How to train your growing community to self-moderate

Question

Two years ago I accepted the post of a pro tem moderator on Computer Science. At that time, and that's true for any new beta SE site, there were little to no users with enough reputation to moderate. So, what did we do? Edit, close, migrate, whatever the situation called for.

I used to read, edit and tag every single post on the site for about a year. I'm no longer able to do so, due to a rising amount of posts (yay!) and time constraints on my end.

Now we are in a pickle: everybody seems to be used to not having to community-moderate.

So, here is the problem: the set of tools moderators can use are all for immediate action. There is no way to vote normally. There isn't any way to delay or delegate a decision in a platform-supported way. So the choice always is: use the sledgehammer now or accept that a bad post may stay on (assuming you don't go revisit questions much), creating bad precedents.

How can we ease users into community moderation? How can we let them feel the need for action without having to let the pile of crap grow too high?

Here are some feature ideas I have for aiding in training/engaging your community. I do not claim that all of these are great, but they should give an impression of my perspective.

• Allow moderators to flag a question to themselves with a delay.
  _{Allows us to wait for post improvement and community moderation without the danger of forgetting (letting the question slip through). Upon reflection, this may be best implemented by a personal review queue and (time-delayed) "send to queue X."}

• Allow moderators to cast unbinding votes (maybe create a time-delayed flag automatically).
  _{Shows other users that moderators think the question is unsuited and asks them to participate in the effort (review queue!). Current situation: a) question closed, no user action required or b) moderator tag-edits but does not close, hence user assumes the question has to be fine.}

• Give moderators special "flags" that move questions to certain review queues, optionally with time delay.
  _{Allows to delegate, prompt users to action. Also great for uncertain cases.}

• Have a review queue for badly tagged (only one tag; no common tag; many new tags) questions. (Or extend the low quality queue thus.)
  _{Most of my edits (that may create an impression of omnipresence, reducing the need for user moderation) are retaggings. Good tagging is important, but at this time users are not prompted to act on bad tagging.}

• Issue a badge for some number of close/reopen votes that were "sealed" by a moderator or 10k.
  _{Encourage close-voting as long as it is supported by policy. It might cause the need for a moderator-only flag "Closed by five lower-rep users" to prevent abuse.}

• Add "discuss" to moderation tools on posts. It should allow moderators/10ks to send a message to chat (or a post on meta) that asks fellow users to discuss the post.
  _{Easy way to notify users that action might be needed. Also encourages discussion.}

• Let us move comments to chat.
  _{Long overdue feature; we should be able to move meta-ish and subject-related discussions to chat (both site chat and new rooms) without having to wait for the system to do its work.}

Such features may become obsolete/undesirable later in a site's life cycle; I do believe, however, that some additional support by the platform would greatly benefit smaller sites.

Note: This discussion applies mainly to beta and maybe freshly graduated sites. Bigger sites hopefully don't have the problem and have less trouble with allowing some proportion of crap and/or offending some new users by seemingly hard treatment. Therefore, I ask you to focus the discussion on such sites; an answer stating "We don't need that on the trilogy" is not useful at all.

Answer 1

How active is your chatroom?

This may sound like a weird answer, but on Code Review we managed to get a core nucleus into the main chatroom. With the @StackExchange bot posting questions (and ideally answers too), it's very easy for everyone to spot off-topic questions, and, with an answers feed (or a dedicated user pasting links manually), it's very easy for everyone to spot bad answers that require NAA flags, and good answers that deserve some lovin'.

By hanging in the chatroom with your core community, you get to "coach" them. And when immediate consensus isn't reached, the chatroom becomes a cradle for some nice and healthy meta-site discussions.

---

I believe the rest is about taking ownership. Your community needs to feel like they own that site. Look at the numbers, share them. Beta sites are now available on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer - that's a major tool for your beta progress!

Computer Science Activity Graph

Since the above snapshot was taken, there has been progress. The graph query has changed to make it easier to read, but there is an uptick in the past couple of months, though the answer-voting needs to be maintained. New users are trending well.

_{https://data.stackexchange.com/cs/query/161411/votegraph#graph}

Looking at the site's numbers (not just the Area 51 stats!), and acting upon them, is a great way to foster ownership, and animate the chat room with subjects of discussion. A community that owns their site will want to keep it clean!

Answer 2

I don't think allowing mods to cast unbinding votes is a good idea. This is one issue where I completely changed my mind. I don't think we mods should have an easy alternative to the binding vote, we should either be sure we're doing the right thing or we shouldn't do anything at all. Having the binding vote made me think more carefully about closing, even on sites were I don't have a binding vote. That is a good thing, and I think generally a good mindset for a mod. Our actions matter, and we should be sure about them.

The part I really like is being able to set delayed flags. There are often situations that don't need immediate action, and that could be used to let the community get used to moderating themselves. I do that manually now, but making sure that nothing is missed if the community does not act would be useful.

Answer 3

Don't helicopter moderate

I used to read, edit and tag every single post on the site for about a year. I'm no longer able to do so, due to a rising amount of posts (yay!) and time constraints on my end.

You can't do this as a moderator for an extended period of time. This trains people to know, "hey the mod will do all this work!"

You want to quickly wean the site off needing you to moderate. This should happen as early as possible. During the beta, especially early, you probably have the best likelihood of finding people who will want to stick around. Most of them are familiar with how SE works.

You can't get them engaged/committed if you are already doing all the work.

Think of it like parenting

Think of the example of kids. If you do everything for them their entire childhood (kind of like a "beta" of life) and then turn them loose when they are 18, they won't know how to do anything nor be willing to do so.

But if you slowly stop doing everything for them by the time they turn 18 they are considerably better equipped for life.

Will they be perfect? No! Absolutely not! Anyone who has ever raised kids will know and affirm children.... are more likely to make mistakes in "life" than their parents could. As a parent, you will do the dishes better than your 5-year-old. But if you do the dishes for them every day until they are 18 they never will learn how and likely not do it after they turn 18.

Moderate the same way. Moderators are exception handlers. Just like parents aren't intended to run your children's lives forever, moderators shouldn't hold everyone's hand on a site.

Answer 4

Adding to what Mathieu Guindon said, you currently have 120 users with 500+ reputation (enough to cast close votes while you're in beta).

If you had a few of those with the chat room open in one of their browser tabs, you could ask them (and they could ask each other) to close questions.

You could use your existing room https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2710/computer-science for that purpose, and/or perhaps create a new room for moderation-related issues.

You could post this topic "Can you help moderate? Yes, this means you!" on your own meta-board.

You can use your "Community Bulletin" to try to reach users who only view your main page.

New feature suggestion: allow the owner of a chat room to post an '@all' message which pings every user in the room with an audible bonk.