I'm rarely active in the general chat indeed. Not because I dislike people, but because a general group chat is very counterproductive to my work day. I certainly wouldn't be going around the back deleting comments; I'm not going to play whack-a-mole with them on SO. I have a certain professional face which I don while on SO; if they do not choose to do the same that's up to them. Whether or not that would influence any relationship remains to be seen.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

This always requires a bit of domain knowledge, intuition and tact... sometimes the real answer runs entirely contrary to what the OP may have been asking. Even if an answer appears to go off the rails, it may sometimes be exactly what the OP needed to hear. As such, an answer isn't simply "NAA" just because it points in a different direction than the OP. It's up to the answerer's peers to up- or downvote the answer to judge its usefulness.

An answer is clearly not an answer if it's gibberish, contains no content once any links have been removed or is clearly something other than an answer (spam, a new question, feedback etc.). The general criteria can be found here: https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleted-answers

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

Unless there was a strong case made for closing the question and if I have a good case for reopening the question, I'll do so while leaving a comment for my reasoning. If necessary I'll edit the question to be clearer. This is hardly different from the regular modus operandi involving Mjølnir wielders, unless there was a particular reason why specifically a moderator closed the question. Moderators are still also regular hi-rep users and domain experts.

1
  • 5
    Content still belongs to the person who posted it, but is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange. </pedant> – TZHX Apr 14 '15 at 12:03
40

Second Rikudo's answers

Good luck to all participants! Here's my take:

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

It's a tricky problem, with no good solution.

If the content is good, I'd only delete as a last resort.

  1. Editing the code in question to be more general (and less propriety)
  2. Dissociating the post from the user
  3. Escalating to Stack Exchange employees

are all actions I'd take before deleting a good question with good answers.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Consult with my fellow moderators first.

If it were up to me alone, however, I'd privately contact, notifying said user that his behavior is unacceptable and offer however much guidance I can. If the behavior carries on, I'd have no choice but to suspend the user for a few days to cool down.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Again, it's a tricky situation. On the one hand, the user is not doing anything that's not reversible, so I don't want to hastily suspend. On the other, we don't want questions being invalidated for too long.

Again, this is a decision best done in a group. If I see that comments and rollbacks are not helping (he's fighting me), I'd rather suspend.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

I'm assuming it's a meta post that the user has opened, in which case I will look at their question, explain why it was closed and how to improve it. Of course, if the more experienced user was wrong, I'd respond appropriately and reopen the question. If I'm not sure at the validity of the question, I'd refrain from responding and ask other users/moderators for their opinions.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

Moderators were currently bestowed upon with the ability to revoke a user's ability to suggest edits for a set time. If the user is under 2k, I'd use it, because it's cluttering the review queue. If the user has 2k, I'd probably do nothing because unless the edits are damaging the posts, they're improving them (however marginally). If the trend goes on for a very long time, there may be room for private contact.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

Well, it could be that all of the posts indeed look good. Don't take action until after you've confirmed he's voting Looks OK even for posts that do not look OK. Second, if the user is engaging in "review botting" I can immediately ban from review and contact privately. If it's a repeated offender, a full fledged suspension is more suitable.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

If it's constructive and pointing out potential flaws in my moderation, I'd happily respond, defend my actions or apologize for mistakes, and improve my moderation decisions as I go along. I will not feed trolls though.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I've nominated for the last election (and the one before that), and my stance hasn't changed. I love the site. I feel I've maxed my cleanup potential as a normal (even if high privileged) user. And I would like to improve the tools available to me. I feel like a moderator is held to a higher standard, and is looked up to.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

Close voting and delete voting rings are not new, and they often have a very good accuracy rate (in which case I'd let them be). In the case they do not, however, I'd act to shut it down. Those close rings are almost always coordinated from chat, in which case I can step in there and talk with the users in question. There's always the option of privately contacting the members if they are coordinating from elsewhere.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.
    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I feel like education is a much better tool than enforcement. First and foremost, I'd speak to my friend Reggie (Reggie the regular. Heh), and ask them to edit their comment, so it's not as snarky. Snarky comments are worse than inflammatory comments, because they hurt much more. If Reggie fails to oblige, I'd edit it for him. If the situation escalates, I'd step out and ask another moderator, who's not a friend of Reggie, to step in and act however they think.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

I think that a post that attempts to solve a problem presented in the question is an answer. That includes answers directly solving the problem, answers attempting to suggest a better way to solve the problem (XY problem style), and to some extent, link only and code only answers (although there's a strong consensus to count them as NAAs).

Older questions need to be taken with a grain of salt, and the line is blurry. I think it's more a question of helpfulness in that case.

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

Talk to the other mod. We've got plenty of communication channels between us. If we fail to reach agreement, I'd push for having a meta post and let the community decide.


If you've reached all the way down here and actually read everything. Well done brave soul. You have proven thyself a true warrior.

3
  • To the last question: What if he/she just called it a night? – Deduplicator Apr 13 '15 at 23:47
  • 2
    For the chat question: this is something that already happens today, we're actively trying to minimize snark in chat leaking to the main site and SecondRikudo has been actively aiding with that. – Benjamin Gruenbaum Apr 14 '15 at 0:41
  • 7
    @Deduplicator Wait until they get back (realistically, of course. I won't wait for months). If the mod that handled it is not around, talking to other mods and opening a meta post are still options. I'd rather not go and undo another moderator's action unilaterally (it's not professional). – Madara's Ghost Apr 14 '15 at 7:06
40

Raghav Sood's answers:

Best of luck to all the candidates! I apologise for the delay in answering. I'm afraid I ran into some more pressing tasks on the personal front.

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

When writing to this site, one licenses their content under the CC license. They volunteer any information in it into this domain, and hence lose the right to remove it at their own will. However, I will evaluate on a case by case basis and, after consulting with other mods on the case, possibly delink the user from the concerned question.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

High reputation does not grant one immunity from the rules of SO, one of which, since time immemorial, has been to be nice to everyone. There are constructive ways of providing feedback, and I would not tolerate anything less, regardless of reputation. As in any case, the user would be warned to ease things. If the disruptive pattern continues, I would place them on a timed suspension.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Similarly to the first question, the content is now owned by the community. Vandalising it, for whatever reason, not only goes against that, but also reduces the quality of the community they have helped build. I would rollback the vandalism, and talk to the concerned user to determine what caused this behaviour, and how to curb it. In case it continues, measures such as a temporary suspension can be undertaken.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

We have some fairly high standards that are often difficult for new users to fathom. I would advise the new user that arguing is unlikely to get questions reopened - question closure requires not one, but five experienced users to agree on it not meeting our standards. Instead, I would try and suggest methods by which the user could meet these standards and then have it reopened by the community.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

This is a problem sometimes seen in the review queue, where users try to shoot for the badges by making small, grammatical or other tiny edits. I would evaluate on a case by case basis (there may be edits which are high quality too), and then appropriately roll back, approve and speak to the user if required. If necessary, editing rights may be suspended.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

This works similarly to the previous question, minus the flags. Or there may be flags for this too. In either case, the user ought to be contacted, warned and if necessary, temporarily suspended.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

I will explain my reasoning behind that answer, as well as discuss the case with other mods. If I am in the wrong, I will make the necessary rollbacks and apologise to those affected. I do not consider myself to be above mistakes. I will try to keep them to an absolute minimum, but I am aware that I can err.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

This is my third year running in a row, and if I lose I will be running again. I started programming a long(ish) time ago, and this site has heavily contributed to my learning. It is a community I have experienced, learnt from, and grown to love, and I want to contribute back to it to as high an extent as I can.

The main reason which drove me to nominate myself is to contribute back, and help fix up high frequency tags such as Android. In the past two elections I stood for, I lost by a very small margin, and I have made it to the final 10 this time as well. I think this can stand testament to the solidity of my intent to the site.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

Answer copy pasted from chat

It's a little hard to give an exact answer on what I'd do without more details. In my experience, it's not uncommon to have the same set of users contribute votes to a large number of questions in their tag of expertise. For instance, in Android, there are only a handful of users who patrol at that level of moderation, so it's easy to repeatedly come across their name. This is something that can be seen across most, if not all, larger tags. Before proceeding further, I would:

  1. Evaluate whether or not the questions actually needed to be deleted. Outright spam and abusive posts should be deleted, and may often be deleted by the same people if posted in quick succession (which some particularly annoyed souls have done in the past)
  2. If the deletions by the same set of users are indeed unjustified, I'd first seek the opinion of other mods - I am capable of human error, and obviously may not understand every tag well enough to distinguish in every case. A second opinion would help. Then, if it is a genuine problem, I would take the necessary steps in warning or temporarily suspending the users who are abusing their power.

This, of course, applies to unjust, repeated deletions at every level, even by a single user. You don't need a ring to do it wrong over and over

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.
    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

If someone is being deliberately snarky, they will be appropriately warned or suspended. Friendship doesn't change community rules. I am a regular in the Android room, and would consider many of them my friends, having known them for next to three years now. However, friendship does not enable rudeness and rule breaking.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

Over the years, the community has evolved. Older questions must be brought up to the current standards. If their previous form is absolutely integral to them, and they are important for that and in that form, then I would lock them as historically important, but currently substandard (as some of our really old, but really popular threads are).

Users and reviewers can find this in the current state of the site. We're all on it, and it's growing around us. Take a look at the newer, good quality content.

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

I would ask the mod in question about his actions over the mod channels. It is entirely possible that my judgement was wrong, and I may be corrected in that. However, if I still continue to see an issue with it, I would take feedback from the other mods, and then proceed as a team on that item.

0
32

Matt's answers:

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Not without considering the particular situation. Whilst I understand all posts are released under the CC license, I also feel common sense needs to be applied here; we shouldn't say no, and cause someone to lose their job, or a company to go bankrupt. I'd feel pretty bad if that happened.

Ideally, the question could be edited to remove the offending information. The revision containing that information could then be nuked by the community team. In practice, it might not always be that easy, so a decision may have to be made per instance.

TL;DR; I certainly wouldn't delete every question where this type of flag was raised, but I'd equally not decline every instance of this type of flag.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

I think it is irrelevant that the user is high-rep. Rude, borderline abusive and not-constructive comments should not be tolerated on Stack Overflow. I would contact the user and explain to him that his behavior is unacceptable. If the behavior does not stop, I'd look at suspending the user for a short period of time. If the user has been warned about his behavior before, I may increase the severity of the warnings.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Deleting old, unaccepted answers, where the answer is provided in other/ accepted answers is not what I'd call vandalism, and is not something I'd want to punish or suspend over.

A user who is editing answers which contain unique pieces of important information, and which appears to be a ragequit? That's what I'd call vandalism, and that's something I'd want to stop. I'm dubious as to whether messaging the user will have any impact here, so I'd likely suspend the user for 24 hours, accompanied by a message asking them to stop deleting their own, valued content. This gives time for the message to get across, and for them to potentially cool down.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

It depends on how heated the disagreement is as to whether I think a moderator should step in or not. If a disagreement has escalated to the point of being personal, rude or not-constructive, then perhaps the comments should be cleared, and the user could be directed to meta to bring up their concerns on there. Other than that, I can't see my involvement here helping in any way.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

I assume we're talking about trivial suggested edits here.

If the user hasn't been making an attempt at fixing all the issues with the posts, then I'd deem those edits as trivial. Similarly, if they were adding irrelevant tags to already near-perfect posts, I'd also deem the edits as trivial.

Once I've determined the edits are trivial, if the user has been warned about this before, I'd place the user under an edit ban (and accompany it with a message that they're continuing the make trivial edits). If it's their first infraction, I'd send them a message, reminding them that suggested edits need to fix all issues with a post.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

I'd look through the posts they reviewed to see whether the posts did indeed look ok. If they did, then obviously nothing to see here, move along please. If they weren't, I'd take the same approach as I just explained for trivial edits; warn the user if it was their first infraction, and suspend them from the review queue if it wasn't.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

I regard myself as someone who can take criticism, listen to feedback, and remain constructive throughout a disagreement.

The only venue in which I'd respond to feedback would be on Meta. I don't do chat, and I wouldn't accept being approached outside the SE network for issues like this.

If I was wrong in a particular situation, you'll find that I have no issues with accepting a mistake and apologizing for it. If I hadn't done anything wrong, you'll see me stand my ground, but be fair and reasonable throughout.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

Heh, I did nominate myself in the previous election! I've been active on Stack Overflow for 5 years. Stack Exchanges mission to help and benefit others resonates with my personal aims to help and benefit others as well.

Throughout my time on Stack Overflow, I've been editing posts, helping users out, participating in review and flagging already; moderating is something I've always done, and will always continue to do. By becoming a moderator (by name!), it will help me be more productive in this regard; flagged posts will be deleted outright, rather than having to be reviewed by another human.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

I'd pop into the PHP chatroom and ask them to stop. Ooooooo, was that a bit too below the belt?!

No; in all seriousness, I hate seeing high profile posts, which have benefited hundreds of thousands of people over time, being deleted. This is what the historical/ wiki locks exist for. Provided the consensus of the meta discussions is that the deletions were invalid, the historical/ wiki locks (in the right context) are what I'd apply in the given situation.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I haven't ever hung out in chat, and it's not something I'd see myself doing if I were to be elected. I would therefore be in a position to review the comments that have ended up on Stack Overflow like any other comment; if they were inappropriate, I'd delete them. If the behavior persisted, I'd warn them against it.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

Firstly, this is about 4 questions, not 1. Don't think I wouldn't notice.

  1. What constitutes an answer to a question?

    A post which provides a self-contained solution to the underlying problem described in the question.

  2. Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria?

    I think this Meta post is relevant here. If the question is precise, but the question is invalid given the underlying problem, an answer which provides a solution to the problem, but which doesn't necessarily answer the question is permitted.

  3. Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different?

    No.

  4. Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

    This is hard; there isn't really one place. There is the help center, and there is meta; but you'll equally find posts on meta which have opposing views to the ones I've just provided. This "Why was this NAA flag declined?" question will never go away; because there will never be an accepted definition of what is, and what isn't an answer. Intuition, common sense, and a broader understanding of each situation needs to be applied here.

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

I will contact the moderator privately first to have a discussion about it with them. We'd then agree on the correct action for the situation. If the moderator isn't available, or if we didn't agree on what action was correct, I'd probably bring in another moderator to get a 2nd/ 3rd opinion off. What I wouldn't do is unilaterally undo the moderators action.

3
  • 3
    Almost everyone has their name at the top of their post, as suggested above. Did you leave that out on purpose or accidentally? (I strongly suspect the latter, but I am not confident enough to just edit your post. Even commenting here is kinda scary… runs back to SO) – nobody Apr 15 '15 at 18:23
  • 1
    @nobody: Oops, no; that was definitely unintentional! Thanks for pointing it out :). psst... stay here on Meta, it's not that bad! – Matt Apr 15 '15 at 18:57
  • 1st answer killed it!! Good luck. – Mixcels Apr 21 '15 at 12:21
29

Ed Cottrell's Answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

No. First, by posting the question, they licensed it to Stack Exchange for public use. Second, a good question with good answers has great value to the community, and destroying it destroys that value. Third, it is extremely likely that any damage from leaked passwords, API credentials, and so on is already done by the time multiple answers are posted. Bots scrape this site all the time for precisely such information. Fourth, it is not the community's responsibility to help users avoid getting caught cheating or running into trouble with their employers. We obviously don't wish ill on people for honest mistakes, but we cannot let one individual's bad decisions hold the community hostage.

This doesn't mean that it is never appropriate to take any action. Sometimes, mods or the community team can take a surgical approach by deleting one revision or disassociating the asker from the question. But I would not delete a quality question simply because the asker should not have asked it.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

First, the offending comments need to be removed, immediately. If the circumstances require it, we can temporarily suspend the user from commenting to stem the tide of abuse. I would then reach out the user and explain the problem. What happens next depends on the user. If he or she cooperates, all can return to normal. If not, a temporary suspension or permanent comment ban is a must. In a truly extreme situation, account closure or deletion could be appropriate, but that is an action for the moderators to take collectively. No one moderator should nuke or permanently ban a high-rep user, unilaterally.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

Yes, I suspend. In such an instance, it may be that the user's account or computer is compromised. The important thing is to stop the vandalism and destruction until we can assess the situation. I would immediately reach out to the user and ask what is going on. I would keep a suspension in place as long as necessary to stop the destruction. If a user is deliberately vandalizing valuable content, account closure or deletion (again, with consultation of as many of the mods as possible) is a last resort.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

Politely! I would direct them to Meta, obviously, if the disagreement was occurring on the main site. I would then explain the rules regarding question closure and, if possible, help the new user make the question better. If it turns out the the more experienced user was wildly out of line, then I would also try to educate and correct that user.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

In general, I would try to reach them by leaving a note explaining why the edits were rejected, directing them to the help section, and encouraging participation on Meta to address any questions. If the pattern is egregious - destructive edits or a huge number of edits in an obvious attempt to get a badge or rep points - then I would temporarily suspend their editing privileges.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

I am assuming here that "veeery long" means more than, say, 5, and that at least some of the decisions were obviously incorrect. Hopefully, the audit system would catch this and get the user to pay more attention. If not, I would contact the user and encourage them to slow down and pay more attention. A review ban would also be appropriate here until I or another mod can talk to the user.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

First off: If I'm wrong, I own up. I have made mistakes in the past and will surely do so again. It could be as simple as hitting the wrong button or clicking the wrong option, or it could be an error in judgment on my part. I am only human, and I admit my mistakes and make adjustments when needed.

If the user is just harassing me, however... well, I have a pretty thick skin. It's necessary in day job (I am an attorney and used to work in trials). As long as the criticism is on-topic and arguably constructive, the complaining user is welcome to have at it. If my moderation style is correct, the community will generally point that out and address it. I will personally respond to the complaints whenever feasible. Purely abusive comments, though, will get the same treatment that I would give them if they were directed at someone else: deletion. Critiquing the moderation style of any moderator is fair game, but personal attacks and off-topic rudeness are out of bounds, no matter who the target is.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

I was a fairly new member (roughly 1 year in) last year and just barely above the rep threshold. I feel that running would have been inappropriate. This year, I have experience, having voted 5,000+ times, cast 6,500+ helpful flags, edited 700+ posts, and completed thousands of reviews. I have also served as a pro tempore moderator on ebooks. In short, I have the experience and knowledge to be a moderator now.

Oh, and I've been programming for 30 of my nearly 36 years. I'm not about to get bored with programming. And as long as I'm programming, I'll always be on StackOverflow. :)

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

This is a hard one to answer. Some very high-profile posts are actually not very good questions or answers. Many are opinion-based or are recommendation requests. Some of these were once on-topic and are now off-topic. If the deletions are actually wrong decisions or indicate some sort of collusion to knock down other members of the community, I would talk to the users in question directly and take any other necessary actions. Either way, I would participate in the meta posts to address the concerns and either curb any bad behavior or reiterate the site norms for other users.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

    First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I don't tolerate rudeness, and neither should anyone else on here. I will delete comments when necessary. I've even deleted my own comments when I have realized that they weren't constructive. Sometimes, a simple edit can remove the snark. Sometimes, a language barrier means a comment is unintentionally rude. But if somebody is just being a jerk, I will call them out on it. Moderation is a privilege and a duty, and it has to take priority over any one friendship. So, I will do everything I can to rein in my friend's behavior. But, as I say, I have a pretty tough skin, so I will strive to always do the right thing. I would just have to hope that my friend would respect that and handle the situation with maturity.

I would not call out my friend or shame him or her publicly. There's no real value in that. If my friend posted on meta asking what happened, then yes, I would answer the question. But I'm not going to make an example of somebody just because I can.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

An answer is an answer is an answer! If it is clear enough that a new user, who has never been to the site, could read the question and use the answer to solve the problem, it's a good answer. Even if the answer is incorrect, if it tries to solve the problem, it's an answer. Deletion is appropriate for a few types of posts:

  • Me too, did you figure this out? (same problem)
  • I tried these answers and they didn't work. (commentary on another post)
  • Have you tried switching from (language X) to (language Y)? (changing the topic)
  • Here's a fix for a related (but different) problem. (changing the topic)
  • spam
  • etc.

Old questions really should be subjected to the same standards. A particularly noteworthy answer that is at least on-topic should be left alone. But a truly off-topic answer, no matter how many votes it has, is fair game for deletion. Usually, that kind of thing indicates that the question is bad, too.

One exception: The non-answer that is on-topic, not clear, and seems wrong, but gets the big green check mark, anyway. Sometimes, that's an indication of sock-puppetry. Other times, it just seems that the OP is confused, clicked the check by mistake, or simply asked a terribly unclear question. These have to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

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

Usually, I would tee this up in private email or the moderator chat room first. There's almost always more of a back-story than meets the eye. Only in an obviously incorrect call, when I can't reach the other mod and where there is absolutely no question it was a mistake, would I override that decision. Before doing that, I would get at least one other opinion to make sure I wasn't missing something.

6
  • Do you consider link-only answers as NAA or not? – honk Apr 17 '15 at 21:31
  • 2
    I consider them NAA. They are uninformative, brittle (links break), hard to verify, usually not a link to a direct answer, and often merely someone's attempt to promote some site. As an ordinary user, of course, I can only flag such answers, even if the link is relevant and helpful. As a mod, I could convert a helpful link-only "answer" into a comment. Even though comments are also brittle, they are the appropriate place for helpful links. – elixenide Apr 17 '15 at 21:46
  • Thank you for clarifying this. Very nice answers. You've got my vote! – honk Apr 17 '15 at 21:59
  • @EdCottrell, first, thanks for making a very relevant summary. I think you're a great candidate. But first, as a co-founder, and second, an already existing Stack* moderator, it would help if you could give more insight into how you will manage the much higher workload that a third moderation role will entail. – Fox Apr 21 '15 at 10:45
  • @Fox Thanks for the kind comments. One quick clarification: I only have one moderator role right now, not two. I realize the workload will be higher than it is currently. That said, I spend 30+ minutes each day looking over recent posts, raising flags, and handling various review tasks, already. Most days, it's much higher than that. The biggest difference for my workload would be in the types of actions I am taking---for example, handling flags instead of raising them---rather than in the amount of time involved. – elixenide Apr 21 '15 at 11:48
  • @Fox awesome; thanks! – elixenide Apr 21 '15 at 13:15
25

Jeremy Banks's answers

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

If the "trouble" is that they posted something to which they admit they didn't own the copyright, I would delete that content. Ideally, the question could be edited to convey the same meaning without the copyrighted content. The post would no longer need to be deleted, and I would purge the old version from the post's history.

If there is no copyright issue, I would not delete the content. It also belongs to the community. However, I would inform them of their right to have the content disassociated from their name under our Creative Commons license.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Delete the comments, and then send him/her a message sympathizing with their frustrations, but warning that they can't continue to act like this because it's hurts the atmosphere on the site and alienates new users. If they persisted, I would have to suspend them.

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

I would temporarily suspend the user and send them a message explaining that we don't allow them to destroy community content like that. I would invite them to explain if they thought there was a legitimate reason for the content to be deleted.

If the user was not vandalizing their posts, but only deleting some of their less-successful ones, I wouldn't do anything.

  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

It's not practical to address all situations like this, but I might get involved if one were flagged. I would explain the reasons that closure is necessary in general, and not necessarily permanent, but would also look at the specific current situation. The new user could be right, and the question may deserve to be reopened.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

Small edits are fine as long as they're addressing all of the major problems with a post. If they're not, then they generate noise and review work for no benefit. I would send them a message explaining this.

  1. A user had done a veeery long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

Temporarily suspend them from all review queue, and send them a message explaining the harm their actions cause to the site and that they'll be under extra scrutiny in the future.

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat, and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

If some users aren't annoyed with you, you're probably not doing very much moderation. That's just part of the job. If the post on meta is specifically about me, and many people are interested in it, I would feel obligated to explain my reasoning and respond to their complaints. However, we don't need to actually come to an agreement.

If the post on meta is ridiculous, does not have much support, and other community members have already explained to the user why my behaviour was appropriate, I would not feel obligated to re-state what they've already said.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

My life overall is in a more stable position than it was during the last election. I am prepared to take on additional responsibility.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

As one of the early advocates for something resembling our current Historical Lock, I would apply it very generously in situations like this. Most high-profile posts that are even remotely appropriate for the site do not deserve to be deleted. If there were associated meta discussions, I would reply to them by explaining the importance of preserving content and not breaking links.

  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions' misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged.

First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

I would not hesitate to take corrective action again users I am friendly with. Consistent snarky comments alienate new users and must be discouraged. I would not conceal my involvement in the moderation of their content. That fact that I am friendly with them should be a benefit: they may be more receptive to my feedback than to others'.

They should also understand the way the site works, the necessities of moderation, and that disagreement is different from disrespect. I do not anticipate this being a problem.

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

An answer does not need to entirely answer the question, but it does need to contribute significantly towards a solution, and it must stand on its own. If it just provides a link or a very small piece of relevant information, I would probably convert it to a comment.

If the question is very old and has not been active/maintained, then I'm much less like to delete its answers (though I could still convert them to comments). Even if the answer is not very useful, it's something, and old inactive questions are unlikely to get anything better.

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

If I only disagree weakly, then I wouldn't do anything: it's unrealistic and impractical to expect complete agreement all of the time.

If I disagreed strongly, I would privately discuss it with them if they were available. If it seemed like they would not be available for a while, I might discuss it with multiple other moderators instead. Hopefully, we could come to an agreement about how the situation should be handled. I would not revert the other moderator's actions without discussing it first.

2
  • 10
    This is a super solid response, and shows that you have confidence in your ability to deal with these situations. Your nomination seemed to have started on a less serious note, but my impression is that you now genuinely seem to be taking this seriously. Are my impressions correct? If elected, would you commit to the position, and would your actions be consistent with the ideals you've stated in your nomination post and this questionnaire response? Would you also place importance on handling the current large work queue? – Jason C Apr 17 '15 at 22:09
  • @JasonC Yes, yes, and yes. :) – Jeremy Apr 17 '15 at 22:10
21

Paresh Mayani's answers

Good luck to all the rocking players. I am really sorry for being late in answering to the question but I was busy in some of the personal tasks and duties which were on high priority.

Here are my answers to the collective questions:

  1. A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

All the contents being shared over Stack overflow is under Creative Commons license and meant to be public.

Deleting contents straight way is not the solution. If the content is of trouble then I would first consult post owner and try to see which content is causing the trouble and try to remove that content. If it doesn't work then my next question would be unlinking the post owner profile from the post.

  1. You notice an experienced, high-rep user who has started a pattern of rude, not-constructive borderline abusive comments directed at users. How do you proceed in this situation?

Be Nice is one of the model/rule being followed by Stackoverflow and also all the Stackexchange sites, with this rule everyone has to be nice in all the situation, doesn't matter whether user is experience or newbie, doesn't matter whether user is holding high reputation or low.

I will notify/warning them about the actions and for being nice with fellow users. If the actions still be continued then suspension would only be the option and there by some days in penalty box. Assuming that they will learn, will welcome back them in community again!

  1. A valuable member of the community starts vandalizing their posts and deleting them, what do you do? Do you step in and suspend? If you don't suspend them, then how do you handle it?

I will handle by taking below actions:

  • I will notify them that this is not the right action they have started taking.
  • If they still continue vandalizing post and deleting answers, will straight way suspend them and there by stopping new posts from vandalizing or deleting.
  • After putting user into the suspension period, I will check and review the posts, will try to rollback as much as content we can.
  1. A new user has gotten into a disagreement with a more experienced user over a question closure, and complains that the site is "unfriendly to newcomers." How do you respond, if at all?

Stackoverflow is a community and it always happens that new comers or community users have questions or criticism. I have been a part of some of the community like Stackoverflow and Google Developers Group, so I have seen and have responded to such criticism in polite way.

In the case of such criticism, I mostly prefer to chat with them, either in stackoverflow chat room, over skype, google hangout, email or any other way of communication. I will try to understand what his concern is about, if his comments are seems right then will accept those and open the closed question. If it's not right then will notify new users with what is right and why his question is closed.

  1. A user has been flagged for making a series of "trivial" edits. How do you decide whether these edits are a problem? How do you act on that flag?

Mostly it's automatically handled thorugh the review queue by having edits rejected.

But if it comes to me, then being a moderator, I will accept if user has tried to improve the post by correcting spellings or improving grammar. But yes I will straight way reject if minor edits/small changes (like capitalisation) which is not going to actually improve the posts.

If the user is new then I will share a rule with him that his edits will be placed into the review queue for getting reviewed by fellow users, who are holding >2000 reputation.

  1. A user had done a very long series of Looks OK flags in Low Quality Posts without editing anything. What would you do?

I will first try to check if the posts he/she has flagged are actually Looks OK, If he/she is making fun with doing it then I will straight way put him/her into the suspension box and there by some days in penalty box and will contact privately, will try to share rules and standards being followed by we community members.

Afterwards, if he/she still continue doing that then full-fledged banned will only be the action!

  1. A user continuously calls you out for your moderation style on Meta, Chat,and other venues. How do you react? It could be anything, really. It's happened to every moderator. The specific most recent instance of being called out isn't as important as the fact that as a moderator, you have a shiny target on your back; how do you handle it when some of the most vocal users decide to continuously shoot rubberbands at you?

Human being are used to make mistakes and there is always learning in mistakes :) If the user's comments are constructive and right, I won't hesitate to accept my mistakes and promise to improve upon it.

  1. You are an experienced user, and have been a member for several years. You know how the site works and the problems moderators and trusted users have to deal with. But tell us, why today instead of last election (if you hadn't ran last election)? Why today instead of next election? What has driven you to nominate and stand up to the task now? Are you confident your intent can and will remain the same in the mid future?

As mentioned in my nomination, this is my third consecutive time I am standing in the moderator election. There is always good ending of any competition or election, strong players will win and other loose the game, if I will lose then I will nominate myself again in future elections, until I will be voted as a moderator.

Regarding a strong reason which have been putting me into the community contribution is, I believe in the power of community and hence has been contribution to Google's community by organizing events and developers community by posting answers over Stackoverflow and by writing articles over my blog.

  1. When reviewing recently deleted posts and current posts with deletion votes, you begin to notice a pattern. A group of users is consistently present for deletion votes, and some of the deletions begin to cause meta posts questioning the validity of the certain deletions. The deletion set gets so big that some high profile posts are being deleted. How would you address this situation?

As these would be queued up in moderator panel, it would be managed by users having moderator tools access.

Meanwhile, I will:

  • Try to investigate how many posts are actually voted for the deletion with the same pattern.
  • Notify users about the pattern (how do they find questions to be deleted, what is wrong, etc.), there might be chances that he/she is unaware about the rules/standard practices or putting ill-consideration.
  • Will also try to discuss with the fellow community users and existing moderators.
  1. Before elected mod, you used to hang out in one of the SE chat rooms and continue to do so after being elected (ok, not so active as before, your new duties and adjusting to them take some of your time now). You consider "regulars" there to be your friends. One of them has the habit of posting witty/snarky comments under SO questions and re-posting them in the chat room - for your friends' notice, and sometimes amusement. The comments are not inherently bad, on the contrary they are often pointing on the questions'misconceptions or lack of useful info. But they can be taken as snark and are sometimes flagged. First, what do you do, what action do you take if any? Second, do you > tell, announce to your friend and others what you did? If they have their comments repeatedly deleted, they will notice of course, but they will not know who did, only guess, probably. The point of this second part is not only whether and how your friendship will affect your actions but how you will deal with the consequences of your actions and the effects of them to your friendship.

With following "Be Nice" rule, everyone has to be nice everywhere on Stackoverflow, either in chat room or comments over threads or anywhere! With that, I don't tolerate rudeness and neither would allow anyone else here on anyone. I will delete comments when necessary, even mine too if I realized that I have made comments which are not constructive.

I would not hesitate to take actions against the users with whom I am friendly with, having said that I would not entertain those snarky comments!

  1. For handling NAA flags: What constitutes an answer to a question? Do answers need to answer the question, or just address the question to avoid being possibly deleted under the above criteria? Does it matter if the question is really old when the standards were different? Where are users and reviewers expected to find this information?

Answers to the question are not always supposed to be a full solution or complete answer, it must have contributed significantly to the problem/solution.

As usual if answers are link only answer or having comments or less information then I will straight way convert them into the comments. So far I have moderated many of such posts and mostly posted comments over those posts to guide them for not posting such answers.

For old questions/answers when standards were different, the example here I would share is, link-only answers, earlier it was allowed to post link only answer but later we stopped allowing. So same way I will moderate old posts (by downvoting, deleting the posts and converting them into the comments) with the new standards and rules.

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

If I will be moderator then obviously existing moderators are having more moderation experience then me.

I will definitely talk with them internally first and try to understand why they thought it to delete/close and I will also share why I think close/delete should not be the case.

6
  • 5
    A pity that you answered so late. Nevertheless, you should edit the "question" post to include a link to your answers and nomination. – Marco13 Apr 20 '15 at 8:51
  • 2
    @Marco13 Thank but It was quite a hectic schedule :( BTW, I have edited question post with answers link and nomination. Posted a request to edit the nomination to update This candidate has not yet answered your questions with the answers link! – Paresh Mayani Apr 20 '15 at 9:11
  • 1
    Really great answers; you deserve to be elected. – GingerHead Apr 20 '15 at 16:32
  • For #7, how would you handle the case where the user's comments are not constructive, or wrong? – Jason C Apr 20 '15 at 16:45
  • 2
    Better late than never..... but not acceptable...... – Lucifer Apr 21 '15 at 1:40
  • 1
    @Kedarnath yes I accept it but those personal issues were on high priority so I did it! – Paresh Mayani Apr 21 '15 at 4:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290096/2015-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire
meta.stackoverflow.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-17
424236
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:4FXJH4QJ5R3IFETLDD4G4GJUCOSLVTHS
<urn:uuid:a8787e23-a299-47d5-af0d-090e444c6a47>
2021-04-21T11:16:04Z
151.101.129.69
text/html
sha1:4OT2N4Y3PGPQIS2JFKSIK66EF4TII6Z4
<urn:uuid:9964f358-0d4a-48d8-8d50-29a40a5d08c5>
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290096/2015-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire
response
<urn:uuid:a4606f52-c61c-4a9e-9fe9-d6fbfb1ced3d>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-17
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-134.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/