Revising the criteria for moderator nominees

Question

It is very easy to be a candidate in a moderator election. If we exclude the prerequisites to become a moderator on Stack Overflow and the necessary 1,000 rep for Mathematics, a nominee needs only three requirements to run for election:

1. To be 18 or over.

2. To have earned 300 reputation points (the equivalent of thirty upvotes).

3. Not be suspended on any SE site in the last 12 months.

In theory these requisites allow the following scenarios:

• A user who has never posted a question, answer, or comment on meta, can be elected as moderator for life.
• A user who has never suggested an edit, reviewed or edited a single post that was not theirs, could be elected as a moderator.
• A nominee who has cast zero votes during their time on the site is eligible for election.
• A user who has either raised no flags, or more worryingly, whose flags have been declined, is eligible for election nonetheless.
• A nominee might not have contributed, participated, or even visited the site in one or more years prior to an election but could, in theory, be victorious.
• A former moderator cannot run for reelection because they were suspended on a completely different site in the preceding 12 months. No distinction is made between a suspension of a single day, week, month or year. No distinction whether it was the first suspension in the former moderator's history or their tenth.
• In the candidate score, where 40 is the maximum, a nominee's score could be as low as 0. I don't believe this has ever happened on any election on any SE site but the rules do not explicitly state a minimum score is necessary.

For context, on English Language Learners (ELL): as of today, two former nominees' score are 3/40 and 4/40. But the scores of three former ELL moderators are 33/40, 37/40, and 38/40.

In the 2022 election on French Language: all three nominees had less than 700 rep, and their current candidate scores are between 1/40 and 6/40.

A community which allows their least active and lowest-rep members to run for election, may be an example of a free and democratic election but it is potentially a dangerous situation.

Ideally, in a healthy flourishing community, the weakest and least qualified candidates should easily lose. However, as we have often seen, users on smaller SE sites are typically reluctant to nominate themselves. Last year ELL had four nominees running, this year three. In the future, there will be elections where only one or two seats are open and one or more nominees will have little to no history of reviewing, voting, editing posts (not theirs) or helping the community via comments or through chat. These under-qualified nominees are nevertheless eligible to run for a lifelong role.

What do I mean by an under-qualified nominee? It is a user who has not contributed in any significant way to the community; sought to improve and uphold standards, or help run the site in any shape or form. In fact, on Stack Exchange there are specific milestones which hinge on reputation points earned. For example, before a user is trusted to cast close and reopen votes, they must have earned 3K.

3,000 ⇅ cast close and reopen votes       help decide whether posts are off-topic or duplicates

If a nominee has not earned 1k, Stack Exchange suggests that they are not an "established user".

1,000 🏆 established user       you've been around for a while; see vote counts

If a nominee has not earned 500 rep, they are not allowed to use the review queues.

500 ⇅ access review queues       Access the First posts and Late answers review queues

And yet once elected, the under-qualified ♦ moderator can unilaterally put on hold, lock, close, reopen, and migrate questions. They have the authority to close a hundred posts in a review queue in one single day. Moderators can delete upvoted answers which they retain do not answer the question; delete and undelete comments, and even meta posts. They can convert answers into comments, freely edit posts, and suspend users without knowing anything about the user, their background or their contributions owing to the fact the newly-elected moderator has never participated on the main site. But, Stack Exchange allows them to run in a moderator election just as long as they have 300 reputation points. It is worth noting that Stack Exchange does not allow a community to change their mind about a moderator once that nominee is elected. Unless the moderator voluntarily steps down (retires), is removed for inactivity or fired by Stack Exchange; an unqualified, ineffectual moderator will be allowed to hold that position permanently. For more information: Who are the diamond moderators, and what is their role?

For all the reasons above, I suggest that the aforementioned minimum requirements be revised. For example, raising the minimum candidate score to 4/40, one badge per category: reputation, moderation, editing and participation. Failing that, it should be expected that nominees have one moderator badge and the Quorum badge (participation on meta).

I would appreciate hearing the community's opinion.

Answer 1

I would echo the concerns raised here as I have observed people with limited activity becoming moderators on sites in which I participate. I find it odd that on this site where I regard myself as little more than a lurker I have still apparently developed a candidate score of 7. I also find it odd that the reputation threshold for ordinary users to gain access to moderator tools is set at such a high barrier compared to the level for running as moderator.

I would suggest that more credit be given for badges which actually recognise moderating activities and at least some credit is given for participating in the child meta site. Care would need to be taken not to set the bar too high on less active sites. For instance, on the Spanish site, only two people have ever earned the Marshal badge and only one the Steward badge.

Answer 2

Counterpoint: Users who have proven themselves on other sites are likely to be good moderators, even without having that much experience on the site they're running on (though this may depend on the site a little — a mod should at least be interested and a little knowledgeable about the topic). I would certainly prefer someone like that get a diamond than to see a site languish for not having enough moderators. (The winner of the most recent French election was someone who mods two other sites.)

All the potential problems you describe with unqualified moderators seem to me more like problems that would be caused by someone who simply doesn't listen. There's never a mod team of one; my ideal moderator will ask their fellow moderators what to do when they're not sure, and when they do act they should remain open minded that there may be something that they missed. For almost all the things a moderator can do, it's just as easy (at least for them or another moderator) to reverse. With time, an unqualified mod should quickly become a qualified and experienced mod.

About candidate score... it's not really even that much of an obstacle to get a low candidate score. A score of 4/40 can be someone who: 1) knows how to rollback, 2) has edited a single tag wiki, 3) has edited a tag on someone's question, 4) has edited the question they answered within 12 hours. (You can do all that with 2 suggested edits and a single answer, I believe.) It's baffling how some people have such a low candidate score when they run (except that it's really not obvious how candidate scores work unless you're a Meta SE expert). Quorum doesn't seem like an unreasonable requirement except that there are sites where meta really isn't used.

Answer 3

While I'm a moderator on 'only' two sites - I've occasionally meddled, advised or otherwise had an impact on quite a few sites I've no involvement with. I'm familiar with some of the history (but I won't be naming names for obvious reasons).

I think the core requirements do have reasons - though I do agree that some additional criteria might be good.

To be 18 or over.

That's the most recent one - it's a legal requirement. Folks have disagreed in detail there.

To have earned 300 reputation points (equivalent of thirty upvotes).

Which seems a bare minimum.. The current requirements are basically just there to get rid of the 'joke' candidates, and such rather than comprehensively filter out 'great' moderators. I do agree that having some meta-related criteria as a hard requirement would be nice. The 'old' semi official election pages were nice but one of the issues I find is its very hard to get metrics on many moderator skills.

I rely a lot on soft skills - how I write as much as volume as well as chat as part of a broader 'philosophy' of moderation I hardly do reviews on some of the sites I'm on cause when I go there there's nothing. On the other hand, on sites I moderate, a good chunk of the work I do is on the front page. There's no good way to capture this outside comments and such.

Candidate scores and other criteria should hopefully allow for informed voting. That said, lots of moderators don't do (as) much meta, but there's a fair amount of other work they do.

Not be suspended on any SE site in the last 12 months.

Ah this one.

There's two points I'd make here.

Firstly I'd quote "A Theory of Moderation"

As a moderator, your actions now represent the community, so you will be held to a higher standard of behavior. You are an ambassador of trust, with the same sorts of rights that the official development team and community coordinators have.

I'd argue that that standard of behavior begins before an election - and that as an ambassador of trust, you're also representing your site to other sites and when dealing with the community team. A suspension shows something slipped in that period—whether it’s a "cautionary" one-day suspension because you'd decided to clean up old posts and that triggered a flag or a full one. The block on suspension IIRC is manually reviewed by the CM team, so in exceptional circumstances I'm pretty sure the whole issue could be sorted out. If not, a year's not a terribly long time, and the potential candidate can wait for the next one.

Folks tend to behave better in sites they care about. There's a joke about how people in a certain country would keep their homes clean, but litter outside. You always take care of the places you care about. It’s how you behave elsewhere that matters too. That they kept their nose clean on one site doesn't reflect how they would act elsewhere.

And while I've never been suspended - I've skipped elections in communities I've been engaged in and stood later. While moderator-dom is our highest level of trust for a user (short of being hired!), there are lots of ways one can work with their communities or other communities. There's a lot of good a person can do in a year, help their community and be in a better place for the next election.

I also would point out folks have gotten suspended, gotten elected and have been moderators. It’s something that doesn't really have a long-term impact.

Answer 4

For all the reasons above, I suggest that the aforementioned minimum requirements be revised. For example, raising the minimum candidate score to 4/40, one badge for each category: reputation, moderation, editing and participation. Failing that, demand that a nominee have one moderator badge and the quorum badge (participation on meta).

I don't think either of these will solve the problems you're describing. Assuming the score is calculated the same way as it is now, you will need at least:

• 1000 rep,
• One of: A minimum of 300 upvotes, a first rollback, 80 helpful flags, >600 votes with 25% of that on questions, a minimum of 250 completed review tasks or 100 upvotes on answers to questions where you also have a positively scoring answer,
• One of: Edits to a minimum of 80 posts (excluding own posts, deleted posts and tag edits), edited and answered a question, both within 12 hours and the answer scoring > 0, a first retag, or a tag wiki edit
• One of: Voting for a candidate in an election, minimally 1 post with a score of 2 on meta, visit for 30 days in a row, offered a bounty on another user's post, be a member for a year and have earned 200 reputation points.

First of all, this grouping means that a nominee can still have no posts on meta, but can still nominate if they were around for 30 days in a row at one point in the (perhaps distant) past. They can still have been gone for years, not visited at all, but still have that 30 days badge, so be eligible. They can still have no votes, or no helpful flags at all, and be eligible to run, because at some point they rolled back an edit. Basically, a user can still fall into the undesirable categories you described above, but have a candidate score of 4.

On the other hand, this may block actually active users from nominating, because they are actively making edits, flagging and reviewing things, they just haven't yet done 80 edits, collected 80 helpful flags or finished 250 reviews. This can be a problem for newer users on low activity sites, but also for every new site that is getting their pro-tempore elections.

Even if a user has a point from all these categories, it can be met by having only done a single action besides gathering that 1000 reputation points: a rollback, a retag/tag wiki edit, and a post on meta scoring 2 (which could even just be a 'fun' type answer, like we see on MSE during Winter Bash, for example). Moderators are however to be more than 'one-trick ponies' in my opinion, so if you want minimum requirements to filter out good candidates, you need to raise the bar to make sure those requirements show a user can do the right things over and over again, not just once.

The same goes for requiring at least one moderation badge and the quorum badge: That still allows for those users that managed to get it right once to nominate. It won't reflect that the user is consistently making good decisions, just that they got it right once. Raising the bar a bit, for example by making this 'have 1 silver moderation badge' and we're back at how this may exclude possibly great nominees on low activity or very new beta sites. And, again, if those badges were earned ages ago, they say nothing about the participation of that user now.

If you want to solve all the situations you're mentioning, you need a system that doesn't just look at badges and reputation earned over time, but also somehow can give an indication of a user's recent engagement. Something that shows a user may have all the badges, but hasn't been active or seen in years. And something that at the same time can highlight those users that do vote, do edit, do review, even though they haven't gotten silver badges for that yet. Something that answers questions like: Has this user consequently been raising helpful flags on posts recently, even though they haven't yet gotten a silver badge? Or have they stopped flagging entirely after achieving a gold Marshall badge? If they haven't written anything on meta, have they at least been actively voting in the discussions on meta? Are they perhaps very active in chat, explaining the inner workings of the community, site and SE network to new users there, linking them to posts that already exist? Are they editing posts as they come up, even though the activity may be low so they don't have silver badge yet? Are they still active in the review queues, or did they stop that too after achieving the badges? Some users may have fewer privileges that others, but for the privileges that they have, how well, and how often have these users been using those recently?

I have no concrete ideas on how to measure the answers to these questions, just that these are some things that probably need some form of measurement for the candidate score to truly be an indicator of most of the potential undesirable situations your questions lists. As for making these 'answers' additional requirements, I don't know. I'm leaning towards saying that adding requirements will block too many potential candidates from running. I think that if the candidate score calculations are somehow improved, the voters can make more informed decisions, but adding more minimal requirements across the network may be a step too far.

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I also noticed you mentioned not being able to nominate if recently suspended (which has an exception: You can contact community managers and have your suspension reviewed, after which you may be allowed to continue and nominate), and it took some comments to get you to confirm that this was indeed something you saw as undesirable, at least in the specific case of 'former moderator suspended on another site than the one they moderated can't run for re-election'.

You don't include this rule in your revised minimum requirements, but I strongly feel it should remain included. As a minimum requirement, nominees should show that they can behave themselves correctly across the network for at least a year. After all, a year is not that long. A moderator should have a good track record, and not just on the sites they want to nominate on.

You didn't list the minimum age as something causing undesirable situations. And while it is something legal, I've seen moderators that were younger than that do great jobs. So I want to say that this can cause undesirable situations too, where great candidates may be excluded based on age, and that as far as I'm concerned, if this wasn't a legal thing, that one could be dropped.

Answer 5

The moderator system here is broken in a few ways.

First of all, we elect once and then there is is no way remove that person if we are unhappy. In democracies, even if we don't get active enough to remove someone from office, we have the chance to passively not reelect them. Here, being a moderator is like being King or being Pope (or on the US Supreme Court for some reason I'll never understand). Once you got the title, you're made. And the peasantry better not complain about whatever you do with your powers.

A time in office of 2, 3 or 4 years would be plenty. A lot can happen in those years. And if they want to, they can get reelected. There is no need for a term limit, if they do a good job and get reelected, that's cool.

Second, we show some data, but apparently not the data that is important. In the last SO elections I have seen current moderators coming out against potential candidates with good scores on paper, grilling them why their vote count is only this or their participation in reviews is only that. Well, good questions, but a little unfair to only ask that specific candidates. If moderators spend so much time in review queues, why isn't the number of reviews the candidates did visible in the election. Why is it that someone has to dig that up and publish it like a dirty little secret.

And the third thing, you can say I'm biased, and that would certainly be correct: suspensions. Taking into account suspensions on other sites is basically just a punishment for linking your accounts in the first place. Had you not linked your accounts, it would not count. So a suspension is a reason to cut you out from democratic process... if you opted to use the same password for convenience. That is some... grass-through-cow-process endproduct. This should not be a secret a candidate is allowed to hide. But it should be up to the voters to decide if they think that it's important. "Has been suspended for 3 days on Yatzee.SE 10 months ago" is something that I would consider when voting for a candidate, but it should not keep them from running.

It also enables any moderator on any site to keep you from running. If you want to change the moderation policies of a site because you are not happy with them, there currently is no way to get rid of moderators and it is trivial for current moderators to find an infraction and suspend you for it, so you cannot be elected and change something either. And to be fair, there is no way for the moderators to change that. They cannot just turn a blind eye either because you may want to run in a potential election that potentially might happen in the future. I have been banned for "you argue to much in comments". Not because of the actual argument or because I insulted someone, but because I did it too often. Now, there is no objective measure here. It's not like "You knew, 13 comments was the line" or something. So, as long as moderators have the power (and duty) to suspend people for subjective actions, using those powers should not become a means to oppress the opposition.

I know SE is a US company that naturally has US viewpoints, please consider that most other democracies have different priorities in their democratic process. In the US losing your right to vote is quite easy, while elsewhere, it is literally the last thing you lose and a huge deal because we think that being able to vote is a fundamental right that cannot be taken from you. Especially not by people who where voted into office and rely on continuous votes to stay in office.

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So to sum that up:

Display the relevant information for everyone and then elect based on that for a limited time

I would say that using the moderator tools as a normal member is the minimum requirement for being trusted with the power to override those. So you need the amount of points to be able to do that and the numbers. Don't draw hard lines. Just show the information. How many votes cast? How many reviews done?

Review queue participation, vote count, flag count, show them.

You think suspensions are important? Well, show them, and let the voters decide.

Right now, it's more like trying to dodge bullets (I decided that I would rather give up on a site, than risking their moderation determining where else I could or could not run) and gunning for meaningless badges to get to 40 score.

And I'm sure any moderator running for reelection, if they did a half-decent job, will have so much more votes and review participation than non-moderators, that they should have a huge bonus when they want to run for another term.

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Showing the plain numbers to compare would also get rid of the problem that certain thresholds are impossible to reach on some sites. I have a lots of reviews on SO, because I can do it any time I like. On other sites, it's rare that there is a review to be done. Showing all the information, instead of badges and score, so people can compare candidates would remove that problem, too.