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I'd like to see if it'd be possible for moderators to get read-only access to moderation information on other Stack Exchange sites.

As a moderator on Programmers.SE, perhaps the single most frequent type of issue I'm pinged about in Teachers' Lounge is potential migrations from the other programming-related Stack Exchange sites to Programmers.SE.

The general conversation goes something like this:

Other moderator: Hey Mark, [this question] on Stack Overflow has 4 close votes, 3 of which are for migrating it to Programmers.SE. Do you want it there?

Me: {I go look at the question} Nope, bad question overall. Voted to close as not a real question.

Other moderator: {5 minutes later} Hey Mark, [this other question] was closed and flagged for migration to Programmers. Want it?

Me: No, it'd be okay on Programmers if it addressed X, Y, and Z.

Other moderator: Can you leave a comment explaining that to the user?

And so on.

Another use-case is when questions get asked on one of the sites related to programming, but really would be better off asked on a more specialist site because they are likely to get far better answers. For example, DBA and GameDev questions getting asked on Stack Overflow or Programmers.

When we moderators are alerted to those questions, we check with the moderators on the more specialist sites, but there are a lot of questions we never see.

A third use-case involves being able to track a user's trends across similar sites. On a few occasions, we've had users go back and forth between Stack Overflow and Programmers asking questions, causing duplication of effort between the moderator teams while we both perform the same forensic analysis of the user's actions on our respective sites. It'd be extremely helpful to see what the user's done and if he's been a problem on another site to get a more holistic picture.

In the situations described above, it'd be helpful for moderators on related sites to have read-only access on other Stack Exchange sites so they can better facilitate the most appropriate resolution for things that affect their sites without having to wait for a ping from a mod on the other site who happens to catch something of mutual interest on his or her own.

This would include being able to see:

  • questions with close votes or flags to migrate to our site
  • migration rejection stats for questions migrated from our site
  • certain information on user profiles, particularly mod history and deleted questions
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    There might also be some value in mods having privileges on migrated questions from other sites, so that e.g. a mod could reverse/reject a migration without having to coordinate with a mod from the migrating site. This would go above the read-only access you propose, but only for a very limited set of questions.
    – Mad Scientist
    Sep 6, 2011 at 20:48
  • See also meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83500/…
    – ChrisF Mod
    Sep 6, 2011 at 20:54
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    There's an argument here that's a fairly fundamental issue (for me): you weren't elected on those sites. The community elects moderators, they give you the power...this is really saying that community power/decision doesn't matter.
    – Nick Craver
    Feb 11, 2012 at 12:03
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    @NickCraver If it's a fundamental sticking point, why are moderators given mod access to every site's chat rooms? I wasn't elected on TeX.SE or Gaming.SE, yet I see their chat flags every day, and can take action on their rooms. SE sites are not islands unto themselves: this request is about providing access to information to form a complete picture about the site I was elected on.
    – user149432
    Feb 11, 2012 at 17:31
  • @Mark - That's really a limitation of the chat system at the moment...not an intentional design choice. You have the complete picture of a user's behavior on your site, you're asking for the rest of the album, that's a different level of access. If you think there's network-level problems with the user, that's when it's time to ping the community team.
    – Nick Craver
    Feb 11, 2012 at 19:40
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    @NickCraver The fact that we're supposed to contact the community team to coordinate migrations or to find out why a user was banned on another site is complete news to me, and I'm sure every other moderator out there. The primary purpose of TL is to coordinate this type of inter-site moderation: what's being requested is to be able to get routine information without having to waste each other's time.
    – user149432
    Feb 11, 2012 at 20:21
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    So, a moderator who's a user on a different site should be able to see what they're saying about him in flags, annotations, etc? Is there not enough drama already?
    – Monica Cellio
    Mar 3, 2014 at 22:09

2 Answers 2

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Migration stats - in or out of your site - are available.

If you want to be involved in closing on another site, earn that privilege and participate as a normal user. If a question gets migrated to your site, and it's inappropriate... Reject it.

The more I've seen of it, the more I've seen the sort of "horse trading" conversation described above as actively harmful to both sites, depriving the broader communities on each of a say in the process, and wasting moderator time on top of it. If an off-topic question looks decent and appears to be on-topic somewhere else, then migrate and be done with it.

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While all of these bullet points would be quite nice, I think there's an urgent need for at least #3 (certain information on user profiles, particularly mod history and deleted questions). It doesn't seem like adding an extra tab or link somewhere in the user profile for mods to see site-wide moderation history for a given user would be that difficult to implement and it would bring so much to the table.

Even a simple count or type breakdown (VLQ/spam/etc) would be immensely useful and probably wouldn't be as difficult to implement on its own as this entire request.

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