Recent on about the experience of using StackOverflow inspired me to write . I want to note right away that we will talk about Stack Overflow in Russian. My profile: .
First, I would like to talk about the reasons that prompted me to participate in the elections. If in past times in general the main reason was simply the desire to help the community, then on The reasons were much deeper.
I'm with the English-speaking SO, that I've been interacting with ours for more than 6 years. If you did not know, then the forerunner of ruSO was . Years passed, at some point SE bought the hashcode, and it turned into Stack Overflow in Russian. The user base and questions, respectively, moved to the new engine. But along with all this, the rules have changed. A lot of the questions asked on the hashcode are offtopic on SO. The participants discussed a lot at the Meta, made some joint decisions. But over time, democracy began to fade away. And at some point the situation reached its apogee.
The so-called "Resistance" appeared, which included many active participants who were dissatisfied with the current situation. For fun, at that time I made a screenshot of the top active Meta participants and highlighted in red the participants whom the administration / moderators called provocateurs. By the way, I got banned for posting this picture in the chat ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Many things happened during that period:
- Lots of chat bans.
- At some point at all .
- Many active members have stopped contributing. Eg, , TOP1 participant, left the site.
- Most of the active participants went to , where there were no general bans.
- Some of the TOP40 permanently deleted their profile.
More details (although not in everything objectively) can be found in , who recently got out of a year-long ban (¬‿¬)
These events divided the community. Many participants simply stopped believing the moderators/administration. And when I was promoted to moderators, I wanted to correct this situation. Moderators have their own private chat, there is a moderators chat for all network moderators, there is Teams for moderators. I naively hoped that with these tools I could somehow influence at least something ...
A typical moderator's day
At breakfast:
- I look at the list of all . I work on the simplest ones. Watching old alarms that were acted upon. Let's say, if the alarm was on the answer-link, the moderator left a comment with a request to add details to the answer, the author did not do this for a sufficiently long period of time, then I transfer the answer to the comment to the question. More complex anxieties, if there is time, I try to brainstorm. If over time it’s not very good, then I leave it for later. These alerts can be handled by other moderators or by myself as the opportunity arises.
- I skim the questions and . In the case of our Meta, if there are new questions and if there is an opportunity to quickly write an answer, then I write. If not, then I put it off until later, and on the way to the office (or somewhere else) I think about the answer. In the case of MSE, I select important discussions to read later at lunch, for example.
- I look through the chats.
During the day during the rest (for tea / lunch) I help to rake . Because we have few active participants in the queues, I try to help as best I can. Along the way, I look for new alarms.
At lunch, I look through the discussions on the Metas that have been postponed for later.
Naturally, all this is about. The main thing I wanted to say with this is that moderation takes quite a lot of time.
Moderators != administration
I want to immediately cancel that the moderators are not the administration. Volunteer moderators are essentially exactly the same contributors, but with additional tools to keep the community clean at bay.
Moderators may not agree with the administration (aka the Stack Exchange company). There are some frictions with specific employees of the company, most often with community managers.
What private data about you is available to the moderator
We just recently had a dispute in the English-language chat of the moderators after . Many moderators are in favor of not telling users what information about them is available to moderators, explaining that otherwise they will be able to bypass our checks. I am personally for full transparency and I believe that participants should know what information about them is available to moderators. Eat where there is a list. True, it's not all there. Full list:
- A real name that does not shine publicly anywhere.
- Linked mailboxes.
- Your IPs.
- Last used nicknames.
- Your OpenIDs.
On top of this, there are a bunch of tools. There are some pretty basic ones (for merging labels) and some pretty complex ones, like detecting puppets or voting that breaks the rules.
Alarms of all kinds
This is how the admin panel looks like with a list of alarms. We don’t get even hundreds in a day (whereas on enSO it happens up to a thousand), but this does not negate the fact that there are ambiguous alarms that cannot be resolved on the fly.
We receive alarms from users or from a bot. It’s good if it’s some kind of simple anxiety like “no more need”, but difficult situations are quite common.
For example, the “offensive” alarm, which is often put on comments. If there is really an insult there, then there are no questions - we just delete it, and write a message to the participant on behalf of the moderators (or ban in extreme cases). But what if the comment was useful, but, for example, in a comic form or with sarcasm? Such anxieties are often raised by the authors of questions that have not yet learned how to ask them.
It is also common for people to use "not the answer" anxiety. If the answer consists of only one link, then the anxiety as a whole is easy to resolve. But what if the answer seems to be on point, but wrong? As soon as possible, we will dismiss such an alarm. Because moderators don't moderate content in the way some people think. Downvoting bad answers, voting to close bad questions should be done by the community. And this aspect is not understood by many participants. In terms of closing, it is still complicated by the fact that the moderator's vote for closing is always decisive. Let me remind you that in a normal situation, 5 participants are required to close a question (or one participant with a gold badge on a tag).
There are some really funny questions.
It's quite common for people to ask questions that are not related to SO topics. They probably saw in the brief description that this is a "question-answer site", but they missed the part about "programming".
Meta
Not all moderators do this, but still. Participants periodically ask questions, which often can only be answered by a moderator:
- «»
- «»
- «?»
There are questions that any participant could potentially answer, but it is better to answer on behalf of a moderator to stop rumors (for example, “").
And, as you can guess, this leads to the fact that even when you write / reply on behalf of a regular user, your messages will be perceived by many as official. Even more, some will identify you and your actions with the administration. But let me remind you that the moderators are volunteers. In addition, they may not agree with the administration on some issues. This can be traced back to recent events related to Monica Cellio, when many moderators voluntarily left their posts (“"). As a result, there were no active moderators left on some sites in the network at all.
MSE
To discuss global issues of the entire network, there is . Previously, most of the announcement from the company was here. Bug reports, feature requests, feedback - it's all here.
As a moderator (and just as a regular participant) I monitor MSE. If I see something important, I transfer it to . If the participants report something on the local Meta, but the question concerns all sites of the network, then I translate it and publish it on the MSE.
More questions on MSE from my side were . When creating Stack Overflow, the developers did not include the possibility of localization, so a lot of problems are now popping up. The translation itself is carried out collectively by members of our community with the help of и ( from g3rv4).
Chat moderators Stack Overflow in Russian
There we discuss many situations occurring on the site. On some issues, the final decision is made collectively. In some difficult cases, we try to listen to each moderator, and only then make a final decision.
I think there are several key topics that are being discussed.
- Puppets. It is not always obvious whether a participant is a puppet. Therefore, it is better to once again discuss the issue together. The participant will not run away.
- Voting twist. A friend voted or not. Shared IP or not. All this affects the final decision. Things get even more complicated if a user with a high reputation is under suspicion.
- Discussions on the meta. Sometimes people go overboard. Criticism often borders on slander. This is also mixed with negativity, etc. Is this the first time or is the member doing this all the time? Just delete messages or ban?
- Bans. In the case of puppets / vote cheating, everything is generally clear. But the most heated discussions are usually about Meta posts (most often critical) or about potential insults. We are all different, some are more touchy than others. The same goes for moderators and community managers. And for some participants in the discussion reach hundreds of messages.
Global chat moderators from across the Stack Exchange network
Chat for hundreds of moderators, where sometimes there are quite heated discussions. Sometimes such discussions go beyond. And many see this as a problem. "».
In general, the story with Monica happened in this chat.
Chat for 400+ people, where everyone represents the site they are responsible for. People from different countries, different mentality, different religions and worldviews. Personally, I rarely communicate there, only if there is a specific question.
Puppets, cheating by voting
Moderators have tools to detect this. And it's very sad to watch when high-profile users break the rules. Many participants, when they are caught doing this, deny that this is a “friend”, “teammate from work”, etc. But trust me, tools often paint a pretty obvious picture.
Yes, there are sometimes mistakes, there are ambiguous situations. Just a trial on this topic greatly influenced the "Resistance" at the time. Then the puppet was removed (according to the moderators). But some of the participants did not agree with this.
It's all getting complicated signed by the moderator. The bottom line is that moderators cannot publicly disclose many things related to the investigation. As a consequence, participants may perceive this as a fact that the moderators have no evidence, and they simply made a mistake and are trying to hide it behind the rules.
All actions are treated as moderator actions
Other members look to you as an example. If you joke, ironically, then soon they will begin to do the same. As a great lover of irony/sarcasm, I now have to be doubly careful about what I write.
Because your actions are perceived as the actions of a moderator, then some begin to appeal to this when conflicts arise. For example, recently there was a situation when some of the participants decided that there was no place for anglicisms on Stack Overflow in Russian. The edit war has begun. And some edits from the moderator (from me) were perceived precisely as the actions of the moderator. Participants wrote that I "abuse power." But let me remind you that any participant can edit other people's messages. A bypassing the check queue.
Analytics
After к . But there you only have 3 short charts like this.
The analytics available to moderators is much more powerful and allows you to trace many patterns.
The only pity is that these charts cannot be posted publicly, there are quite a lot of interesting things there.
About the mission
Now I see that I was rather naive. It is unlikely that there will be any positive moves from SE. I briefly that the company has been moving in the wrong direction for a long time.
In general, if you look at how posts from employees are accepted by the community, then in general there are no illusions.
- «».
- Previous post (now deleted) on the same topic «» with a rating below -2000.
More recently SE , which in general is almost scored on MSE, feedback will be taken only from specially selected groups of people. The company is not particularly interested in feedback on .
PS
Now I continue to perform routine tasks for handling alarms, etc., but I still believe / hope that the company will meet the needs of the community, and then I will be able to return the breakaway part of Stack Overflow in Russian. Perhaps in the next 2020 at least something will change for the better. In the meantime, I feel that I do not justify my position as a moderator.
Source: habr.com