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I am able to view the Stack Overflow site moderators by clicking on this

https://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=moderators

But when I search the same in meta.stackexchange, it does not display the site moderators.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

The below message is displayed

We believe moderation starts with the community itself, so in addition to privileges earned through reputation, we periodically hold democratic moderator elections.

Please see A Theory of Moderation for information on our moderation philosophy

My Questions:

  1. Are there restrictions to view the site moderators in meta.Stackexchange?
  2. How does the above message make sense when viewing the moderators? Can someone explain this to me?
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3 Answers 3

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Are there restrictions to view the site moderators in Meta ?

No, there are no restrictions. However, Meta doesn't have any community moderators - it is moderated by Stack Exchange staff.

How does the above message make sense when viewing the moderators ? Can some one explain me how ?

Which community (of the over 130 current separate, distinct communities) should such moderators come from? They need to represent all of these communities.

We, at Stack Exchange, have taken the view that for moderation (keeping up on flags, mostly) - we are best placed to moderate the network Meta site.

-- As a developer, not a CM, these are my views on the matter. I will ask the CMs to look at this answer and contribute their views.

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    As Oded says, the Meta moderators consist of SE employees, which can be found here (not all will be mods, a lot of them are). (Expanded as answer)
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 10:32
  • I doubted that, Thanks for confirming it !
    – user280850
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 10:46
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Currently, the only moderators for Meta Stack Exchange are members of the Stack Exchange community team. Developers also have access for technical reasons. Folks actively using moderator privileges are doing so:

  • To migrate certain exceptional questions, following the MSO/MSE split
  • To address quite a few 'other' flags that mostly challenge duplicates, point to better duplicates, or request migration of rather old posts
  • To apply the special [status-*] tags as needed, as you'll see quite a few of our developers doing

Of course, any employee that sees obvious spam or abuse is going to delete it on sight, that goes without saying.

We have not yet appointed or elected moderators for this site mostly for the following reasons:

  • This is new, the whole concept of a network-wide meta (which is nothing like the support oriented meta site that lived here in the SE 1.0 days). We're not entirely sure we're certain how to organize and do things, much less ready to bring others into the chaos :)

  • There's not yet been a need to have additional moderators. The flag volume here is extremely light, and most posts that are acted on while moderating involve making a decision (or asking someone else at the company about something) prior to responding - stuff that really only employees can do

  • Quite a few of our network moderators are sort of participating in the moderation tasks, mostly through suggesting actions to take through flags. However, if we appointed them, most still couldn't take the actions on their own, however proper, because you need a certain level of access to handle about 2/3 of the flags.

There may come a time when we can open a position or two for election / appointment, but I don't think that's going to be in the very near future. While we'd love the extra perspective and help, there's .. just not much someone that isn't an employee could do autonomously, which would make for a rather frustrating (and unpaid) job.

This is on my list to revisit at the end of 2015. I'd like to have a few community mods here, if for no other reason than to keep us on our toes, it's just not technically feasible at the moment to move forward.

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  • I agree on your post. It seems to have no use to appoint community moderators. Through questions and answers the community can steer things too, so no need for a moderator. The only question left is: why aren't they shown in the list? Is it just because there are only community mods in that list, and that SE mods are excluded automatically to avoid 'noise'?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 13:36
  • It's actually access and the way we manage it that does it. There's a few account types, yet moderator access can be granted to all types. That list is fed from a type for registered users that have the moderator bit enabled, not those with the employee type with the moderator bit enabled. It's a little complicated, but we're sort of designed to be excluded from most things like it (as we should be, I'd think, in all but a few very narrow cases)
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 13:40
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As Oded says, the Meta moderators consist of SE employees, which can be found here (not all will be mods, a lot of them are).

You can walk through the list, and check on the accounts tab. If you find a diamond ♦ after the Meta Stack Exchange site name, he or she is a mod here (at least they have that privileges).

This SEDE query has most of the SE employees / mods. There are some false positives though, so it needs some work. It will get you started:

select *
from   users
where  aboutme like '%Valued Associate%'
or     aboutme like '%Stack Exchange%'
or     websiteurl like '%//stackexchange.com'
or     websiteurl like '%//stackexchange.com/'
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  • Cool, the SEDE returns me as well since I have in my about me "Stack Exchange is a great place"!
    – Unihedron
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 11:09
  • @Unihedro: Cool. Then add and id not in (266094) :)
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 11:09

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