2014 SO Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection [closed]

Question

In connection with the Stack Overflow moderator elections, 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.

Here's how it'll work:

• During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, February 17th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 3:00 pm EST 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.

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

• At the end of the 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. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

• Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, 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 new process, feel free to post as a comment here.

Answer 1

An asker repeatedly flags their own question and says that they need to delete it or they'll be fired, because they mistakenly posted proprietary code. There are several good answers on that question. What do you do?

Answer 2

How would you handle situations involving less than warm welcomes given to new users?

For example, a new user posts a well written first question consisting of clearly defined requirements, admission of a high level of domain ignorance, and a request for the proper solution methodology, but no actual code attempts to tackle the problem.

Said question receives many downvotes and impolite comments. The asker gets upset about the situation and complains to you directly on chat and/or meta.

What would you do?

Answer 3

How many Close Vote reviews have you done?

• As a reviewer, how do you feel about size of The Queue reaching over 110k?

• The community considers this a problem, as indicated eg by over 100 upvotes cast at Close Votes review: I'm going on a strike! - what's your take on these concerns?

• What do you think of New queue for moderators: questions that appear stuck in close votes review at SO?

 

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_{Update: over 100 upvotes, not bad for a question accused of being "not relevant to a mod's duties". Thanks to all who share concerns expressed here!}

Answer 4

How would you deal with complaints about a user successfully suggesting a large number of low-quality edits?

Answer 5

What's your take on link-only answers that get flagged for not being answers? Should they be removed when flagged, or are they worth keeping around if they answer the question?

Answer 6

As a moderator, your votes become binding. Actions you used to take like flagging, closing, and deleting will take effect immediately without any input from any other users or moderators.

How will you adapt the way you currently flag and vote to deal with this change?

Answer 7

Here is a set of general questions, 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?

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• 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?

Answer 8

If you became a moderator, would your actions be more like an Exception Handler or a Janitor?

To put it in other terms, do you think your moderation style will be more focused on allowing the community to run the site and you will only step in to handle exceptions, or do you think your style will be more focused on aggressively trying to "clean up" the site?

I realize a moderator's duties involve both roles, and that there is no right answer to this question. Identifying with either role is valid, and will appeal to different people.

Answer 9

What are your views on the chat feature?

Do you plan to spend time in the chat once you're elected and assist in its moderation?

Answer 10

Are you on drugs?

Answer 11

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do (and have done) will be seen under a different light. How do you intend to handle that responsibility?

^{(Branched off from Grace Note's backup default questions list).}

Answer 12

All of you feel that being a moderator will make you much more effective than simply being a high-rep user.

What moderator ability, if any, do you think can be given to high-rep users instead to make the community in general more effective? If this ability was given to high-rep users, would you still want to become a moderator?

Answer 13

In what situations should a moderator delete a question themselves?

Answer 14

How would you handle a single user that is upset at a moderator action you have taken?

For example, if someone posted on meta "This mod deleted my [question|answer|comment] and he is abusing his power," how would you react?

Answer 15

You see the question which was put on hold by another moderator (not with 5 votes of community). But you think that this question is good and should not be closed. What will you do?

Answer 16

There are lots of people on StackOverflow, and their opinions on "how the site should work" also differ a lot.

Some people are mainly driven by a desire to help and/or participate; as a result, their activity might not be regarded as efficient or even desirable when viewed under a certain light. For example, they might choose to answer a question even though it has been obviously (to a regular) asked and answered before.

For these people, directly helping another member has immensely more value than clicking buttons (which they might still do, the two actions are certainly not mutually exclusive).

On the other end of the scale, some people are driven by StackOverflow's "one quality answer site to rule them all" aspirations; as a result, their activity might stick to the letter of the law and make it harder for others to get the answer they came here for. For example, they might downvote/delvote questions and answers because the answer already exists and therefore another one might be detrimental to a future seeker's ability to discover the canonical version.

For these people, maintaining the site's knowledge base has immensely more value than handholding a newbie (which again, they might do).

Given that both of these groups are entitled to their place in the sun and in fact have to cooperate in order for maximum value to be produced,

How do you intend to moderate both these types of do-gooders so that everyone goes home satisfied at the end of the day rather than deciding that SO is full of undesirables? Do you have a strong opinion of your own on the matter? How will it affect your stance as a moderator?

Answer 17

You see a Meta post calling out a user for spamming the site with edits containing referral links. After checking the details, you notice that this is not your typical spammer. Instead, the user has more than 2000 reputation (and thus also able to edit posts directly).

Because of the rather nasty kind of spamming - adding his spam to posts from reputable users - people call for the user to be deleted immediately. How will you deal with this situation?

Answer 18

What is, in your opinion as a potential future moderator, the biggest problem that Stack Overflow currently faces? If you were to get elected, what actions would you take towards resolving these issues?

Answer 19

While the moderator position you're nominating yourself for is a voluntary position, there is a minimum amount of time that you would need to be available in order to be an effective moderator.

How much time would you be able to spend on mod duties at Stack Overflow, and are there any known circumstances in which this will change in the future?

Answer 20

Based on my experiences and observations as a mod, I believe that a new mod should prepare to commit to devoting one hour per day, 5 days per week to handling flags in the flag queue, for the first year. Here's why:

1. Stack Overflow raises somewhere between 1000 and 2000 flags per day
2. During any given time, only about 25% of the mods on Stack Overflow are actively moderating (we currently have sixteen mods, which means our active base is four).
3. The period of maximum productivity for new mods seems to be the first year. After that, a certain degree of burnout sets in (let's be honest).
4. It takes about an hour to handle 100 flags, once you gain some experience. The top performers handle 200 to 300 flags per day. Currently, we need to be processing about 200 more flags per day, and there are three open moderator slots.

Would you be able to make such a commitment?

Answer 21

If a post has thousands of views and at least +50 upvotes, why would it be a good or bad idea to put it under a historical lock instead of deleting it?

Given:

• The question itself is off topic or out of scope (regardless of when the community came to its senses)
• The answers are obsolete, or so many that two-thirds are variations/duplicates on the first set of answers posted.

Answer 22

You've had a bad day at work/home/school. How do you make sure you don't unfairly take it out on poor innocent posts/users?

Answer 23

How would you deal with SO users with a revenge oriented mentality? (Down voting questions and/or answers of others, those down voted or commented on them)

Answer 24

Describe your perfect day. (This is a trick question, the only correct answer is to "Flag as off topic").

In all seriousness, questions that have been edited more than 10 times by the asking party are converted to community wikis. Do you think it is appropriate to rollback the community wiki status upon request? Further, what is your opinion of this policy in general (do you see as punishing the asker for improving the question)?

Answer 25

Let's consider this situation.

You happened to close a question on Stack Overflow but the close reason wasn't very much acceptable. The OP brings up that issue on Meta where the community feels that it was wrongly closed. Another moderator walks by and opens the question, suggesting that your action was indeed questionable.

"How/What" would you, as a Moderator, "react/respond/do" in such a situation?

Answer 26

Real-time case:

A desperate user has posted the same question (some borderline between programming and configuration) to many SE sites. The problem is badly defined, but there are SCREAMINGS that this is URGENT and he BEGS FOR HELP.

The user is surely aware that posting his question everywhere to increase the chance of getting an answer is a bit of an egoistic behavior, but he thinks his problem is more important than the others.

How would you deal with such users? What measures would you take:

• simply closing as off-topic and informing that is off-topic and why
• downvoting
• comments informing that such behavior is unacceptable
• spam flags or any other attempts to block such user
• something else?

Answer 27

A user calls you out on Meta, screaming bloody murder over an action you felt was completely justified. They probably get some responses from the folks on Meta before you even learn there is an issue, but even if the community agrees your decision was perfectly fine, the user will sometimes be disgruntled and move on to other places (their blog, Reddit, Twitter) calling you all sorts of terrible things, and by your full name. (And if you were actually mistaken in your decision, then may God have mercy on your soul.)

It will most likely happen to you. There is no way to avoid it, no matter how carefully you moderate.

This aspect of moderation takes a certain amount of thick skin. Do you have it? What would you do if a conflict with a user "gets to you"?

Answer 28

Frequently it is noticed that some users who are active in the review queues on Stack Overflow are merely clicking "No Action" or "Accept". As a moderator, what action is appropriate to take against these so-called "robo-reviewers", and would you be willing to investigate instances such as these and take that action?

Answer 29

A new user has arrived and doesn't really understand the way the Stack Exchange system is supposed to work. They're complaining that people keep editing their posts and a roll back war has started on a question that they've asked.

You need to step in and moderate the situation. What actions do you take?

Answer 30

What would your stance be on educating new users on how to ask questions, and the consequences of asking too many poor-quality questions?

The growth of the Close Votes queue and the frequency of What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"? type questions here on Meta seem to indicate that we're not in an ideal position on that front.

Although we do have resources such as How to Ask (and many wonderful others), do you think we could do more to help newer users take advantage of them? Or do you think we are already doing enough as a community, and should hold new users accountable for not already taking full advantage of the resources at their disposal?