I cannot think of a community without thinking of the moderators who keep the community from sliding into the abyss of strife. Day after day, moderators lead their sites by example and assist users who need help. The day comes when they need to step down and hand their communities over to other enthusiastic volunteers. I think it is a bittersweet moment, and we’d like to make it a little sweeter.

Former Moderators page

Each Stack Exchange site has the two following pages:

1. Current Moderators page that lists all users with the moderator status.
2. Election page that lists all community elections and the winners.

It seems we are missing a page that displays all users who have been elected or appointed at one point but who now do not have the moderator status anymore. We believe that such a page would honor these former moderators’ contributions to their communities.

The proposal

We suggest adding a page that lists all former moderators of a community (probably under the current Moderators tab of the Users page). Our current thoughts are:

• Former moderators are the users who have had moderator status in the past but do not have it at the moment.
• It is for every former moderator, regardless of why the moderator status was removed.
• Every moderator is opted in by default. If someone wants to be opted out they need to explicitly say that when they step down or we send them an absentee emailget removed. (When we are ready to ship the feature, we will contact all mods who have resigned in the past and ask them if they want to opt out.)

We would like to hear from you all your thoughts on the proposal. Please share your comments, questions, and concerns.