Proposal against power abuse on stack sites and a more democratic voting system

Question

Stack Exchange sites are fantastic and very useful. I have been using them for years but in the last time the management is getting bad, moderators abusing power, deleting posts and comments just because they can and they think so. The fact that some people are moderators does not mean that their judgement is absolute. They can delete posts and comment at their will and sometime you get even persecuted by same moderator. I really find this offending, no respect and not good education. It is against any rule of democracy and freedom of speech and expression. So I am proposing this changes, hoping that will limit the abuse on stacksites:

• Only automatic post/comment delete
• Post/comment should be automatically deleted if it has more then 10 negative down-votes (-10)
• Make mandatory comment if a post is down-voted
• Automatize as many process as possible

I do not want stack-sites to became the centre of control of little bunch of persons. It should be free of any dictator abuse. It should be in control of all community.

Answer 1

The fact that some people are moderators does not mean that their judgement is absolute.

Moderation privileges are gained by community members by participation in the system and by diamond moderators who are elected/appointed. This is according to the Theory of Moderation. Each one of us starts from one rep, and gradually progresses and learns how to participate in moderating and cleaning the sites; this is required because over time, a lot of noise tends to accumulate.

It is against any rule of democracy and freedom of speech and expression.

The most important privilege is unlocked at 5 rep, which gives you a chance to participate in Meta, and discuss with the community in cases where you want to know the reason behind a certain action.

Meta participation helps us learn about the community. Many users discuss disputed audits/reviews, disputed flags, closed questions, deleted questions over there. The community helps you understand the reasons, and many posts get undeleted and reopened as a result of Meta effect.

Understand that we are all humans, including moderators, and sometimes due to the huge volume of flags they handle on high-traffic sites like Stack Overflow, they may make mistakes too. Come to Meta and constructively open a channel for discussion, the community will always help you.

And finally, making comments mandatory for downvotes has been discussed numerous times, and the request has always been declined.

As for your proposed changes, comments are second-class citizens, they can be deleted any time, use them only to ask for clarifications. Don't engage with any user in arguments, walk away. Only use comments for content related to the post. Flagging is a privilege unlocked at 15 rep, flag any comment you think is too chatty, offensive or rude, it will eventually be removed.

Apart from posting on Meta, for quick discussions with community members to discuss the problems you face, or receive immediate feedback, chat is a very good option too. You can visit chatrooms like the Tavern on the Meta and ask for advice any time you want. The privilege "talk in chat" is unlocked at 20 rep.

As Flexo said:

Provided you use the correct channels to do so you can challenge any moderator or community decision. That's not to say anyone will agree with you, but with the exception of personal information the whole moderation process is very open and democratic.

Answer 2

moderators abusing power, deleting posts and comments just because they can and they think so

sometime you get even persecuted by same moderator

Don't you think that's quite an extreme accusation to make without any evidence or argument whatsoever?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're talking about this question. Your concerns seem to be wildly off-base here. First of all, the reason for deletion of some comments has been clearly stated:

@albanx, if you'd like to have an open-ended discussion, please feel free to use the chat. This area is for asking questions that can be answered. Please review the guidance in the site tour: mechanics.stackexchange.com/tour. This is not an area for no true scotsman arguments.

In fact, the moderator who left this comment was quite generous. You can't expect comments to be permanent; they're "second-class citizens," and they can be deleted at any time, even without notice.

It is against any rule of democracy and freedom of speech and expression

To quote xkcd, "The right to free speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bulls**t, or host you while you share it."

The fact that it is legal for you to post comments here doesn't make it illegal for us to delete them if they are rude, offensive, non-constructive, too chatty, or for any other reason. Stack Exchange sites are community-run: The community as a whole decides what content is appropriate, not just you.

• Only automatic post/comment delete
• Post/comment should be automatically deleted if it has more then 10 negative down-votes (-10)
  Automatize as many process as possible

... oh dear. I... don't even know how I can react to this.

Okay, first of all, your question and other valuable meta questions and answers would be deleted just because other people disagree with them. And perfectly valid questions on, say, Stack Overflow, with perfectly valid answers, would also get deleted, just because they're a little low in quality. (Also, comments don't have downvotes.)

But more importantly, almost no stuff that should be deleted would get deleted. Out of the 3701 posts on PPCG, only seventeen of them are voted -10 or below. (Mostly spam or offensive posts, where a spam or offensive/abusive flag gives an extra downvote.) And there are a total of 2319 deleted posts voted +0 or above.

Many positively voted posts get deleted too, for a wide variety of reasons. Votes are not a method of saying "I believe this post should {stay on the site / go away}," and you can't try to make them that.

Make mandatory comment if a post is down-voted

Yeah, this has been discussed to death.

downvotes post
posts comment: "I like coooookies"

It should be in control of all community.

And it is indeed. Moderators are elected directly by the community. You gain privileges as you earn reputation, and a user with the "trusted user" privilege can actually do most of the things that moderators do anyway. Your per-site meta is a perfect place to discuss every aspect of the site, or bring up complaints or requests.

Answer 3

A lot of moderation - i.e. placing questions on hold are done by community members with sufficient reputation - members to put a question 'on hold' or to 'reopen' as an example. Those without sufficient reputation can flag answers and questions that are off-topic, don't show enough prior research and the like.

As I have learned, comments are '3rd class citizens' and can be deleted by a moderator, or by community flagging. If you see something offensive - flag it.

As for comments on downvotes, this has been discussed many times, you'd get comments like GYVVKBibubflrbfenfnefne just to get around that condition - so the person being downvoted is still none the wiser. Voting is anonymous, for one thing this can stop the possibility of 'revenge voting'.

Many of the processes are automated. For a significant part, the community does have considerable control in the sites.

Answer 4

I think a little introspection might help you understand the issue here. Of course this is meta so the flow of things is a little bit different, but lets look at the ramifications of your suggestion:

Post/comment should be automatically deleted if it has more then 10 negative down-votes (-10)

As it stands right now this very post is at -29 (+1/-30). So I put it do you: given your suggested rule structure your post would long ago have been auto-deleted. Is that what you think should have happened to it? Would you like for your idea to be swept under the rug based on (un)popular consensus? Wouldn't that bother you more than having the issue discussed and the reasons why the system doesn't work like that explained?

Personally, I hang around Stack Exchange sites specifically because they ARE moderated. The signal to noise ratio on the main sites is much higher here than on most Internet forums guided by raw popularity.