What posts should be escalated to staff using [status-review], and how do I escalate them?

Question

For context on how this process came to be, please see our initial commitment to responding to Meta and Mods, our guidelines for the testing period, and the results of the initial test and next steps.

This post contains guidance to ensure moderators understand when to escalate issues that they feel need to be addressed by staff, and when not to. It also has some guidance for the overall community of what posts should be brought to the moderators’ attention as candidates for escalation.

The question contains guidance that is applicable for as long as this process is in effect. Answers containing the response targets and guidance specific to a given period will be posted every quarter. The answer that relates to the period currently in effect will be accepted so it's pinned to the top. Once that period has elapsed, that answer will be updated to include stats for how we did with regards to our response targets as well as some noteworthy posts.

What makes a good candidate for escalation?

New questions:

For any new question, consider the following questions:

Is the question a feature request that looks like it has community support?
Is it a bug report that others have been able to reproduce?
Is the question only fully answerable by an employee?

If you replied “yes” to at least one of the above, then that question is a good candidate for escalation.

Older questions:

We realize that there are a lot of outstanding posts all over the various Meta sites on the network that have not been addressed by staff — some of them posted a long time ago too. To ensure that the most relevant of those get surfaced and responded to, we ask that you focus mostly on resurfacing old questions that relate to either something only a Community Manager would be able to respond to, or to things currently being worked on by the various product teams as part of their quarterly roadmaps (which allows us to easily find these older discussions so that we can use them as part of our research).

So, if a post meets the guidance for new questions above, but it is not new it is more likely to be responded to if it also follows the guidance in the accepted answer, which should be the one relevant to the current quarter.

Some of these are going to be SO-specific, but most will eventually apply to all of the network sites, even if with some simplifications. In addition to those larger buckets, for each non-SO (or MSE) site in the network, the CM Team also wants to see that special feature your community has been asking to be enabled for a while now (MathJax, syntax highlighting, etc.), or that particular warning that would help your new askers — so give us a top 5 of outstanding site-specific customizations from your site, and just make sure their score is positive. Note that features that need dev time and that are only applicable to your site are unlikely to be given a high priority, unless they're in alignment with the guidance in the accepted answer (i.e., in alignment with stuff on our roadmaps).

And other old posts that fall outside of the scope of projects being worked on?

Community-specific concerns are evergreen good candidates for escalation: anything, from policies to community guidance, that only a Community Manager could reasonably respond to. This includes tweaks to help center pages, and other minor changes to site settings such as blocking tags, adjusting the question asking form, and updating site specific close reasons to fit the new format.

Old requests that have previously been declined can be reposted as new requests if you have something you can point to as a switch in the platform or culture that would render the previous reasons for declining obsolete. If you do repost one of these — no matter how old, as long as the issue is still current — be sure to link to the old declined post for historical reference, as well as to any following posts that make discussing the issue again relevant. Staff will be able to either further expand on the previous stance and reiterate why it's still relevant and valid, or make sure the request is put in front of the right team given the new circumstances.

Oh, and hopefully it is redundant to say this, but just for the sake of clarity: don’t repost old posts that fall outside of the above guidance just so they can get attention as a way to game this system, please. It'll just create more work and frustration for you, the mods, and us ^_^

How do regular users nominate a post for staff attention?

If the question meets the criteria above (and in the answer relevant to the current quarter), flag the post for moderator attention using the “in need of moderator intervention” option, making sure to provide a link to this post for context. Be as clear as you can about why you think the post is a good candidate.

To prevent overloading moderators with flags, please avoid going on flagging sprees. We want to remind you that your moderators will be the first line of people dealing with these. The CMs will work with the mods to make sure this doesn’t generate a huge increase in their workload, and try to alleviate it as much as possible — but we are also relying on you not bombarding them with tagging requests.

How do moderators escalate a post for staff attention?

How do moderators handle flags nominating a post for escalation?

Refer to the guidance above (and in the answer relevant to the current quarter) on how to tell if a post is a good candidate for escalation. Other than that, just use your judgement as you would for handling any other flag. There may be cases where you want to mark the flag as helpful but don’t feel like adding the tag is necessary - that’s fine: again, use your best judgement. If you’re not adding the tag, try to use the flag response field to explain why, so the flagger also gets some information about the decision.

If you’re unsure, talk to your fellow mods about what they think, or feel free to ping a CM in The Teachers’ Lounge for guidance. It’s OK if moderators err on the side of over-escalating issues, rather than under-escalating them: if the CM Team determines something could have been answered without having to elevate to staff, it presents a good opportunity to point moderators to where that information could have been found, as well as to tweak this guidance.

If you escalated an issue by adding the status-review tag, but something caused it to be “solved” — maybe someone from the community could actually answer it and did so; maybe a bug was really an issue on the user’s side; etc. — please ping a CM in The Teachers’ Lounge explaining the situation. We will then figure out with you what to do about that particular issue (which will likely mean removing the tag, at least).

Ok, how do moderators actually escalate a post, then?

Escalating a post is as easy as adding the status-review tag. Doing so ensures that post is picked up by a feed that puts the question on our internal tracking system.

If you are a moderator, refer to the section above (and to the answer relevant to the current quarter) describing what makes for good candidates for escalation — if a post fits, add the tag (there’s no need to go through the flagging process for regular users).

If the post already has the status-review tag, ping a CM in The Teachers’ Lounge, and we’ll add it to our system manually.

What happens once a post is escalated?

The CM Team will categorize and prioritize the post, and will then respond when they have the necessary context to do so. If they don't, they'll pass it along to the relevant team, which can be the CMs or any relevant product team. It will then be worked into that team’s existing weekly workflow, with the intent of being replied to as soon as the team can manage to.

Note that the commitment being made is to respond to as many posts as possible — that could mean answering or leaving a comment, or adding a different status tag. This doesn’t necessarily mean implementing feature requests or fixing bugs — hopefully that will sometimes happen, though.

Is there a list of the posts getting escalated using this process?

To keep track of what kind of questions are being marked for review, and what happens to them, Glorfindel has built a SEDE query listing all questions across the network which have been marked status-review during a certain period (pre-filled dates are for this process's testing period).

The fifth column is the current status of the question; you see that some of them are already resolved. If you want another time period/quarter, just enter other dates in the parameters section (YYYY-MM-DD) and hit the 'Run Query' button — note that fromDate is inclusive, and tillDate is exclusive.

Note that SEDE is updated once a week, on Sunday morning, so the results of this query are less accurate as the week progresses.

Answer index

2020:
2021:
- Jan-Mar
- Apr-Jun
- Jul-Sep
- Oct-Dec
2022:
- Jan-Mar
- Apr-Jun
- Jul-Sep
- Oct-Dec
2023:
- Jan-Mar
- Apr-Jun
- Jul-Sep
- Oct-Dec

If a past request meets the guidelines for escalation in the current month, but has already been tagged status-review in the past, how can that be escalated? Are those escalated automatically? — Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog, Commented May 29, 2020 at 19:39
Also, I've had a few past flags for escalation declined without an explanation. Is there any way for a user to contest the denial of adding the tag, if they still feel it meets the criteria? — Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog, Commented May 29, 2020 at 19:43
@SonictheStay-HomeHedgehog: If that sort of thing happens, I'd imagine you could make a meta post about it (at least for unexplained flag denials on specific site metas), as you could for any unexplained flag denial or similar issue. I'm unsure how well that'd be received on MSE, though... — V2Blast, Commented May 30, 2020 at 9:17
I noticed that Glorfindel's SEDE query shows the highest rated community site meta post in status-review is the request I added on Christianity.SE for Bible Markdown enhancements. Does the switch to commonmark hurt or help this request? And, based on your first comment, is the community score helping the prioritization at all? I think most of us would really, really like this. Mods on some of the the other religious sites said they'd like it too. — Peter Turner, Commented Jun 2, 2020 at 13:54
Stuff that was tagged status-review before we started testing this process will not get automatically escalated, @SonictheStay-HomeHedgehog, no — the upcoming guidance for older posts should clarify what to do for those. If you mean stuff that was escalated in previous periods and didn't get a response, though, then those are on our radar already and don't need to be re-escalated. — JNat, Commented Jun 2, 2020 at 14:25
Can I ask why there's such emphasis on a question being "new" for it to get attention? (I dug through the announcement and results posts but didn't find much.) The stipulation that posts need to be new just feels so... arbitrary. A request that doesn't align with the road-map but got attention quick can get a green-light, but old requests that only recently get traction don't even seem to get a chance under this system. It appears to be heavily and unnecessarily stacked against the "late bloomer" requests that take time to get traction, but that the community still values. — zcoop98, Commented Jul 6, 2021 at 23:16
The intent is not for emphasis to be on "new" questions, @zcoop98, but rather for it to be on issues that are still relevant and somewhat in alignment with our roadmaps. — JNat, Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 9:23
@JNat That's fine, and makes a lot of sense– it just seems like there's a hole for older questions to fall into (including this one, recently), where a request that's off the roadmap has support but gets denied a [status-review] tag because a moderator deems it, in accordance with these guidelines, "not new enough". That seems, to me, like an emphasis on "new", even if it's unintended, because new requests which fall outside the roadmap appear to have less hurdles to traverse than older ones do. — zcoop98, Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 14:29
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @zcoop98 — I tagged that question and left some clarifications in the comment section there. — JNat, Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 17:07
is there any change to the Oct-Dec 2023 targets due to the layoffs? or will they still be met? — starball, Commented Nov 7, 2023 at 10:02
Dunno about whether or not they'll be met, @starball, but we're not adjusting them, no — JNat, Commented Nov 7, 2023 at 15:00

Elements In Space · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-07 09:05:02Z

Oct–Dec 2023

Targets:

Respond to 70% of Meta posts from across the network to which status-review was added during this period.
Respond to Meta posts from across the network where status-review was added to it in a previous period — we will no longer have a target percentage for how many of these we respond to, but will still report the actual percentage at the end of the quarter.
- In this quarter, we will also be thinking of how this process can work better in the future, given the accumulating backlog, as well as the frequent need to resort to one-off, cross-team efforts to tackle it. Expect more updates in a separate post and/or in next quarter's update.

Guidance:

Since focus for this quarter is still being finalized, we will wait for that to be the case before posting guidance for you here.

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-09 15:19:51Z

May and June 2020

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, within 2 weeks of status-review getting added to it. [not met, only got to ~32%; see below for details]
Set targets for responding to "leftovers" from previous periods. [target: respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period]
Set targets and guidance for older posts (particularly posts not relating to current projects). [target should be encompassed by the above bullet point; guidance was edited in to the question]

Guidance:

Review Queues: any posts having to do with the general experience and mechanics of review queues; the problems users face as reviewer or moderator when it comes to the current system; any feature requests or suggestions, etc. (see this post and the others linked therein for details on our ongoing work on this).
Barriers to collaboration or participation: any posts related to product limitations that may hinder users from deeper collaboration within the community or participating on-site. Previous suggestions on ways to address these things such as educating users, best practices, ways to show appreciation, etc. are welcome.
Voting: any posts relating to general issues surrounding voting, peculiar edge-cases, or voting fraud and abuse. We're researching intentions behind voting and its impact on participation and artifact quality.
Jobs-related posts on the network: Jobs ads are shown on sites other than SO — particularly on the international SOs, and some technical sites — and these can sometimes have specific concerns/issues. Posts relating to Jobs in general on these sites are also good candidates.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 190 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

121 (~64%) got the tag added during this period; of these 47 (~39%) got a staff response (39 [~32%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 38 (~31%) got status-review removed.
69 (~36%) already had the tag on them; of these 21 (~30%) got a staff response, and 24 (~35%) got status-review removed. For a bit of nuance:
- 62 (~33% of total; ~90% of above) had their tag added to them in the previous period ("leftovers" from the testing period).
- 7 (~4% of total; ~10% of above) made their way through the process in some other ways (likely because they already had status-review added to them at some point in the past, and an edit made it get into the workflow).

New this period:

A total of 121 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 53 (~44%) of these, and the other 68 (~56%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a slightly smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-6 posts; ~-5%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the rest Metas from all over the network:

58 (~48%) from MSE.
34 (~28%) from MSO.
29 (~24%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 47 questions (~39%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 39 (~32%) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~6d 23h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~57d 9h; median of ~14h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

22 questions (~47% of above; ~18% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~2d 14.5h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~22d 14h; median of ~2h). 20 (43% of above; 16% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
39 questions (~83% of above; ~32% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~8d 18h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~57d 9h; median of ~1d 7.5h). 31 (66% of above; 26% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
34 questions (~72% of above; ~28% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~7d 19h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~57d 9h; median of ~21h). 26 (55% of above; 21% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 38 (~31%) questions got status-review removed. 35 of these got removed by staff, the other 3 by a moderator. Of these:

29 questions (~76% of above; ~24% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~3% of above; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
1 question (~3% of above; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~5% of above; ~2% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
1 question (~3% of above; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
4 questions (~11% of above; ~3% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 47 posts that got a response from staff, 30 had status-review added by staff, and the other 17 by mods:

53 tagged by staff, 30 responded, 23 unresponded
68 tagged by mods, 17 responded, 51 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 69 questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 33 (~48%) of these, and the other 36 (~52%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by network Metas, and MSO:

32 (~46%) from MSE.
11 (~16%) from MSO.
26 (~38%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 21 of these questions (~30%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~38d 12h (min. of ~1d 9h; max. of ~88d 3h; median of ~34d 3.5h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

5 questions (~23% of above; ~7% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~58d 14h (min. of ~48d 5h; max. of ~72d 21h; median of ~53d).
15 questions (~71% of above; ~22% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~30d 20h (min. of ~1d 9h; max. of ~64d 9h; median of ~34d 3h).
20 questions (~95% of above; ~29% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~39d 7h (min. of ~1d 9h; max. of ~88d 3h; median of ~26d 23h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 24 (~35%) questions got status-review removed. 23 of these got removed by staff, the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

19 questions (~79% of above; ~28% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~8% of above; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~4% of above; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
2 questions (~8% of above; ~3% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 21 posts that got a response from staff, 14 had status-review added by staff, and the other 7 by mods:

33 tagged by staff, 14 responded, 19 unresponded
36 tagged by mods, 7 responded, 29 unresponded

Will this answer include a list of all status-review posts from around the network during this period? :-) That would be a nice thing to edit in, since the numbers seem manageable enough to fit in one post, and the data is public just not easy to gather (except for you with your ticket system). — Rand al'Thor, Commented May 29, 2020 at 18:08
In the long run, it may be a bit too much to include a full list, @Randal'Thor, but I do understand why it'd be beneficial — I've added Glorfindel's query to the question body so it's featured more prominently, and I believe that should address the use case you had in mind for having a list on each answer. — JNat, Commented Jun 2, 2020 at 14:18
RE: "Respond to 50% of posts across the network" - that's a laudable goal! But is every post on an even footing for whether it gets reviewed? Or is there any weighting being applied here? If you're sorting posts by votes, for example, you might be getting the "most important" posts, but you might also be inadvertently filtering by community/site size. Or you might miss the existential community-dividing posts that have 100-odd up/down votes but a total score of '-1'. So is the post selection criteria random? Or is there a weight given to which posts to review first? — Robotnik, Commented Jun 10, 2020 at 2:24
Currently, @Robotnik, they all get eyes regardless of score, or any other weighting — all posts get the same level of attention when being reviewed to be prioritized and added to the backlog. Dunno how we're gonna do it long run, but that's how it's been happening for now. — JNat, Commented Jun 10, 2020 at 9:13
Some holidays and vacations ended up delaying this one, but I'm aiming to post some stuff before the end of this week. Apologies for the delay! — JNat, Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 8:59
I posted the guidance for July and August here, but I ran into some issues with the query to get the stats so will take a bit longer to post those (hopefully before the end of the week). — JNat, Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 9:49

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:34:01Z

September and October 2020

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, within 2 weeks of status-review getting added to it. [not met, only got to ~27%; see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~27%; see below for details]

Guidance:

New these two months:

Editor: we’re working on an upgrade to the editor. Posts surrounding usability issues with the editor, markdown, or any feature related to post creation — we’d like to hear about it.
^{_{^{_{Winter Bash is also being worked on.}}}}
Jobs-related posts on the network: Posts relating to Company Pages and Company ads are good candidates, especially given our recent Company Page updates.

And carried over from last two months:

Moderator elections: over the next few months, we'll be looking at automating some steps of our election system, as well as some other overdue tweaks to the its backend. Posts surrounding common bugs or pain points in the election system are something we wanna be looking at now, and thus good candidates for escalation.
Review Queues: any posts having to do with the general experience and mechanics of review queues; the problems users face as reviewer or moderator when it comes to the current system; any feature requests or suggestions, etc. (see this post and the others linked therein for details on our ongoing work on this).
Voting: any posts relating to general issues surrounding voting, peculiar edge-cases, or voting fraud and abuse. We're researching intentions behind voting and its impact on participation and artifact quality.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 195 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

82 (~42%) got the tag added during this period; of these 46 (~56%) got a staff response (22 [~27%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 31 (~38%) got status-review removed.
113 (~58%) already had the tag on them; of these 31 (~27%) got a staff response, and 30 (~27%) got status-review removed. For a bit of nuance:
- 113 (~58% of total; 100% of above) had their tag added to them in previous periods ("leftovers" from previous periods).
- 0 (0% of total; 0% of above) made their way through the process in some other ways (likely because they already had status-review added to them at some point in the past and an edit made it get into the workflow, or because they somehow got missed in previous periods).

New this period:

A total of 82 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 49 (~60%) of these, and the other 33 (~40%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-22 posts; ~-21%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the rest Metas from all over the network:

42 (~51%) from MSE.
25 (~30%) from MSO.
15 (~18%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 46 questions (~56%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 22 (~27%) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~5d 4.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~51d 13h; median of ~7.5h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

24 questions (~52% of above; ~29% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~3d 3h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~37d 18h; median of ~1h). 22 (48% of above; 27% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
29 questions (~63% of above; ~35% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~6d 10.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~51d 13h; median of ~13h). 24 (52% of above; 29% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
29 questions (~63% of above; ~35% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~5d 15h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~44d; median of ~13h). 23 (50% of above; 28% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 31 (~38%) questions got status-review removed. 29 of these got removed by staff, the other 2 by a moderator. Of these:

18 questions (~58% of above; ~22% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~3% of the above;~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
1 question (~3% of above; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to it.
2 questions (~7% of the above; ~2% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
2 question (~7% of above; ~2% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~7% of above; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
5 questions (~16% of above; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 46 posts that got a response from staff, 30 had status-review added by staff, and the other 16 by mods:

49 tagged by staff, 30 responded, 19 unresponded
33 tagged by mods, 16 responded, 17 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 113 questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 45 (~40%) of these, and the other 68 (~60%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by network Metas, and MSO:

49 (~43%) from MSE.
21 (~19%) from MSO.
43 (~38%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 31 of these questions (~27%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~80d 3h (min. of ~4d; max. of ~168d; median of ~83d 23h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

18 questions (~58% of above; ~16% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~70d 6h (min. of ~4d; max. of ~113d 17h; median of ~80d 10h).
17 questions (~55% of above; ~15% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~93d 2h (min. of ~4d 22h; max. of ~168d; median of ~84d 17h).
26 questions (~84% of above; ~23% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~78d 12h (min. of ~4d; max. of ~168d; median of ~76d 7.5h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 30 (~27%) questions got status-review removed. 28 of these got removed by staff, the other 2 by a moderator. Of these:

17 questions (~57% of above; ~15% of total) got status-completed added to them.
3 questions (~10% of above; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~3% of above; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
4 questions (~13% of above; ~4% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
3 questions (~10% of above; ~3% of total) got status-planned added to them.
2 questions (~7% of above; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 31 posts that got a response from staff, 7 had status-review added by staff, and the other 24 by mods:

45 tagged by staff, 7 responded, 38 unresponded
68 tagged by mods, 24 responded, 44 unresponded

(I'm just posting so it gets stuck to the top, JNat gets the actual credit. :D) — Catija, Commented Oct 9, 2020 at 15:23
Is there a plan to get closer to hitting the targets next 2 months? If I look at the stats, last 2 answers (4 months) don't look great. — Mast, Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 19:41
See the last target in the Nov./Dec. post, @Mast: "Make changes to the internal process and reporting, to align this process with our quarterly planning/roadmap. The process as outlined here has the intake of requests portion figured out, but work is needed on our internal workflows to better meet the targets we're setting." — JNat, Commented Nov 6, 2020 at 15:22

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:34:16Z

Jul-Sep 2021

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~70% (2% increase from last period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~49% (4% increase from last period); see below for details]
There's been a slowly growing backlog of status-deferred and status-planned questions. We'll be coming up with a plan to try to tackle those, in addition to the stuff tagged status-review. [not met; various new staff onboarding and summer vacations shifted priorities on this front slightly; transposing this goal to Q4 2021]

Guidance (see Q3 roadmap for more details):

Outdated answers: how to best increase the discoverability of newer answers so they have a better chance of rising to the top, and how to make it clearer which technology versions a particular answer applies to.
New user onboarding: how to best guide new users through the process of successfully asking their first questions and engaging with the Stack Overflow community to get the support and information they need to start off on the right foot.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 190 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

115 (~61%) got the tag added during this period; of these 80 (~70%) got a staff response (75 [~65%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 77 (~67%) got status-review removed.
75¹ (~39%) already had the tag on them; of these 37 (~49%) got a staff response, and 39 (~52%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 115 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 55 (~48%) of these, and the other 60 (~52%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-50 posts; ~-30%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by the various Metas from all over the network, and MSO:

53 (~46%) from MSE.
29 (~25%) from MSO.
33 (~29%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 80 questions (~70%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 75 (~65% of total; 94% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~3d 10h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~38d 21h; median of ~6h). Of these:

18 questions (~23% of responded; ~16% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~8d 6h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~38d 21h; median of ~2d 7h). 14 (~18% of responded; ~12% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
30 questions (~38% of responded; ~26% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~25h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~13d 20h; median of ~1h). 30 (~38% of responded; ~26% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
32 questions (~40% of responded; ~28% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit to remove the status-review tag (and/or add another status tag). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~2d 22h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~30d 7h; median of ~27h). 31 (~39% of responded; ~27% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 77 (~67%) questions got status-review removed. 68 of these got removed by staff, and the other 9 by a moderator. Of these:

52 questions (~68% of untagged; ~45% of total) got status-completed added to them.
4 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
2 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
10 questions (~13% of untagged; ~9% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
3 questions (~4% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-planned added to them.
6 questions (~8% of untagged; ~5% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period was also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 80 posts that got a response from staff, 42 had status-review added by staff, and the other 38 by mods:

55 tagged by staff, 42 responded, 13 unresponded
60 tagged by mods, 38 responded, 22 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 75¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 20 (~27%) of these, and the other 55 (~73%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from network Metas, followed by MSE, and MSO:

22 (~29%) from MSE.
15 (~20%) from MSO.
38 (~51%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 37 of these questions (~49%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~140d 19h (min. of ~25h; max. of ~445d 7h; median of ~67d 15h). Of these:

5 questions (~14% of responded; ~7% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~117d 23h (min. of ~6d 18h; max. of ~345d 10h; median of ~48d 21h).
3 questions (~8% of responded; ~4% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~33d 23h (min. of ~8d 19h; max. of ~81d 22h; median of ~11d 3h).
29 questions (~78% of responded; ~39% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit to remove the status-review tag (and/or add another status tag). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~155d 18h (min. of ~25h; max. of ~445d 7h; median of ~70d 23h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 39 (~52%) questions got status-review removed. 37 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 2 by a moderator. Of these:

15 questions (~38% of untagged; ~20% of total) got status-completed added to them.
4 questions (~10% of untagged; ~5% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
13 questions (~33% of untagged; ~17% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-planned added to them.
4 questions (~10% of untagged; ~5% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 37 posts that got a response from staff, 9 had status-review added by staff, and the other 28 by mods:

20 tagged by staff, 9 responded, 11 unresponded
55 tagged by mods, 28 responded, 27 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't match the sum of unresponded posts reported in the previous period. I considered "unresponded" to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-25 15:38:27Z

Apr-Jun 2021

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~68% (no change from previous period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~45% (14% drop from previous period); see below for details]
As a follow-up to last quarter's ticket smash, we've been going through outstanding requests on a weekly basis, with the intention of reducing the Public Platform team's backlog. We plan to continue doing this during this quarter. [partially met; while we continued to go through the backlog, we failed to meet the 75% goal as seen above]

Guidance (see Q2 roadmap for more details):

Review Queues: last quarter, we overhauled the Review Queue interface and refreshed each queue to provide reviewers with more context to make deliberate decisions on review tasks. This quarter, we'll be releasing an onboarding experience to provide reviewers with better guidance to make their reviewing experience more successful, and we'll also be working on optimizing review queue workflows to address some long standing pain points with how effectively posts pass through various queues. Please highlight posts that are relevant to that project. See the post for more details.
Outdated Answers: last quarter, we kicked off a project to begin tackling the issue of outdated answers, and we ran a survey to better understand the various use cases that might cause an answer to be out of date. This quarter we plan to release a temporary flagging mechanism that will allow users to flag and classify out-of-date or less-than-optimal answers, so that we can collect a data set to analyze. The data we gather will allow us to quantify how pervasive the issue of outdated answers is on Stack Overflow. If you have posts that are relevant to that discovery, we'd like to see 'em. See this post for more details.
New User Onboarding: we're kicking off discovery on onboarding, so if you have posts surrounding issues of educating new users about the platform and guiding them through their first critical experiences and setting them up for success, please escalate them.
Requests to test 3-vote close and reopen on sites: we're currently running tests to change the number of votes needed to close or reopen a post from 5 to 3 on 13 sites. Sites interested in testing this should have moderators status-review a request that has the support of the community.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 236 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

165 (~70%) got the tag added during this period; of these 113 (~68%) got a staff response (89 [~54%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 118 (~72%) got status-review removed.
71 (~30%) already had the tag on them; of these 32 (~45%) got a staff response, and 31 (~44%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 165 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 61 (~37%) of these, and the other 104 (~63%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+71 posts; ~+76%).

The majority of questions came from the various Metas from all over the network, followed by MSE, and MSO:

51 (~31%) from MSE.
30 (~18%) from MSO.
84 (~51%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 113 questions (~68%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 89 (~54% of total; 79% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~9d 13h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~82d 16h; median of ~50h). Of these:

26 questions (~23% of responded; ~16% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~9d (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~45d 15h; median of ~2d 15h). 21 (19% of responded; 13% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
35 questions (~31% of responded; ~21% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~2d 20h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~16d 9h; median of ~5h). 33 (29% of responded; ~20% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
52 questions (~51% of responded; ~38% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~14d 15h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~82d 16h; median of ~5d 18h). 35 (31% of responded; 21% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 118 (~72%) questions got status-review removed. 103 of these got removed by staff, and the other 15 by a moderator. Of these:

62 questions (~53% of untagged; ~38% of total) got status-completed added to them.
3 question (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
14 questions (~12% of untagged; ~8% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
18 questions (~15% of untagged; ~11% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
10 questions (~8% of untagged; ~6% of total) got status-planned added to them.
1 question (~1% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-reproduced added to them.
8 questions (~7% of untagged; ~5% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period was also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 113 posts that got a response from staff, 51 had status-review added by staff, and the other 62 by mods:

61 tagged by staff, 51 responded, 10 unresponded
104 tagged by mods, 62 responded, 42 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 71¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 26 (~37%) of these, and the other 45 (~63%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from network Metas, followed by MSE, and MSO:

27 (~38%) from MSE.
15 (~21%) from MSO.
29 (~41%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 32 of these questions (~45%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~214d (min. of ~8d 19h; max. of ~415d 2h; median of ~233d 3h). Of these:

9 questions (~28% of responded; ~13% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~132d 19h (min. of ~8d 19h; max. of ~308d 6h; median of ~79d 9h).
23 questions (~72% of responded; ~32% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~245d 19h (min. of ~11d 14h; max. of ~415d 2h; median of ~262d 4h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 31 (~44%) questions got status-review removed. 29 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 2 by a moderator. Of these:

12 questions (~39% of untagged; ~17% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~6% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
7 questions (~23% of untagged; ~10% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
9 questions (~29% of untagged; ~13% of total) got status-planned added to them.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods was deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 32 posts that got a response from staff, 13 had status-review added by staff, and the other 19 by mods:

26 tagged by staff, 13 responded, 13 unresponded
45 tagged by mods, 19 responded, 26 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ If you're paying attention to previous posts, you maybe expected this number to be 78. Some posts have since been deleted, though, so I just removed them from the total count, instead of counting them as "responded" in some way. Furthermore, we tweaked the query used to pull the data for these reports, so reports from here on are actually more accurate than previous ones... which is to say that between Jan-Mar and Apr-Jun numbers, Apr-Jun's (and any future quarters') numbers are more accurate.

Are you considering implementing more sites to test on while the test is already running? Or will they be considered when a decision has been made based on the outcome of the test? — Luuklag, Commented May 10, 2021 at 14:35
@Luuklag What I'm learning in just the first bit of these tests and the great discussions around them is that there are a lot of factors I haven't really thought about and, for that reason, I'd much rather finish the test and look at the data before testing on more sites because it may give insights into where these test are more likely to be successful and where they have shown little or no improvement. :) — Catija, Commented May 10, 2021 at 14:40
Thanks for the reply Catija, just trying to make sure people don't get their "hopes up" to end up being disappointed afterwards. — Luuklag, Commented May 10, 2021 at 14:51

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-25 15:38:43Z

Jan-Mar 2021

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~68%; see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, got to ~59%; see below for details]
We'll be having a "ticket smash" in February to go over the backlog, and try to respond to as many of the yet-to-be-responded-to posts as possible, in preparation for putting a new internal workflow in place. During this time, you may see a lot of tickets marked as status-deferred and status-declined, simply because they do not line up with our Q1 roadmap that defines what we are actively working on. [met; see this post for details]
Test new internal workflow, which aims to increase response rates and response times. [met and a success, as reflected by above stats' bump compared to previous periods]

Guidance (see Q1 roadmap for more details):

Editor: we're testing a new editor!. See the post for more details on how to give feedback on it.
Review Queues: we're in the midst of making changes to Review Queues. The next phase is around educating new users about how to do reviews. Please highlight posts that are relevant to that project. See the post for more details.
Outdated Answers: we're starting discovery surrounding the problem of outdated answers and how to address identifying, surfacing, and encouraging updating them in February. If you have posts that are relevant to that discovery, we'd like to see 'em.
New User Onboarding: we're gonna kick off discovery on onboarding in February, so if you have posts surrounding issues of educating new users about the platform and guiding them through their first critical experiences and set them up for success, please escalate them.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 221 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

94 (~43%) got the tag added during this period; of these 68 (~72%) got a staff response (58 [~72%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 70 (~75%) got status-review removed.
127 (~57%) already had the tag on them; of these 75 (~59%) got a staff response, and 74 (~58%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 94 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 35 (~37%) of these, and the other 59 (~63%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+44 posts; ~+88%).¹

The majority of questions came from MSE, the various Metas from all over the network, and MSO:

42 (~45%) from MSE.
24 (~25%) from MSO.
28 (~30%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 68 questions (~72%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 58 (~62%) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~7d 16.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~70d; median of ~2d 7.5h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

40 questions (~59% of above; ~43% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~4d 20h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~36d 3h; median of ~1d 19h). 36 (53% of above; ~38% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
48 questions (~71% of above; ~51% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~8d 13.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~70d; median of ~21h). 36 (53% of above; 38% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
62 questions (~91% of above; ~66% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~8d 20.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~70d; median of ~3d 3h). 48 (71% of above; 51% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 70 (~75%) questions got status-review removed. 61 of these got removed by staff, and the other 9 by a moderator. Of these:

39 questions (~56% of above; ~42% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~1% of above; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
3 questions (~4% of above; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
12 questions (~17% of above; ~13% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~3% of above; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
14 questions (~20% of above; ~15% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 68 posts that got a response from staff, 31 had status-review added by staff, and the other 37 by mods:

35 tagged by staff, 31 responded, 4 unresponded
59 tagged by mods, 37 responded, 22 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 127² questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 59 (~47%) of these, and the other 68 (~53%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by network Metas, and MSO:

59 (~47%) from MSE.
30 (~24%) from MSO.
38 (~30%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 75 of these questions (~59%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~187.5d (min. of ~13d 1h; max. of ~345d 8h; median of ~161d 16h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

16 questions (~21% of above; ~13% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~120d 12h (min. of ~13d 1h; max. of ~259d 8h; median of ~134d 20h).
61 questions (~81% of above; ~48% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~201d 2h (min. of ~28d 3h; max. of ~345d 8h; median of ~187d 16h).
73 questions (~97% of above; ~58% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~190d 17h (min. of ~28d 3h; max. of ~345d 8h; median of ~175d 15h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 74 (~58%) questions got status-review removed. 74 of these got removed by staff, none by a moderator. Of these:

29 questions (~39% of above; ~23% of total) got status-completed added to them.
17 questions (~23% of above; ~13% of total) got status-declined added to them.
3 questions (~4% of above; ~2% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
18 questions (~24% of above; ~14% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
5 questions (~7% of above; ~4% of total) got status-planned added to them.
2 questions (~3% of above; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 75 posts that got a response from staff, 38 had status-review added by staff, and the other 37 by mods:

59 tagged by staff, 38 responded, 21 unresponded
68 tagged by mods, 37 responded, 31 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ It's worth noting that we changed our reporting periods from 2 month periods to full quarters, though.
² If you're paying attention to previous posts, you maybe expected this number to be 129. Some posts have since been deleted, though, so I just removed them from the total count, instead of counting them as "responded" in some way.

So.... updates will come in Q2? (April?) Sorry for sarcasm, but this really makes me sad. If you can't keep up with this whole thing it's fine, I really don't blame you or any other staff member, but please.... let us know, and put an end to this charade. — Shadow Wizard, Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 12:47
The election system is also being worked on, should posts regarding that also be illegible @JNat — Luuklag, Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 11:50
Those were included in September/October 2020, @Luuklag, while discovery work was underway — if you have stuff surrounding elections that's about actual bugs, for instance, it might be worth escalating as they may be addressed by the dev work already underway; if it's about feature requests... you can escalate, but also be aware that discovery work is done, and actual dev work is currently happening, so it may be that the feature doesn't make its way into the work being done. — JNat, Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 12:01
RE: New User onboarding, Arqade has a meta-tag specifically for issues surrounding this: [new-users]. Hope that helps :) — Robotnik, Commented Apr 13, 2021 at 5:32

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:34:53Z

Oct-Dec 2021

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~70%; see below for details]
For this quarter, we are temporarily suspending the goal to respond to Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. This is due to the holidays near the end of the year along with a bandwidth and staffing shortage on the Public Platform team. We plan to pick this target back up on Q1 2022. ["met/not met" not applicable]
There's been a slowly growing backlog of status-deferred and status-planned questions. We'll be coming up with a plan to try to tackle those, in addition to the stuff tagged status-review. [met, item got roadmapped for Q1 2022; more details to come]

Guidance (see Q4 Community roadmap for more details, and stay tuned for the Public Platform Q4 roadmap post for even more details):

3-vote close and reopen: back in Q2 2021 we requested that communities interested in taking part in an experiment to lower the number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3 escalate posts requesting that change for CM attention. Catija has since concluded that experimented and posted its results here, so any communities interested in having their close/reopen threshold lowered to 3 votes should have moderators status-review a request that has the support of the community, if they haven't done so already in the past.
Outdated answers: how to best increase the discoverability of newer answers so they have a better chance of rising to the top, and how to make it clearer which technology versions a particular answer applies to.
New user onboarding: how to best guide new users through the process of successfully asking their first questions and engaging with the Stack Overflow community to get the support and information they need to start off on the right foot.
Inbox notifications: how we might improve the Inbox to better help users triage and respond to their notifications.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 201 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

137 (~68%) got the tag added during this period; of these 96 (~70%) got a staff response (82 [~60%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 87 (~64%) got status-review removed.
64¹ (~32%) already had the tag on them; of these 22 (~34%) got a staff response, and 21 (~33%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 137 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 69 (~50%) of these, and the other 68 (~50%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+22 posts; ~+19%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by the various Metas from all over the network, and MSO:

79 (~58%) from MSE.
20 (~15%) from MSO.
38 (~28%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 96 questions (~70%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 82 (~60% of total; 85% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~5d 20h (min. of ~1m; max. of ~48d 18h; median of ~20h). Of these:

27 questions (~28% of responded; ~20% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~10d 20h (min. of ~1m; max. of ~48d 18h; median of ~2d 22h). 18 (~19% of responded; ~13% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
36 questions (~38% of responded; ~26% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~3d 13h (min. of ~1m; max. of ~35d 18h; median of ~2h). 33 (~34% of responded; ~24% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
33 questions (~34% of responded; ~24% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~4d 6h (min. of ~1m; max. of ~35d 19h; median of ~2d 2h). 31 (~32% of responded; ~23% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 87 (~64%) questions got status-review removed. 86 of these got removed by staff, and the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

65 questions (~75% of untagged; ~47% of total) got status-completed added to them.
3 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
4 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
6 questions (~7% of untagged; ~4% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
3 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
6 questions (~7% of untagged; ~4% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 question that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 96 posts that got a response from staff, 53 had status-review added by staff, and the other 43 by mods:

69 tagged by staff, 53 responded, 16 unresponded
68 tagged by mods, 43 responded, 25 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 64¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 21 (~33%) of these, and the other 43 (~67%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from network Metas, followed by MSE, and MSO:

24 (~38%) from MSE.
15 (~23%) from MSO.
25 (~39%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 22 of these questions (~34%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~104d 5h (min. of ~2d 10h; max. of ~372d 5h; median of ~58d 20h). Of these:

9 questions (~41% of responded; ~14% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~80d 21h (min. of ~23d 1h; max. of ~219d 22h; median of ~47d 3h).
1 question (~5% of responded; ~2% of total) had its first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~86d 15h (min. of ~86d 15h; max. of ~86d 15h; median of ~86d 15h).
12 questions (~55% of responded; ~19% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~123d 3h (min. of ~2d 10h; max. of ~372d 5h; median of ~77d 11h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 21 (~33%) questions got status-review removed. All 21 of these got removed by staff, and none by a moderator. Of these:

15 questions (~71% of untagged; ~23% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~5% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
2 questions (~10% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~5% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~10% of untagged; ~3% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 22 posts that got a response from staff, 5 had status-review added by staff, and the other 17 by mods:

21 tagged by staff, 5 responded, 16 unresponded
43 tagged by mods, 17 responded, 26 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't match the sum of unresponded posts reported in the previous period. I considered "unresponded" to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:36:12Z

Apr—Jun 2022

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~67% (5% bump from last period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, got to ~30% (6% bump from last period); see below for details]

Guidance:

Outdated answers: how to best increase the discoverability of newer answers so they have a better chance of rising to the top.
New user onboarding: how to best guide new users through the process of successfully asking their first questions and engaging with the Stack Overflow community to get the support and information they need to start off on the right foot. We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 250 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

125 (~50%) got the tag added during this period; of these 84 (~67%) got a staff response (67 [~54%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 82 (~66%) got status-review removed.
125¹ (~50%) already had the tag on them; of these 38 (~30%) got a staff response, and 38 (~30%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 125 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 58 (~46%) of these, and the other 67 (~54%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a lower amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-58 posts; ~-32%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

57 (~46%) from MSE.
42 (~34%) from MSO.
26 (~21%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 84 questions (~67%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 67 (~54% of total; ~80% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~8d 12h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~64d 0h; median of ~1d 0h). Of these:

26 questions (~31% of responded; ~21% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~10d 8h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~64d 0h; median of ~1d 8h). 19 (~23% of responded; ~15% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
30 questions (~36% of responded; ~24% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~4d 1h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~61d 3h; median of ~0.5h). 28 (~33% of responded; ~22% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
28 questions (~33% of responded; ~22% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~11d 13h (min. of ~1h; max. of ~57d 9h; median of ~5d 4h). 20 (~24% of responded; ~16% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 82 (~66%) questions got status-review removed. 75 of these got removed by staff, and the other 7 by a moderator. Of these:

62 questions (~76% of untagged; ~50% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~1% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
4 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
1 question (~1% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to it.
6 questions (~7% of untagged; ~5% of total) got status-planned added to them.
6 questions (~7% of untagged; ~5% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 84 posts that got a response from staff, 45 had status-review added by staff, and the other 39 by mods:

58 tagged by staff, 45 responded, 13 unresponded
67 tagged by mods, 39 responded, 28 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 125¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 51 (~41%) of these, and the other 74 (~59%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by the network Metas, and MSO:

60 (~48%) from MSE.
27 (~22%) from MSO.
38 (~30%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 38 of these questions (~30%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~156d 6h (min. of ~6d 3h; max. of ~750d 0h; median of ~79d 2h). Of these:

21 questions (~55% of responded; ~17% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~140d 18h (min. of ~6d 3h; max. of ~750d 0h; median of ~59d 13h).
3 questions (~8% of responded; ~2% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~361d 20h (min. of ~98d 9h; max. of ~564d 15h; median of ~422d 12h).
14 questions (~37% of responded; ~11% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~135d 11h (min. of ~40d 21h; max. of ~740d 11h; median of ~94d 9h).

Many of the responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 38 (~30%) questions got status-review removed. 33 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 5 by a moderator. Of these:

27 questions (~71% of untagged; ~22% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
5 questions (~13% of untagged; ~4% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~5% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to it.
2 questions (~5% of untagged; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods was deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 38 posts that got a response from staff, 16 had status-review added by staff, and the other 22 by mods:

51 tagged by staff, 16 responded, 35 unresponded
74 tagged by mods, 22 responded, 52 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

As usual, I'm taking credit for JNat's work so this answer can be pinned. — Catija, Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 13:27
So can we get jul-sep a bit earlier in the period then this one ;) I know Jnat was away for a bit, but a bit sooner next period would be appreciated. — Luuklag, Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 13:30

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-11 17:31:43Z

Jul—Sep 2023

Targets:

Respond to 70% of Meta posts from across the network to which status-review was added during this period. [not met, got to ~61% (+9% change from previous period); see below for details]
Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, got to ~5% (-3% change from previous period); see below for details]

Guidance:

Suspicious voting tools - We recently released suspicious voting tools (/admin/show-suspicious-votes-v2) for moderators. If you are a moderator, please let us know if you have any feedback here.
Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve. We'll be communicating new experiments and updates to the initiative in this Meta post.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 331 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

97 (~29%) got the tag added during this period; of these 59 (~61%) got a staff response (49 [~51%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 46 (~47%) got status-review removed.
234¹ (~71%) already had the tag on them; of these 11 (~5%) got a staff response, and 10 (~4%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 97 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 47 (~48%) of these, and the other 50 (~52%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-27 posts; ~-22%)

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO and the various Metas from all over the network:

58 (~60%) from MSE.
23 (~24%) from MSO.
16 (~16%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 59 questions (~61%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 49 (~51% of total; ~83% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~8d 8h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~81d 12h; median of ~17h). Of these:

13 questions (~22% of responded; ~13% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~20d 9h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~81d 12h; median of ~13d 6h). 8 (~14% of responded; ~8% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
30 questions (~51% of responded; ~31% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~3d 1h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~32d 8h; median of ~2.5h). 28 (~47% of responded; ~29% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
16 questions (~27% of responded; ~16% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~8d 13h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~43d 5h; median of ~1d 16h). 13 (~22% of responded; ~13% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 46 (~47%) questions got status-review removed. 45 of these got removed by staff, and the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

33 questions (~72% of untagged; ~34% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
2 questions (~4% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
1 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to them.
1 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-reproduced added to them.
7 questions (~15% of untagged; ~7% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

2 questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 59 posts that got a response from staff, 30 had status-review added by staff, and the other 29 by mods:

47 tagged by staff, 30 responded, 17 unresponded
50 tagged by mods, 29 responded, 21 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 234¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 90 (~38%) of these, and the other 144 (~62%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO and the various Metas from all over the network:

124 (~53%) from MSE.
78 (~33%) from MSO.
32 (~14%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 11 of these questions (~5%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~55d 8h (min. of ~14d 8h; max. of ~107d 16h; median of ~49d 7h). Of these:

8 questions (~73% of responded; ~3% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~60d 18h (min. of ~14d 8h; max. of ~107d 16h; median of ~63d 21h).
1 questions (~9% of responded; ~0% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~43d 19h (min. of ~43d 19h; max. of ~43d 19h; median of ~43d 19h).
2 questions (~18% of responded; ~1% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~39d 13h (min. of ~29d 20h; max. of ~49d 7h; median of ~39d 13h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 10 (~4%) questions got status-review removed. 9 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 1 by a moderator. Of these:

9 questions (~90% of untagged; ~4% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 questions (~10% of untagged; ~0% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.

0 question that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 11 posts that got a response from staff, 5 had status-review added by staff, and the other 6 by mods:

90 tagged by staff, 5 responded, 85 unresponded
144 tagged by mods, 6 responded, 138 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

Note: The SEDE query for listing [status-review] questions was updated during this quarter due to an issue related to international sites. If possible, I'd appreciate if you could review old [status-review] questions that may have been overlooked. Here is a list of such questions: data.stackexchange.com/meta.stackexchange/query/1779724/… — nekketsuuu, Commented Sep 2, 2023 at 14:07
The internal queries we use take this into account, and I can verify that international SOs' Meta posts are safely making it to our system, @nekketsuuu ^_^ — JNat, Commented Oct 11, 2023 at 17:33

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-09 15:19:59Z

July and August 2020

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, within 2 weeks of status-review getting added to it. [not met, only got to ~21%; see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~44%; see below for details]

Guidance:

New these two months:

Moderator elections: over the next few months, we'll be looking at automating some steps of our election system, as well as some other overdue tweaks to the its backend. Posts surrounding common bugs or pain points in the election system are something we wanna be looking at now, and thus good candidates for escalation.

And carried over from last two months:

Review Queues: any posts having to do with the general experience and mechanics of review queues; the problems users face as reviewer or moderator when it comes to the current system; any feature requests or suggestions, etc. (see this post and the others linked therein for details on our ongoing work on this).
Barriers to collaboration or participation: any posts related to product limitations that may hinder users from deeper collaboration within the community or participating on-site. Previous suggestions on ways to address these things such as educating users, best practices, ways to show appreciation, etc. are welcome.
Voting: any posts relating to general issues surrounding voting, peculiar edge-cases, or voting fraud and abuse. We're researching intentions behind voting and its impact on participation and artifact quality.
Jobs-related posts on the network: Jobs ads are shown on sites other than SO — particularly on the international SOs, and some technical sites — and these can sometimes have specific concerns/issues. Posts relating to Jobs in general on these sites are also good candidates, especially given our recent jobs-related adjustments for technical SE sites.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 230 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

104 (~45%) got the tag added during this period; of these 62 (~60%) got a staff response (22 [~21%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 57 (~55%) got status-review removed.
126 (~55%) already had the tag on them; of these 55 (~44%) got a staff response, and 58 (~46%) got status-review removed. For a bit of nuance:
- 122 (~53% of total; ~97% of above) had their tag added to them in the previous period ("leftovers" from previous periods).
- 4 (~2% of total; ~3% of above) made their way through the process in some other ways (likely because they already had status-review added to them at some point in the past, and an edit made it get into the workflow).

New this period:

A total of 104 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 58 (~56%) of these, and the other 46 (~44%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-17 posts; ~-14%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the rest Metas from all over the network:

61 (~59%) from MSE.
28 (~27%) from MSO.
15 (~14%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 62 questions (~60%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 22 (~21%) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~9d 3h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~34d 23h; median of ~5d 2h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

36 questions (~58% of above; ~35% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~10d (min. of ~1min; max. of ~34d 23h; median of ~4d 9.5h). 24 (67% of above; 23% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
36 questions (~58% of above; ~35% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~7d 12.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~27d 7h; median of ~1d 3h). 27 (44% of above; 26% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
56 questions (~90% of above; ~54% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~9d 13.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~34d 22; median of ~5d 3hh). 39 (63% of above; 38% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 57 (~55%) questions got status-review removed. 56 of these got removed by staff, the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

37 questions (~65% of above; ~36% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~2% of above; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to them.
11 question (~19% of above; ~11% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
4 questions (~7% of above; ~4% of total) got status-planned added to them.
4 questions (~7% of above; ~4% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 62 posts that got a response from staff, 37 had status-review added by staff, and the other 25 by mods:

58 tagged by staff, 37 responded, 21 unresponded
46 tagged by mods, 25 responded, 21 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 126 questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 47 (~37%) of these, and the other 79 (~63%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by network Metas, and MSO:

56 (~44%) from MSE.
26 (~21%) from MSO.
44 (~35%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 55 of these questions (~44%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~86d 13.5h (min. of ~37d 11h; max. of ~147d 6h; median of ~77d 1h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

24 questions (~44% of above; ~19% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~84d 8h (min. of ~37d 11h; max. of ~147d 6h; median of ~75d).
23 questions (~42% of above; ~18% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~86d 17h (min. of ~42d 10h; max. of ~141d; median of ~74d 6h).
53 questions (~96% of above; ~42% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~87d 12h (min. of ~37d 11h; max. of ~147d 6h; median of ~81d 5h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 58 (~46%) questions got status-review removed. 56 of these got removed by staff, the other 2 by a moderator. Of these:

25 questions (~43% of above; ~20% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~2% of above; ~1% of total) for status-bydesign added to them.
4 questions (~7% of above; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
4 questions (~7% of above; ~3% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
15 questions (~26% of above; ~12% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
5 questions (~9% of above; ~4% of total) got status-planned added to them.
4 questions (~7% of above; ~3% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 55 posts that got a response from staff, 24 had status-review added by staff, and the other 31 by mods:

47 tagged by staff, 24 responded, 23 unresponded
79 tagged by mods, 31 responded, 48 unresponded

JNat, since you are also the asker of this question the accepted answer does not get pinned to the top. Perhaps something to consider for the next iteration of this post. — Luuklag, Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 10:45
I am aware, yes. We'll prolly have someone else post it next time — since it's just the two answers at the moment, it didn't seem like a big problem to me :) — JNat, Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 10:58
Thats why I didn't suggest post disassociation / re-association ;) Also because the drama that came with that last time ;) — Luuklag, Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 11:30

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-14 18:49:30Z

Jan-Mar 2022

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~62% (8% drop from last period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, got to ~24%; see below for details]
There's been a slowly growing backlog of status-deferred and status-planned questions. We'll be sharing a plan to tackle those, in addition to the stuff tagged status-review. This plan should also address posts that are tagged status-review, status-deferred, and status-planned from before this process was put in place. [not met, no plan was shared; there has been some more internal restructuring and a plan should be shared in Jul.-Sep. 2022]

Guidance:

Outdated answers: how to best increase the discoverability of newer answers so they have a better chance of rising to the top, and how to make it clearer which technology versions a particular answer applies to.
New user onboarding: how to best guide new users through the process of successfully asking their first questions and engaging with the Stack Overflow community to get the support and information they need to start off on the right foot.
Inbox notifications: how we might improve the Inbox to better help users triage and respond to their notifications.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 266 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

183 (~69%) got the tag added during this period; of these 114 (~62%) got a staff response (94 [~51%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 102 (~56%) got status-review removed.
83 (~31%) already had the tag on them; of these 20 (~24%) got a staff response, and 23 (~28%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 183 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 93 (~51%) of these, and the other 90 (~49%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+46 posts; ~+34%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

105 (~57%) from MSE.
41 (~22%) from MSO.
37 (~20%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 114 questions (~62%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 94 (~51% of total; ~82% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~8d 2h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~68d 2h; median of ~11h). Of these:

36 questions (~32% of responded; ~20% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~7d 7h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~68d 2h; median of ~9h). 29 (~25% of responded; ~16% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
35 questions (~31% of responded; ~19% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~2d 10h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~28d 6h; median of ~1h). 33 (~29% of responded; ~18% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
43 questions (~38% of responded; ~23% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~13d 12h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~63d 20h; median of ~4d 16h). 31 (~27% of responded; ~17% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 102 (~56%) questions got status-review removed. 95 of these got removed by staff, and the other 7 by a moderator. Of these:

76 questions (~75% of untagged; ~42% of total) got status-completed added to them.
5 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
6 questions (~6% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
4 questions (~4% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
7 questions (~7% of untagged; ~4% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 114 posts that got a response from staff, 64 had status-review added by staff, and the other 50 by mods:

93 tagged by staff, 64 responded, 29 unresponded
90 tagged by mods, 50 responded, 40 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 83 questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 32 (~39%) of these, and the other 51 (~61%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by the network Metas, and MSO:

38 (~46%) from MSE.
15 (~18%) from MSO.
30 (~36%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 20 of these questions (~24%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~70d 21h (min. of ~15d 14h; max. of ~285d 4h; median of ~57d 4h). Of these:

10 questions (~50% of responded; ~12% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~69d 14h (min. of ~15d 18h; max. of ~206d 10h; median of ~58d 3h).
3 questions (~15% of responded; ~4% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~150d 4h (min. of ~24d 18h; max. of ~285d 4h; median of ~140d 13h).
7 questions (~35% of responded; ~8% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~33d 8h (min. of ~15d 14h; max. of ~58d 18h; median of ~27d 21h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 23 (~28%) questions got status-review removed. 19 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 4 by a moderator. Of these:

19 questions (~83% of untagged; ~23% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~9% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~9% of untagged; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 20 posts that got a response from staff, 8 had status-review added by staff, and the other 12 by mods:

32 tagged by staff, 8 responded, 24 unresponded
51 tagged by mods, 12 responded, 39 unresponded

"a plan should be shared in Jul.-Sep. 2022" was such a plan for [status-deferred] ever shared? — mbauman, Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 15:26
No plan was shared, @mbauman — but you can expect some updates here in the near future. — JNat, Commented Feb 8, 2023 at 12:35
@JNat Thanks! That's helpful, but that only covers the [status-review] — I would like to know what the process is for re-evaluating old [status-deferred] and [status-planned] tags. — mbauman, Commented Feb 14, 2023 at 18:15
I'm hoping we'll be doing a similar "smash" event for those other tags in 2023. Once we have more details, we'll let y'all know. — JNat, Commented Feb 14, 2023 at 19:52

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:36:45Z

Jul—Sep 2022

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~65% (1% bump from last period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, got to ~26% (4% drop from last period); see below for details]

Guidance:

New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test and investing more time in the Stacks Editor to improve the Ask Wizard. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve.
Saves (formerly Bookmarks): You've asked for updates on saving content, so we're updating bookmarks. In order to make it easier to find and reuse shared knowledge, we're making our tools more robust, including new ways to save and collect posts. Read more here, and please escalate any weird bookmarking/saving issues our way.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 278 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

153 (~55%) got the tag added during this period; of these 100 (~65%) got a staff response (78 [~51%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 91 (~59%) got status-review removed.
125¹ (~45%) already had the tag on them; of these 33 (~26%) got a staff response, and 30 (~24%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 153 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 60 (~39%) of these, and the other 93 (~61%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+28 posts; ~+22%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

83 (~54%) from MSE.
42 (~27%) from MSO.
28 (~18%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 100 questions (~65%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 78 (~51% of total; ~78% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~8d 13h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~69d 21h; median of ~1d 3h). Of these:

33 questions (~33% of responded; ~22% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~9d 1h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~42d 9h; median of ~3d 10h). 24 (~24% of responded; ~16% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
41 questions (~41% of responded; ~27% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~6d 11h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~69d 21h; median of ~2h). 36 (~36% of responded; ~24% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
26 questions (~26% of responded; ~17% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~11d 4h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~50d 2h; median of ~2d 14h). 18 (~18% of responded; ~12% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 91 (~59%) questions got status-review removed. 87 of these got removed by staff, and the other 4 by a moderator. Of these:

64 questions (~70% of untagged; ~42% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
3 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
3 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-norepro added to them.
5 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
5 questions (~5% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-planned added to them.
9 questions (~10% of untagged; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period was also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 100 posts that got a response from staff, 45 had status-review added by staff, and the other 55 by mods:

60 tagged by staff, 45 responded, 15 unresponded
93 tagged by mods, 55 responded, 38 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 125¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 45 (~36%) of these, and the other 80 (~64%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the network Metas:>

59 (~47%) from MSE.
41 (~33%) from MSO.
25 (~20%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 33 of these questions (~26%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~109d 20h (min. of ~14d 23h; max. of ~510d 9h; median of ~62d 20h). Of these:

14 questions (~42% of responded; ~11% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~129d 2h (min. of ~20d 20h; max. of ~510d 9h; median of ~91d 9h).
8 questions (~24% of responded; ~6% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~84d 6h (min. of ~23d 2h; max. of ~239d 23h; median of ~36d 10h).
11 questions (~33% of responded; ~9% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~103d 23h (min. of ~14d 23h; max. of ~297d 1h; median of ~94d 17h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 30 (~24%) questions got status-review removed. 30 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 0 by a moderator. Of these:

25 questions (~83% of untagged; ~20% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
2 questions (~7% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to it.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

0 questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 33 posts that got a response from staff, 9 had status-review added by staff, and the other 24 by mods:

45 tagged by staff, 9 responded, 36 unresponded
80 tagged by mods, 24 responded, 56 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

@JNat let me start off early about bugging you with the list for the final quarter. Perhaps we can get it a little earlier then 1/3rd into the quarter ;) — Luuklag, Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 16:24
the reminder worked, @Luuklag ;) and I fixed my internal process so that next time I start working on it earlier too — JNat, Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 16:16

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-04 20:37:12Z

Oct—Dec 2022

Targets:

Respond to 60% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [not met, only got to ~53% (~12% drop from last period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~47% (~21% bump from last period); see below for details]

Guidance:

New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve.
Saves (formerly Bookmarks): You've asked for updates on saving content, so we're updating bookmarks. In order to make it easier to find and reuse shared knowledge, we're making our tools more robust, including new ways to save and collect posts. Read more here, and please escalate any weird saving issues our way.
Moderator tooling bugs: Moderators, are there any bugs/quick fixes that we can address in moderator tooling? We'll be reaching out soon about bigger projects that are in the works, so for this, focus on small bugs rather than big overhauls. Feel free to ask about them here on MSE or on the Moderator Team.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 300 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

160 (~53%) got the tag added during this period; of these 98 (~61%) got a staff response (86 [~54%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 91 (~57%) got status-review removed.
140¹ (~47%) already had the tag on them; of these 19 (~14%) got a staff response, and 20 (~14%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 160 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 66 (~41%) of these, and the other 94 (~59%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a larger amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (+7 posts; ~+5%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

81 (~51%) from MSE.
49 (~31%) from MSO.
30 (~19%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 98 questions (~61%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 86 (~54% of total; ~88% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~4d 21h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~49d 23h; median of ~7h). Of these:

23 questions (~23% of responded; ~14% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~8d 20h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~49d 23h; median of ~3d 18h). 18 (~18% of responded; ~11% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
47 questions (~48% of responded; ~29% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~1d 15h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~30d 4h; median of ~2h). 45 (~46% of responded; ~28% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
28 questions (~29% of responded; ~18% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~7d 3h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~44d 4h; median of ~1d 17h). 23 (~23% of responded; ~14% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 91 (~57%) questions got status-review removed. 85 of these got removed by staff, and the other 6 by a moderator. Of these:

67 questions (~74% of untagged; ~42% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
3 questions (~3% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
4 questions (~4% of untagged; ~3% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
2 questions (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to them.
13 questions (~14% of untagged; ~8% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

2 questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 98 posts that got a response from staff, 48 had status-review added by staff, and the other 50 by mods:

66 tagged by staff, 48 responded, 18 unresponded
94 tagged by mods, 50 responded, 44 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 140¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 51 (~36%) of these, and the other 89 (~64%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

71 (~51%) from MSE.
44 (~31%) from MSO.
25 (~18%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 19 of these questions (~14%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~111d 6h (min. of ~11d 23h; max. of ~699d 10h; median of ~53d 2h). Of these:

8 questions (~42% of responded; ~6% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~47d 20h (min. of ~11d 23h; max. of ~137d 2h; median of ~38d 19h).
2 questions (~11% of responded; ~1% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~34d 6h (min. of ~14d 6h; max. of ~54d 6h; median of ~34d 6h).
9 questions (~47% of responded; ~6% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~184d 17h (min. of ~13d 22h; max. of ~699d 10h; median of ~98d 3h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 20 (~14%) questions got status-review removed. 19 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 1 by a moderator. Of these:

12 questions (~60% of untagged; ~9% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~10% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~10% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
1 question (~5% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to it.
3 questions (~15% of untagged; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods was deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 19 posts that got a response from staff, 6 had status-review added by staff, and the other 13 by mods:

51 tagged by staff, 6 responded, 45 unresponded
89 tagged by mods, 13 responded, 76 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2023-08-01 11:26:01Z

Apr-Jun 2023

A note on targets: This quarter we adjusted our reporting goals in order to simplify them, and merged the reporting stats into a single one, as opposed to the hitherto breakdown of "current period" and "previous periods." Additionally, we miscalculated what would be a realistic goal to set, when we failed to account for the backlog of issues escalated in previous quarters, and how much these would weigh on our response rates. For that reason, we're rolling that change back, and reporting as we have until now. As per the usual reporting:

We got to ~52% of posts escalated over this reporting period (-5% change from previous period); see below for details];
We got to ~8% of posts escalated over previous reporting periods (-8% change from previous period); see below for details].

Targets:

Respond to 70% of Meta posts from across the network, which have had the status-review tag during this period. Our target response rate increased from 60% last quarter. [not met, only got to ~25% of total posts]
Because we have caught up with the vast majority of posts lingering in status-review, we've removed our second goal to respond to old posts and consolidated it into the first bullet point. [this decision has been reverted; see note above for details]

Guidance:

New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test, recently opening the second beta round of Staging Ground. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve. We'll be communicating new experiments and updates to the initiative in this Meta post.
Moderator tooling bugs: Moderators, continue to send along any any bugs/quick fixes that we can address in moderator tooling, especially bugs related to the recent plagiarism release. We'll be communicating more about upcoming initiatives that are in the works, so for this, focus on small bugs rather than big overhauls. Feel free to ask about them here on MSE or on the Stack Moderators Team.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 317 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

124 (~39%) got the tag added during this period; of these 64 (~52%) got a staff response (54 [~44%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 50 (~40%) got status-review removed.
193¹ (~61%) already had the tag on them; of these 16 (~8%) got a staff response, and 16 (~8%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 124 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 57 (~46%) of these, and the other 67 (~54%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-4 posts; ~-3%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

69 (~56%) from MSE.
37 (~30%) from MSO.
18 (~15%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 64 questions (~52%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 54 (~44% of total; ~84% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~6d 21h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~62d 23h; median of ~6.5h). Of these:

11 questions (~17% of responded; ~9% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~12d 8h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~62d 23h; median of ~4d 9h). 8 (~13% of responded; ~6% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
35 questions (~55% of responded; ~28% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~19.5h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~10d 8h; median of ~3h). 35 (~55% of responded; ~28% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
18 questions (~28% of responded; ~15% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~15d 10h (min. of ~1h; max. of ~49d 4h; median of ~4d 3h). 11 (~17% of responded; ~9% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 50 (~40%) questions got status-review removed. 49 of these got removed by staff, and the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

37 questions (~74% of untagged; ~30% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to it.
1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to it.
3 questions (~6% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
7 questions (~14% of untagged; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

No questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 64 posts that got a response from staff, 34 had status-review added by staff, and the other 30 by mods:

57 tagged by staff, 34 responded, 23 unresponded
67 tagged by mods, 30 responded, 37 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 193¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 70 (~36%) of these, and the other 123 (~64%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

101 (~52%) from MSE.
63 (~33%) from MSO.
29 (~15%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 16 of these questions (~8%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~68d 19h (min. of ~5d 18h; max. of ~175d 5h; median of ~55d 10h). Of these:

3 questions (~19% of responded; ~2% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~75d 8h (min. of ~14d 19h; max. of ~136d 17h; median of ~74d 12h).
4 questions (~25% of responded; ~2% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~25d 19h (min. of ~5d 18h; max. of ~63d 19h; median of ~16d 19h).
9 questions (~56% of responded; ~5% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~85d 18h (min. of ~26d 17h; max. of ~175d 5h; median of ~68d 5h).

All responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 16 (~8%) questions got status-review removed. 14 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 2 by a moderator. Of these:

11 questions (~69% of untagged; ~6% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~13% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
3 questions (~19% of untagged; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods was deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 16 posts that got a response from staff, 7 had status-review added by staff, and the other 9 by mods:

70 tagged by staff, 7 responded, 63 unresponded
123 tagged by mods, 9 responded, 114 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-05 01:18:29Z

Jan—Mar 2023

Targets:

Respond to 60% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [not met, but only just; got to ~58% (-3% change from previous period); see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met; got to ~16% (+2% change from previous period); see below for details]

Guidance:

New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve.
Moderator tools for plagiarism flags: We'll be adding a new plagiarism flag and additional tooling for moderators to more effectively resolve flags related to plagiarism.
Moderator tooling bugs: Moderators, continue to send along any any bugs/quick fixes that we can address in moderator tooling. We'll be reaching out soon about bigger projects that are in the works, so for this, focus on small bugs rather than big overhauls. Feel free to ask about them here on MSE or on the Moderator Team.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 306 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

128 (~42%) got the tag added during this period; of these 74 (~58%) got a staff response (61 [~48%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 57 (~45%) got status-review removed.
178¹ (~58%) already had the tag on them; of these 29 (~16%) got a staff response, and 32 (~18%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 128 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 58 (~45%) of these, and the other 70 (~55%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there were 32 fewer posts escalated in Q1 2023 than were escalated in Q4 2022, a change of -20%.

The primary sources of these Meta posts were:

64 (~50%) from MSE.
36 (~28%) from MSO.
28 (~22%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 74 questions (~58%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 61 (~48% of total; ~82% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~7d 2h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~77d 6h; median of ~10h). Of these:

20 questions (~27% of responded; ~16% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~11d 14h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~77d 6h; median of ~3d 5h). 16 (~22% of responded; ~13% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
35 questions (~47% of responded; ~27% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~4d 5h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~41d 19h; median of ~1h). 32 (~43% of responded; ~25% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
19 questions (~26% of responded; ~15% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~7d 13h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~31d 9h; median of ~20h). 13 (~18% of responded; ~10% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 57 (~45%) questions got status-review removed. 54 of these got removed by staff, and the other 3 by a moderator. Of these:

48 questions (~84% of untagged; ~38% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
8 questions (~14% of untagged; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

One question that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period was also deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 74 posts that got a response from staff, 35 had status-review added by staff, and the other 39 by mods:

58 tagged by staff, 35 responded, 23 unresponded
70 tagged by mods, 39 responded, 31 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 178¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 63 (~35%) of these, and the other 115 (~65%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from <edit this bit to reflect which sites got more posts escalated. Example: network Metas, followed by MSE, and MSO:>

91 (~51%) from MSE.
63 (~35%) from MSO.
24 (~13%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 29 of these questions (~16%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~112d 7h (min. of ~22d 11h; max. of ~465d 4h; median of ~90d 17h). Of these:

14 questions (~48% of responded; ~8% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~129d 19h (min. of ~34d 23h; max. of ~355d 1h; median of ~118d 13h).
2 questions (~7% of responded; ~1% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~64d 16h (min. of ~52d 3h; max. of ~77d 5h; median of ~64d 16h).
13 questions (~45% of responded; ~7% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~100d 17h (min. of ~22d 11h; max. of ~465d 4h; median of ~70d 13h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 32 (~18%) questions got status-review removed. 27 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 5 by a moderator. Of these:

18 questions (~56% of untagged; ~10% of total) got status-completed added to them.
2 questions (~6% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to them.
3 questions (~9% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-declined added to them.
2 questions (~6% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
1 question (~3% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-planned added to it.
6 questions (~19% of untagged; ~3% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

No questions that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods were deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 29 posts that got a response from staff, 10 had status-review added by staff, and the other 19 by mods:

63 tagged by staff, 10 responded, 53 unresponded
115 tagged by mods, 19 responded, 96 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.

Can the script that staff use to generate these posts please be fixed so it won't produce incorrect output for if a category has only one question? — Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog, Commented Apr 4, 2023 at 20:38
@Sonic I'll pass that along. I should've caught that regardless, thanks for the edit. — Slate, Commented Apr 4, 2023 at 20:50

JNat · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-14 10:56:01Z

November and December 2020

Targets:

Respond to 50% of Meta posts from across the network, to which status-review was added during this period. [met, got to ~58%; see below for details]
Respond to 75% of Meta posts from across the network, where status-review was added to it in a previous period. [not met, only got to ~4%; see below for details]
Make changes to the internal process and reporting, to align this process with our quarterly planning/roadmap. The process as outlined here has the intake of requests portion figured out, but work is needed on our internal workflows to better meet the targets we're setting. [being wrapped up; see Q1 2021 post for details]

Guidance:

New these two months:

Nothing new to highlight.

And carried over from last two months:

Voting: any posts relating to general issues surrounding voting, peculiar edge-cases, or voting fraud and abuse. We're researching intentions behind voting and its impact on participation and artifact quality.
Editor: we’re working on an upgrade to the editor. Posts surrounding usability issues with the editor, markdown, or any feature related to post creation — we’d like to hear about it.
^{_{^{_{Winter Bash is also being worked on.}}}}
Jobs-related posts on the network: Posts relating to Company Pages and Company ads are good candidates, especially given our recent Company Page updates.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 163 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

50 (~31%) got the tag added during this period; of these 29 (~58%) got a staff response (28 [~56%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 23 (~46%) got status-review removed.
113 (~69%) already had the tag on them; of these 5 (~4%) got a staff response, and 6 (~5%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 50 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 33 (~66%) of these, and the other 17 (~34%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-32 posts; ~-39%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the rest Metas from all over the network:

25 (~50%) from MSE.
15 (~30%) from MSO.
10 (~20%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 29 questions (~58%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 28 (~56%) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~2d 18h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~30d 6h; median of ~14h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

17 questions (~59% of above; ~34% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~17h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~6d 21h; median of ~1min). 17 (59% of above; ~34% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
19 questions (~66% of above; ~38% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~4d 11.5h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~30d 6h; median of ~22h). 18 (62% of above; 36% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
21 questions (~72% of above; ~42% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~2d 20h (min. of ~0.1h; max. of ~12d 17h; median of ~13h). 21 (72% of above; 42% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 23 (~46%) questions got status-review removed. 23 of these got removed by staff, and none by a moderator. Of these:

19 questions (~83% of above; ~38% of total) got status-completed added to them.
1 question (~4% of above; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
3 questions (~13% of above; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 29 posts that got a response from staff, 27 had status-review added by staff, and the other 2 by mods:

33 tagged by staff, 27 responded, 6 unresponded
17 tagged by mods, 2 responded, 15 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 113¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 57 (~50%) of these, and the other 56 (~50%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by network Metas, and MSO:

56 (~50%) from MSE.
23 (~20%) from MSO.
34 (~30%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

A total of 5 of these questions (~4%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~94d 4.5h (min. of ~7d 4h; max. of ~251.5d; median of ~84d 22h). Of these (sets below aren’t mutually exclusive):

2 questions (~40% of above; ~2% of total) got commented on by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the comment getting posted was ~96d 8.5h (min. of ~7d 4h; max. of ~185d 12h; median of ~96d 8.5h).
4 questions (~80% of above; ~4% of total) got answered by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the answer getting posted was ~74d (min. of ~10d 9h; max. of ~185.5d; median of ~50d 0.5h).
5 questions (~100% of above; ~4% of total) got edited by staff. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and the edit getting submitted was ~109d 11h (min. of ~10d 9h; max. of ~251d; median of ~84d 23h).

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 6 (~5%) questions got status-review removed. 5 of these got removed by staff, the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

2 questions (~33% of above; ~2% of total) got status-completed added to them.
3 questions (~50% of above; ~3% of total) got status-declined added to them.
1 question (~17% of above; ~1% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

It’s also worth noting that of the 5 posts that got a response from staff, 2 had status-review added by staff, and the other 3 by mods:

57 tagged by staff, 2 responded, 55 unresponded
56 tagged by mods, 3 responded, 53 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ If you're paying attention to previous posts, you maybe expected this number to be 118. Due to an error, 5 of those posts had been responded to at some point in a previous period but went unnoticed and were still being counted as "leftovers" when they shouldn't have been over the past few periods.

(as with the last post, JNat gets all the actual credit here) — Catija, Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 18:54

What posts should be escalated to staff using [status-review], and how do I escalate them?

What makes a good candidate for escalation?

New questions:

Older questions:

And other old posts that fall outside of the scope of projects being worked on?

How do regular users nominate a post for staff attention?

How do moderators escalate a post for staff attention?

How do moderators handle flags nominating a post for escalation?

Ok, how do moderators actually escalate a post, then?

What happens once a post is escalated?

Is there a list of the posts getting escalated using this process?

Answer index

16 Answers 16

Oct–Dec 2023

May and June 2020

Stats for the period:

September and October 2020

Stats for the period:

Jul-Sep 2021

Stats for the period:

Apr-Jun 2021

Stats for the period:

Jan-Mar 2021

Stats for the period:

Oct-Dec 2021

Stats for the period:

Apr—Jun 2022

Stats for the period:

Jul—Sep 2023

Stats for the period:

July and August 2020

Stats for the period:

Jan-Mar 2022

Stats for the period:

Jul—Sep 2022

Stats for the period:

Oct—Dec 2022

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Apr-Jun 2023

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Jan—Mar 2023

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November and December 2020

Stats for the period:

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