18

I'm talking about the old tools links; I hope they will be staying.

I find numerous posts this way that have slipped through the 'Review' system due to people simply gaming it. For example, I just finished flagging a bunch of a series of spam posts by a handful of users - each person's first post was up-voted a couple times, almost certainly due to the "First Posts" review queue.

Beyond this, there are still occasions where people are simply mis-Reviewing, in my opinion. The more 'raw' views of the Tools menu gives those of us who are interested a way to dig through things to, well... review the reviewers, or sometimes catch things that don't end up in the Review queues anyway. (For instance; the late answers to old posts "Tools" item shows all late answers - not just those from 'new' users - and I frequently catch spammy answers there.

EDIT: A clarification; I guess I'm also most specifically talking about the aforementioned New Answers to Old Questions item

Improve this question
3

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

The Review queue and the Tools menu appear to be aimed at two completely different audiences. Just about anyone and their brother and their dog can access the review queue, but only 10k users can access the Tools menu.

The following sentence describes the intended purpose of the Tools, from the Access to Moderation Tools Privileges Page:

These help highlight potential problem areas – or just areas of high activity – on the site.

At 10k, a significant percentage of users on a Stack Exchange site should have enough understanding of how things work to participate in the community moderation of the site. By highlighting areas of high activity, showing late answers, first posts, etc, we give 10k users an opportunity to catch problems and either handle them using 10k+ abilities or escalate them to a diamond moderator.

It would be a mistake for the Stack Exchange team to remove this feature; I haven't heard anything about this being planned, but I hope it doesn't happen.

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    Flags. Reviewers don't get to see flags like 10k users do. That's a very strong case for keeping the 10k tools around.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Oct 13, 2012 at 1:51
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn - Agreed! Forgot to mention those. I just hope they don't get compartmentalized like the Review tools. I know people like the idea of focusing on one thing, but it forces you to skip other problems you might see and be able to quickly fix.
    – jmort253
    Oct 13, 2012 at 3:11
  • 5
    If they put the flags into Review then all the flags would be dismissed as helpful. Bet on that if they also add a badge for it.
    – random
    Oct 13, 2012 at 4:13
  • 1
    Excellent points! I often forget about the distinction between 10k tools and otherwise!
    – Andrew Barber
    Oct 13, 2012 at 7:45

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .