Timeline for Changing how community leadership works on Stack Exchange: a proposal and rough timeline
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 28 at 11:04 | comment | added | Lundin | That being said, I agree that reputation is otherwise a poor metric for moderator suitability. Reputation is mostly a measure of how active a user is. And at some extent also a measure of their domain knowledge of certain Q&A topics. None of which has anything to do with moderator suitability. | |
| Feb 28 at 11:02 | comment | added | Lundin | "Reputation is half the score, which is not a good indicator of how useful a moderator will be." This has been discussed at pretty much every single moderator election. The argument in favour of the existing system is that we want moderators not only to be in touch with how site moderation works, but also with what they actual core purpose Q&A is about. Additionally, since user moderator privileges are unlocked gradually through earned reputation, it becomes impossible to have experience of certain moderator duties without the rep score to match. | |
| Feb 23 at 16:58 | comment | added | Kevin B | @n00dles eh, it's not perfect, for sure, since one can earn a dozen "medals" and then be inactive for 10 years, while still having all said "medals". additionally... not all forms of useful engagement earns "medals". (the current solution relies on this + reputation, both of which suffer from this problem) | |
| Feb 23 at 16:48 | comment | added | n00dles | You can check how many medals they have - surely that's a sure way of denoting engagement. I look at everything as a whole, though. I don't rely on any one thing, but engagement is a good indicator. | |
| Feb 23 at 13:22 | comment | added | Resistance Is Futile | Review queue score is useless for some queues. Especially close vote queue on SO. I have only 6000 close votes cast through review queue, while in total I have over 48000 votes there. Some of similar stats could also be used as a direct measure, instead of just counting reviews. | |
| Feb 22 at 18:54 | comment | added | SamB | I certainly never really know who to vote for -- the people I know would do a good job are usually already moderators. | |
| Feb 22 at 18:23 | comment | added | Peter Turner | This is true, I had a super high score in the Christiantiy.SE election that certainly helped me get elected, but I was only coming back to the site with high rep after a year long hiatus. However, I think I've been a pretty consistent and fair moderator over there after the election for the last 8 years. So either way, it doesn't really show a whole lot. | |
| Feb 22 at 16:20 | comment | added | TylerH | @cfr Probably some mix of the current situation (rep threshold, but greatly reduced in many cases) and basing access based on use/experience. | |
| Feb 21 at 21:30 | comment | added | cfr | If access to site tools is 'decoupled' from reputation, does that mean all such access will require some kind of selective process? Or does it mean all users will have some access by default, regardless of reputation? Or ...? | |
| Feb 21 at 21:26 | comment | added | cfr | @D.BenKnoble Not necessarily. It depends on how the community uses review queues. On (some?) smaller sites like the one I think Joseph has in mind, a high percentage of reviews completed may be an indication a user is more focused on badges than the needs of the community and lots of highly engaged users avoid the review queues most of the time. Users in some time zones may also have higher percentages than others because there's more activity in some zones than others. Reviews may be more hindrance than help from the community's perspective. | |
| Feb 21 at 18:35 | comment | added | Machavity | @JosephWright That's fair to note (I guess in my editing I removed that by accident). The key, however, is that all sites need moderators engaged in some way with the community they want to moderate. Candidate score becomes less effective the longer that community has been around. | |
| Feb 21 at 18:21 | comment | added | Catija | Not to mention that candidate score is based on all-time activity, which means someone can pop in to an election after years of inactivity and still look like a reasonable candidate. Not saying this happens, but as the site ages, checks on recent-ness seem reasonable to include. | |
| Feb 21 at 17:26 | comment | added | Stephen Ostermiller | Stats about the review tools might be meaningful if the review tools weren't terrible. It is amazing how much better SOCVR chat is than the close vote review queue. You get to scan question titles and choose which to review. You get to see how many close votes are still needed to evaluate how effective your vote is going to be. Reviews from others happen in a timely fashion (usually minutes). You don't have to deal with audits constantly popping up. Some of the users with best stats in the queues are robo-reviewing everything. | |
| Feb 21 at 17:18 | comment | added | SpencerG StaffMod | Your points on the candidate score are likely accurate. We intentionally left it out of the election revamp discussion just because we thought there would be some nuance with it and the possibility for it to vary on different sites. But we very much intend to look at it as a follow-up project in the future. | |
| Feb 21 at 17:13 | comment | added | TylerH | In any new system, Stack Overflow is likely going to need to be treated separately from all other sites; I believe it is treated differently already | |
| Feb 21 at 17:10 | comment | added | D. Ben Knoble | @JosephWright that suggests that relative numbers (e.g., % of reviews completed or some other such thing) would be more useful than absolute numbers? | |
| Feb 21 at 17:08 | comment | added | Joseph Wright | On point (2) - that may or may not be relevant at all - for a smaller site (like ours), review queues, etc., are pretty meaningless | |
| Feb 21 at 16:37 | history | answered | Machavity | CC BY-SA 4.0 |