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Stack Overflow, once again, is scheduled for an election next week, July 17th. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

As we did last year, we're collecting questions one week in advance.

Here's how it'll work:

  • Until the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, July 17th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

  • If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

  • This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at currently.

  • At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions.

  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.

  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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  • 34
    All the best to the future candidates. Jul 10 '17 at 20:01
  • 57
    Also, please remember that these are questions for the candidates to answer, so please refrain from providing your own answers in the comments below them. We want the nominees to answer these later in their own words.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:06
  • 15
    @Honey supposedly, they should only act when the community doesn't seems to be able to handle it itself. Exception handlers are for exceptional circumstances.
    – Braiam
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:40
  • 52
    The last election wasn't that long ago, and I seem to remember it being said that those mods should be enough for a while. Has the mod workload increased this much? Are there any stats about the work being done by our existing mods? I'm partly asking because even though we have 22 mods, some of them I only know because I saw them run in an election, or from that mod list. I'm not saying that someone whose actions aren't publicly visible can't be doing work, but are all those mods really doing that "at least 30 minutes work a day"? Jul 10 '17 at 22:14
  • 7
    In the past elections have been held because mods were stepping down, @AndrasDeak, but the retirement was not announced until afterwards.
    – jscs
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:37
  • 27
    @AndrasDeak - All I'll say is that this is a significant factor. A sharp drop in reviews means that more flags are left for moderators to handle.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 10 '17 at 23:06
  • 23
    Pretty crazy to see the consequences of changing something like a navigation bar.
    – g00glen00b
    Jul 11 '17 at 5:43
  • 5
    Will there be requirements about the reviewing that the candidates have done? I want to see candidates who have a history of diligent, high-quality reviewing.
    – S.L. Barth
    Jul 11 '17 at 7:21
  • 4
    @AlonEitan - Unless the questions are wildly off-topic or (the opposite of what's normally true) not actual questions, I'd recommend using votes instead of flags. The whole point of voting on these is to determine what the community thinks are good questions for moderator candidates.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 11 '17 at 13:44
  • 2
    @BradLarson Great! Thanks for clearing that up for me
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 11 '17 at 13:46
  • 1
    Thank you to all candidates! You honor us with your service and hard work. Jul 11 '17 at 14:44
  • 7
    @ouflak from the 2017 Moderator election page: moderator positions available: 2 Jul 12 '17 at 11:32
  • 2
    Well, unlike last year, this year consistently doesn't show the hot meta posts.
    – Braiam
    Jul 12 '17 at 20:03
  • 2
    @DVK there's no incorrect answers, just answers that doesn't follow the status quo. I prefer a moderator that doesn't follow the status quo but actually see the benefits/drawbacks of their actions.
    – Braiam
    Jul 14 '17 at 18:34
  • 2
    @Alex What does the Z stand for in the time? This hint was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. Jul 15 '17 at 17:43

36 Answers 36

141

Here's a classic (happens pretty much every day):

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?

5
  • 26
    @canon - Moderators aren't really presented with any guidelines after an election, aside from signing the privacy agreement and being told what user information we can and can't share publicly. Largely, you bring what you know and your own best judgment. There's a lot of grey area in the things you handle every day, so it's useful to see someone's thought process on these issues.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:42
  • 3
    I understand that the company would not provide explicit guidelines for that, but I expect the moderators would come to a rough consensus among themselves, and that they'd teach new mods. Do you really just leave the new people to learn the hard way? Jul 10 '17 at 20:53
  • 29
    I'm not saying that existing moderators don't help new people come up to speed on tools, procedures, etc., but there isn't a checklist you're presented with as a new moderator. Every situation you encounter is different, and you want someone who can judge the circumstances rather than blindly follow a flowchart. What's important about these questions isn't the exact answer, it's the thought process expressed in them.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 10 '17 at 21:31
  • @canon things that can be defined by policy/structure generally don't need a human to intervene.
    – enderland
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:09
  • 13
    Surely they pick up all they need to know at the two-week induction course held in the Bahamas?
    – TripeHound
    Jul 11 '17 at 13:37
116

Say you just performed a simple moderator action, like closing a question and leaving a comment explaining why.

The question's owner disagrees with your decision, flags your comment as "no longer needed" and replies with a comment that should be flagged as "rude or abusive".

Do you handle the situation yourself or do you wait for another mod to clean up?

If you handle it yourself, do you just dismiss their flag, delete their comment and move on or do take further action?

1
  • 26
    A very good question indeed. This is a common scenario with mods especially when a mod answers a question and deletes an answer on the same question as NAA / VLQ Jul 11 '17 at 8:39
107

Someone uses a custom flag to ask for a question to be migrated to another site. You're not a member of the target site. How do you decide whether or not to migrate the question?

2
  • Moderators, even from different sites, can contact each other, right? Jul 14 '17 at 14:09
  • 5
    @AlvaroMontoro there's a chatroom for all moderators (Teachers Lounge), which yeah, allows you to contact any moderator team.
    – Braiam
    Jul 14 '17 at 19:43
93

Given a question that's closed as a duplicate of a fairly popular question (say a score of 10+, with multiple decent answers having a score of 5+), a gold tag badge user comes along, single-handedly reopens it and posts an answer that doesn't really differ that much from the ones in the duplicate.

The answer or question is flagged by a user who disagrees with the reopening, stating the answer merely duplicates content already present on the site.

What do you do?

5
  • 2
    This is the most topical, tricky question so far asked, I think. +10 for a very good sheep-from-goats question. Jul 11 '17 at 9:55
  • @Nathan, thanks. And no, I haven't experienced this exact scenario, just wondering how a moderator-to-be would react.
    – CodeCaster
    Jul 11 '17 at 10:17
  • 1
    @CodeCaster I think I can find an example or two of this case (even some where the target duplicate is answered by the same gold badge owner) if you wish :)
    – Tensibai
    Jul 11 '17 at 13:55
  • There's an example of this happening (more or less) at Swapping nodes in linked list. The 'raise to moderator' step didn't happen; I didn't agree with the argument in favour of reopening, but decided not to contest it. Jul 12 '17 at 20:39
  • Why don't you ask if the moderator actually has any knowledge on the topic of the questions? Or better, why would you do that action.
    – Braiam
    Jul 14 '17 at 19:44
80

I've been a fan of this question that last couple elections.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

71

A resubmit from last year, as this is always relevant:

A user has been criticizing your moderation decisions on Meta. This has been occurring frequently over the course of a couple weeks. Some of these posts are very constructively made, with examples and reasoning, while some are more rants. While any mistakes you've made that have come to light were corrected when brought up, it seems that almost every day the user is finding something you've done to draw attention to.

The user is a high rep user and generally does not cause trouble, but does seem to have an issue with your moderation style. How do you handle this situation?

54

Moderators are expected to spend only 30 mins of their time, but we all know that 30 mins is insufficient. There are 2100 flags per day in the queue, a few of them needing 10~15 minutes. Most moderators spend way more than 30 mins and a few spend hours together. Would you be able to scale up your work time when the demand increases?

22
  • 56
    30 minutes per moderator per day would be more than sufficient if every moderator actually spent 30 minutes per day handling flags. In practice, there are very few days where every moderator is active, and very few days where every moderator who is active spends 30 minutes handling flags - so a subset end up spending a lot more than 30 minutes to pick up the slack.
    – Shog9
    Jul 10 '17 at 23:43
  • 16
    @Shog9 thanks for the answer ;) Jul 10 '17 at 23:47
  • 5
    @Shog9 Do you expect 30 minutes every single day, or 30 minutes per day on average? Jul 11 '17 at 1:55
  • 30
    Realistically, it should be considered an average, @Jeffrey - unless you're Bill the Lizard with 2967 consecutive days on the site, you're just not gonna be here to handle flags every single day. That said... I'd strongly encourage candidates to ask themselves if they can spare 3 hours a week (beyond what they already spend on SO), regardless of how that's distributed by day. If that sounds unlikely or even borderline, they might wanna re-think it.
    – Shog9
    Jul 11 '17 at 2:05
  • 8
    @Shog9 Jesus christ 2967 consecutive days? That's impressive and scary at the same time
    – Magisch
    Jul 11 '17 at 6:09
  • 17
    @mag, Bill was such a good mod that even trolls used to respect him (screenshot) Jul 11 '17 at 7:21
  • 5
    I had to vote this question down because it feels a bit like asking someone to work overtime in a day job without any additional pay. I know mods don't get paid, but suggesting they do more than the expected 30 mins is an unfair ask.
    – DavidG
    Jul 11 '17 at 7:59
  • 6
    @DavidG Just to make myself clear, no CM/Employee/Mod will ever ask a mod to work harder. Infact if the queue is growing, CMs themselves take time out of their busy schedule and handle flags. Mods also get to take leaves for however long they want. What I've mentioned is only in the extreme cases where there's a sudden influx in flags. I just asked this to see if any of the candidate was willing to spend a few minutes extra to keep SO clean for all of us. (There was no other ulterior motive behind it). Jul 11 '17 at 8:04
  • 3
    @BhargavRao Oh I'm sure that was indeed your intention and that you're genuinely trying to be positive about it. However, I just want to make sure people understand the pressure that is created from even asking this question. Having performed lots of interviews for devs over the years, there's a few subjects I steer clear of and this is one of them.
    – DavidG
    Jul 11 '17 at 8:08
  • 8
    @DavidG in my opinion this question should be at the forefront of any candidates mind. If they are not willing to do the time, they should not bother being a mod as that places further stress on the other mods. I don't think it's unfair to ask. You know what you're getting into before you run.
    – Bugs
    Jul 11 '17 at 9:01
  • 2
    @Bugs You miss my point I think. I agree that mods need to be able to commit the 30mins per day (or 3hours per week as per Shog's comment above) but I don't agree that they should be expected to do more. Now I'm sure that many/most actually do more of course, but that shouldn't be a job requirement.
    – DavidG
    Jul 11 '17 at 9:11
  • 2
    @DavidG OK, I don't particularly want to get into a debate and take the focus away from the question at hand. I can see your point, thanks for clarifying.
    – Bugs
    Jul 11 '17 at 10:32
  • 5
    @SteffenWinkler no, mods handle the special flags. NAA, VLQ and close flags are mostly handled by normal users (with 2k/3k+ rep) in the review queues... But then again, the throughput of those queues is low at the moment, so the mods may have to jump in.
    – Floern
    Jul 11 '17 at 12:44
  • 2
    @DavidG If someone can't make that time commitment, why is it fair for them to take the position over someone who can make the commitment? If there weren't a limited amount of positions, it might make more sense.
    – Rob Mod
    Jul 12 '17 at 3:59
  • 7
    Because we're choosing volunteers to mop up vomit. This kind of implicit pressure is unfair and unreasonable. If it's a 3 hr/week volunteer position, then, sure, if you can do more, that's great, but it should be an occasional bonus, not a "can you step up whenever it's demanded"? Frankly, I'd rather have a candidate who understands that this doesn't all ride on her back, and who can treat this position as professionally as she would a paid job.
    – jscs
    Jul 12 '17 at 12:00
40

Due to your status and actions as moderator and no matter how reasonable your conduct, you will be personally insulted more frequently, will have your competence questioned more publicly, and will be more exposed to negative sentiments.

How will you cope with this negative pressure long-term?

(Kendra already has an answer about handling a particularly abrasive/combative single user. This is asking more about the gradual pressure caused by many users acting more harshly.)

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  • 10
    Bonus points for: provide a specific example of a time you handled it well, and a time you didn't handle it well. Jul 11 '17 at 0:02
  • 4
    This is very relevant. To illustrate, some related discussion from here: i.stack.imgur.com/Zs88A.png (The feature requested there, anonymizing moderator messages, has been implemented in the meanwhile though, which is great.)
    – Pekka
    Jul 12 '17 at 18:52
37

To voters, from the comments:

As a note, this answer isn't just referencing the great CEO incident. There have been other similar posts in the past year or so, which makes this an (in my mind) important topic


A controversial post has appeared on Meta. It is about how the site will handle some real-world, non-programming event. The community is torn between wanting the post left open because it is a major event, and wanting it closed as not pertaining to the site.

How do you help to moderate this conflict? How would your answer change if the post was instead an announcement from the team, which are also frequently closed and reopened several times?

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  • 34
    Are you asking for the candidates to take a stand?
    – rene
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:37
  • 5
    @rene only if it's on a flower pot.
    – Braiam
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:38
  • 17
    Was the community torn? I got the impression the community pretty heavily wanted that question closed, and only company fiat kept it open. Jul 10 '17 at 20:50
  • 8
    @JeffreyBosboom that might be but let's not try to settle that under this answer. It is a good question for candidates to answer and a good chance to evaluate their responses given the real-life testcase we had.
    – rene
    Jul 10 '17 at 20:55
  • 5
    @rene I guess I don't want to ask about "moderat[ing] this conflict", but more bluntly, "When the community disagrees with a company-made moderation decision, will you support the community or the company?" But maybe that's too much of a leading question... Jul 10 '17 at 20:57
  • 14
    @JeffreyBosboom Do you realize how much more quickly the company announcement in question was reopened than it was closed? And by regular users, almost never by moderator. I wonder how on earth you came to the conclusion most users wanted it closed. Jul 10 '17 at 21:24
  • 6
    @JeffreyBosboom As a passive observer, I saw a lot of split on keeping it open and burning it with fire. I saw similar things with the other "political" posts that have been posted since the Great Logo Change. A number of users swears the post does not belong, another number swears that it does affect the site and therefore the post should remain...
    – Kendra
    Jul 10 '17 at 21:27
  • 6
    This feels like a waste of a question given how rare this is and how few moderators even participate in the events. I get it might be important to you because of a post once or twice a year, but... I'd rather ask questions about topics that actually matter in how SO works. Perhaps 0.1% or 0.01% of a moderator's time will involve issues related to this question.
    – enderland
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:20
  • 5
    Is this really something moderators should get involved in in the first place?
    – Pekka
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:26
  • 14
    @enderland - If this was extended to all SE announcements (Documentation updates, community team initiatives, etc.) it's not too infrequent that moderators have to deal with heated arguments in Meta comments, combative answers that people have flagged, etc. How moderators act around those is an interesting question, because there isn't a clear-cut answer and existing moderators have even argued among ourselves about this. It's useful to pose questions that don't have an easy-to-look-up answer.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Jul 10 '17 at 23:09
  • 6
    @Pekka웃: Well, elected mods have in the past gotten pretty heavily involved, so it's worth raising the question. Someone might take the position in their election platform that mods shouldn't, and that would be a valid opinion. Jul 10 '17 at 23:35
  • 4
    @Rob Only 4 reopens involved an elected moderator, of which 2 were the 5th vote anyway, so it was the same as a regular vote. The rest of the diamond users are employees. The community also had no problem reopening it by itself, many times faster than closing. Jul 11 '17 at 1:26
  • 5
    @ScottCWilson The CEO of Stack Exchange, Joel, posted a post on Meta Stack Overflow that was.... Highly controversial. That's what I'm referencing.
    – Kendra
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:40
  • 6
    @AlexanderO'Mara the post was closed 30 times before it was ultimately locked for good. That's one-hundred and fifty >10k-rep users on Meta. Probably the most close-voted question on the SE network, ever. Of the 29 times it was reopened, 15 of those either included a moderator action as the last vote or were moderator-reopened using the mod power, including the very first reopening. You can bet a lot of the subsequent reopen votes were only cast because mods were reopening it rather than regular users. So to compare, that's 30 closures from normal users, and 14 reopens from normal users. ;-)
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 18:52
  • 6
    @Tyoer Meh. Even at the time, people who wanted it closed acknowledged the community mostly wanted to keep it open, because of how much faster it reopened without diamond users. The support is also reflected in the score, it is the second highest-scoring question on Meta SO. I also doubt people were reopening just because SE staff were. Jul 11 '17 at 19:07
35

I'm reposting this from last year:

Not everyone agrees with every Stack Exchange policy, guideline, section of scope, etc. As a moderator, do you think you'll be able to effectively moderate and enforce Stack Overflow policies you may personally disagree with, but which the community strongly supports - or perhaps which you and the community disagree with?

31

The review queues are always full; there are just not enough reviewers.

As it happens, a bunch of users are getting flagged for robo-reviewing or reviewing incorrectly otherwise 1, enough to justify a review ban under normal circumstances.

Do you ban these users from review, even though that worsens the throughput of the review queues even more?

1: and are not caught by audits.

2
  • "a bunch of users are getting flagged for robo-reviewing" You mean erroneously? If so, [citation-needed]
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:30
  • @TylerH no, I mean for example a reviewer notices that another reviewer is reviewing inappropriately, and then raises a flag.
    – Floern
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:54
25

Suppose there is a question in which the community (either via 5 voters or a dupe-hammer) closed the question as a duplicate. After closing and a subsequent edit, the question has been through the reopen queue and most users voted to leave closed.

You then come across a custom flag, which essentially says

My question was wrongly closed as a duplicate, please reopen it.

After looking at the flag and reviewing the question, you feel that the community's decision was completely wrong and the question is not a duplicate. Since this question is in your area of expertise, you feel very qualified to make this judgement and you are very confident of your position here.

What do you do?

  • Do you override the community's decision here even though it was closed and failed to make it through the reopen queue?
  • Do you abide by the community's decision on this post?

I'm not necessarily referring to how you will handle the specific flag, but using it as an example of how you happened across the post. The specific question is "what will do you?" and "would you reopen it".


To put this in more generic terms, how will you to address a community decisions when your expertise and experience suggest that the community decision was wrong. Will you go against the community decision?

0
21
  1. If someone comes up with a comment like (especially with a new OP asking that doesn't have an informed badge):

    Please read the tour (again), and get informed what and how you can ask here.

    And that comment is flagged as unconstructive a number of times.

    How do you act?

    1. Accept
    2. Decline
    3. Digging down the question context and judge for off-topic or not
  2. If we deal with obvious Do my homeworkz plz questions, and someone leaves a comment like

    What did you try so far?

    And that comment is flagged as unconstructive a number of times.

    How do you act?

    1. Accept
    2. Decline
    3. Digging down the question context and judge for off-topic or not
3
  • 34
    I WOULD HUNT DOWN THE FLAGGERS AND STOMP ON THEIR TOYS
    – Pekka
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:24
  • @Pekka웃 Hunting voting rings and flagging mobs?
    – user0042
    Jul 10 '17 at 22:27
  • 15
    @Pekka웃 You get my vote
    – Bergi
    Jul 11 '17 at 6:14
21

Let’s make this one a tradition:

How would you, as a moderator, deal with a situation where a group of users unanimously disagree with your ruling while you’re 100% sure you based your decision on the standing policy?

What if your ruling was issued in a chatroom?

mostly copied from here

1
  • 2
    This copy is approved by me...
    – rene
    Jul 15 '17 at 7:09
21

Apparently a lot of the current moderators aren't spending the 30 minutes a day we elected them to do (source). Is there any reason to believe that you will actually spend the time?

0
20

Here is a set of general questions, this time actually posted instead of mysteriously forgotten, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

  • How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
  • How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
19

There's been some debate surrounding the flagging of link-only answers as NAA.

If someone flags a link-only answer as NAA, how do you handle this and why?

14

You (as a mod) close a poor question that is asking for an off site resource. Then the person who posted that question on Stack Overflow contacts you on LinkedIn and says that you suck as a mod. He then becomes a little rude and says that you are too weak and cannot do anything to him.

How would you as a mod handle this situation?.

8
  • 8
    I imagine there's a story behind this one... o.O
    – Cerbrus
    Jul 12 '17 at 14:45
  • 26
    @Cerbrus - Not really. This question is completely hypothetical. No such thing happened on March 18th, 11:23 PM UTC. :P Jul 12 '17 at 14:46
  • 2
    Please tell us what one might do in such hypothetical scenario, after the election
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 12 '17 at 15:17
  • 9
    Accept the invite, add them in your contact list, endorse them for interpersonal skills and call it a day....
    – rene
    Jul 12 '17 at 15:24
  • 14
    @AlonEitan Engage in an epic rap battle with them. Jul 12 '17 at 15:49
  • 3
    I believe this sort of abuse is something every Stack Overflow mod will have to deal with sooner or later :-( This is actually quite "mild" compared to some of the other stories I've heard. Jul 13 '17 at 9:58
  • 2
    @TheLostMind 500 Days of Summer disclaimer
    – Michael
    Jul 14 '17 at 21:52
  • @Michael - Lol. That made my day :P Jul 15 '17 at 6:59
13

You have just discovered that a closed but highly-upvoted question with highly-upvoted answers has been deleted by the community.

What do you do now, if anything?

4
  • Did you have a particular example in mind? Asking since I imagine the possible responses would depend on the question's topic (for instance, joke post vs. old shopping question vs. something else).
    – user812786
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:59
  • 3
    @whrrgarbl Those are points I hope a candidate would cover in their answer. I'm more interested in the thought process, rather than a specific decision on a specific question. Jul 11 '17 at 15:03
  • 3
    I think the most important question would be "why would you do anything"
    – Braiam
    Jul 12 '17 at 10:07
  • 1
    Such questions are sometimes restored by a moderator and given a historical lock status.
    – DavidRR
    Jul 12 '17 at 12:14
10

How would you handle a high-rep (10k+) user who tends to get into "flame wars"/heated discussions with others and/or frequently has comments flagged as rude or offensive? Would it make any difference if they were extremely high reputation users (e.g. 50k or 100k)? In general, would you tend to be more "gentle" moderating content from high-rep users?

0
8

What (if anything) do you think should be done about the fact that there are so many items in the close vote queue? Do you support lowering the number of close votes required to close questions? To what extent (if any) should moderators actively work the close vote queue?

5
  • 2
    This is in my opinion one of the most important questions of them all. I've practically given up flagging questions for closure since most of my should be closed flags age away. I feel strongly that something needs to be done about this issue. See also my Meta question about this issue. Jul 14 '17 at 23:43
  • @DonaldDuck I agree with you (and with the Meta post). I have a Meta post arguing for reducing the number of votes required to close questions. Jul 15 '17 at 0:19
  • @DonaldDuck Please refer to this comment - The answers in this post are not meant to get examples and personal feedback by the community, they are for the future moderators. I don't say that your opinions are not important but please consider removing them from answers (As I also did too BTW)
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 15 '17 at 9:39
  • 4
    @AlonEton I'm not sure that DonaldDuck was supplying his own answer per se so much as explaining why he thinks that future moderators why he thinks that future moderators should address the issue. (I personally think that it's a major issue facing the community and that more needs to be done to address it, and that that's something that future moderators could at least influence). Jul 15 '17 at 15:12
  • @EJoshuaS NP. I just think that if this is so important topic (I too supported your suggestion to reduce the votes to 4), then it will be reflected by the votes. Then, if a candidate will relate to your question then you could vote for them in the elections. But anyway - Point taken :)
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 15 '17 at 17:07
7

Perhaps not as relevant as recent events have dictated, but I like my previous question from last year.

Not everyone here ventures into the chat rooms, and not many people know what goes on there. However, as a moderator, one of your duties involves the moderation of the chat rooms. If you've never been in a chat room before and you were called to resolve an issue with either the room or its users, what would be the first thing you would do?

Note: "thing" isn't limited to moderator action in this context.

7

You stumble upon a question with a few downvotes. You see the user is new here, and has asked an extremely basic question that any self respecting programmer (including you), would find, perhaps a little ridiculous (say, a syntax error or a misunderstanding of how a basic programming construct works). You aren't the only one with this thought. A group of users have commented the same voicing their opinion, being passive aggressive and borderline condescending in the comments.

You think about closing the question, but it is indeed on topic, ridiculous as it may be, and is not a candidate for closure.

You see more users taking a cue and ganging up on OP. What would your next, immediate course of action be?

2
  • Would this include dupes as well or does not a candidate for closure mean that the question would not be a dupe? Jul 12 '17 at 10:36
  • @TheLethalCoder I believe it would be something really basic like using an except statement without a try (in python), for which you don't really have a duplicate (or maybe you do, but for my example, no).
    – cs95
    Jul 12 '17 at 10:38
6

Split off from Grace Note's generic-questions answer, because I feel it gets at the motivations of the candidate:

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

3
  • What's the point of just repeating Grace's question? You want them to answer it twice?
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:33
  • 3
    @TylerH, her question states: they're only used "if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8)."
    – user812786
    Jul 11 '17 at 15:10
  • @whrrgarbl Thanks, I didn't see that part. Seems like they should just include all of them by default though if they get asked often enough to be considered for that post, and if they're questions the CM team wants answers to...
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 18:34
5

What is your general assessment and opinion of groups who en masse take any kind of voting action against content in an organized fashion? If such a group is a problem, what would you do to mitigate it?

8
  • 6
    Is it worth it to make a difference in the question between up/down voting (which involves rep) and close/reopen delete/undelete voting (moderation), or do you like them in the same bucket? Jul 11 '17 at 12:31
  • 2
    This question would benefit from the caveat that some employees (namely, Shog) have given their blessing to some such groups (namely, the group that likely inspired this question).
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 14:32
  • @TylerH: It'd be interesting to see that, honestly. A tacit blessing is slightly different than actual policy approval, though.
    – Makoto
    Jul 11 '17 at 15:22
  • 2
    @Makoto meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256508/2756409
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 18:30
  • @TylerH: So it seems my question still remains relatively valid. Having an opinion of them is important especially if it runs counter to tacitly approved convention, and knowing what to do if they step outside of the guidelines is something I would expect moderators to do.
    – Makoto
    Jul 11 '17 at 18:57
  • 3
    @Makoto Sure, I never said it was an invalid question; I just wanted to make sure candidates don't feel like it's a loaded question.
    – TylerH
    Jul 11 '17 at 19:56
  • Is this specifically asking about the close vote chatroom? Jul 14 '17 at 17:23
  • 2
    @EJoshuaS: Doesn't have to be a chatroom on site, now does it? Could be off-site. SOCVR is one we know of that's on site, and while that does have tacit approval, it doesn't mean that there may not be problems caused by the group's actions. My recommendation would be not to interpret this as solely about SOCVR, as while I have my issues with it, it's not the only way people can organize and vote on questions/answers, and mods should be prepped to deal with it.
    – Makoto
    Jul 14 '17 at 17:25
4

Often, in my excursions into the VLQ (very low quality) review, I find answers that have been flagged that consist only of a code-block.

Are these answers low quality? Should they be flagged? How would you handle these cases?

1
  • 20
    Note that some of those (very short) answers are auto-flagged by the system, not by users.
    – Floern
    Jul 10 '17 at 21:41
2

When do you find yourself having to take a decision for which the community doesn't reach "consensus", how do you solve the impasse?

Would you do nothing, since there isn't consensus? Would you consult with others more knowledgeable about the issue? Flip a coin and hope for the best?

4
  • "Would you consult with others more knowledgeable about the issue" - also, who would the candidate consult with? How would they determine who could provide unbiased knowledge? That seems relevant to me.
    – S.L. Barth
    Jul 14 '17 at 12:09
  • @S.L.Barth is my very biased view that the stuff community seems to not be able to reach consensus is usually of technical nature. So, I believe that having technical expertise would be a qualifier.
    – Braiam
    Jul 14 '17 at 12:19
  • 1
    As in The Community vs the Domain Expert, I suppose? You have raised your concerns about over-zealous edit rejections, more than once.
    – S.L. Barth
    Jul 14 '17 at 12:22
  • 1
    @S.L.Barth not only that, also closures/deletions, naa's, etc. The expert is mostly ignored on those issues. I recall Shog himself saying that if you don't know about something, you shouldn't be moderating that something (or something in the same vein).
    – Braiam
    Jul 14 '17 at 13:30
2

As we communicate & interact with new users every time, here's a question which I considered interesting from 2 years ago (with some edits):

A new user arguing with one or more experienced user(s) over disagreement against a question closure with certain reasons, and then starting complains to the community that this site is "unfriendly to newcomers". How do you respond properly to this situation?

0

Have you ever disagreed with administrative action taken against you (or another user) on SO? How would you, as a moderator, handle things differently?

1
  • 4
    I thought about a question like this, but if someone has never had administrative action taken against them, their answer won't be very enlightening. Jul 14 '17 at 22:46
0

TL;DR : What is your take on correct yet witty answers?

Long Version: Of the many kinds of ways of answering a question, here are two:

  1. Highly Technical.
  2. Technical and containing humour.

Given a situation where an answer in the style of 2 was down-voted and flagged by certain veteran users for being "ineffective", "misleading", "chatty" or "ambiguous", but your review of the answer does not say so, how would you respond to the situation?

In case any action that was taken from yours or the community's end, that resulted in decreasing the views of the answer, and this action was met with criticism from the poster or some of the users who upvoted it, how would you handle it?

PS: Apologies if this wasn't clear. Feel free to post a comment seeking clarification, or if you're feeling like you understood the point, please edit it. Cheers! :)

3
  • Are you talking about answers or comments?
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 17 '17 at 7:14
  • Thank you for seeking clarification. I was referring to answers that have humour in them, either in the explanation or in the example. The gist is, if humour was claimed by some to "affect the quality" of an answer, while others think it important for understanding, what ought to be the moderator's stance on the matter? Jul 17 '17 at 7:19
  • Thanks for clarifying. I won't reply with my opinion of course because this question is for the candidates to answer
    – Alon Eitan
    Jul 17 '17 at 7:21

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