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Un-modding diamond users by Community Managers should be documented somewhere. At the very least, date, and name of the moderator should be recorded, plus links to relevant meta posts.

Rationale: accountability. Some drama is unavoidable, Agnew was impeached (but not Nixon), after all.

Not a duplicate of this question - I'm asking for a centralized roster for all SE sites, and this information can be gathered (albeit more slowly) independently.

Background reading

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    Don't you run the risk of marking such users forever by doing this? Is that warranted and if so, why?
    – rene Mod
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 16:43
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    @rene - a few defrocking dramas have happened in 2015 (SF, SF&F). Running for an office kinda leaves an indelible trail as well. It is also necessary to estimate mod turnover.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 16:46
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    Yes, I have seen those. That still doesn't answer why it is needed to keep that in clear sight, possible affecting that user after being re-configured to a normal user.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 16:52
  • @rene - haven't seen evidence that it affects ex-mods. They mostly leave and don't give a d*mn.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 16:54
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    So the goal of documenting it is See how we treat users that didn't follow our guidance/fit in our philosophy and if you dare to do something similar you'll be named and shamed as well? Because that is how I read your proposal now.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 16:58
  • @rene - not quite. I don't ask for naming reasons if they are confidential. Yet if there are meta posts on the resignation/impeachment the community has the right to know. And the accountability goes both ways - actions by CMs will be made more transparent as well.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 17:03
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    The rationale "accountability and avoidance of sour grapes" isn't well explained. How exactly does this improve the community? You can always go to the moderator page and find out who the current mods are. If the moderator themselves chooses not to publish their status change, I believe it's better that no more attention is called to the matter. Limitation of drama is a great reason to avoid naming and shaming moderators. What good would it actually accomplish? In short, you don't provide sufficient reason that clearly supersedes the reasons not to name and shame moderators.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 20:16
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    Besides all that, moderators are volunteers. Who's going to volunteer, give hours or more per week of their life to the site if they know there's a chance at the end that they'll be dismissed and publicly whipped? Even if it's a paid job I'd be hard pressed to find good reasons to do so.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 20:18
  • @AdamDavis - meta.serverfault.com/questions/8071/… - have fun reading that. That's exactly what happened.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 20:21
  • @AdamDavis - also this post
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 20:23
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    @DeerHunter While informative reading, this incident doesn't show how your proposal would help. In that situation the community caught on to his loss of diamond status prior to shog9 discussing the issue with the moderator, long before it was a sure thing one way or the other whether he was going to be reinstated or not. Publishing mod suspensions, nevermind mod impeachments would have only fanned the flames, particularly since the SE Valued Associates wouldn't have been able to publish why - it would have simply spurred baseless speculation. I still don't see the value.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 20:44
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    “avoidance of sour grapes” – Did you really mean to say sour grapes? If so, I don’t understand the thinking.
    – chirlu
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 21:33
  • @chirlu - i.sstatic.net/DlWhM.jpg - good catch!
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 21:38
  • Spiro T. Agnew was not impeached. He “resigned amid scandal ... on October 10, 1973.”
    – James Waldby - jwpat7
    Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 15:32

2 Answers 2

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It is documented internally. We recently went over the list and the vast majority of diamonds are removed at the request of the moderator or because of inactivity. We encourage those moderators to post something on meta if they want, but there's no reason for the community to pry into the ex-moderators' personal lives. It's a volunteer position and people have lives outside the site that often interfere with their ability to moderate.

A very small number of moderators have been removed involuntarily. The most common reason was violating the moderator agreement, but you can find the details of the other situations on the relevant per-site meta.

We do retain the results of all moderator elections. (Stack Overflow is the only exception. Election #1 was the first to use the current election system, not the first election.) We also track pro tempore moderators on meta unless we forget. So it is usually possible to piece together a history of site moderation from public information. But I can't see why that would be needed to participate on the site day-to-day.

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I don't think this is useful. In cases with significant public drama there is a record on meta anyway. And in all other cases there isn't much benefit to drawing more attention to the demodding.

This should be handled similar to user suspensions, they're intentionally not logged forever in a public place. Drawing attention to them is usually avoided, if possible. Similar to supensions, such a demodding would also involve a lot of private data in most cases which makes it much harder for anyone on the outside to judge what happened. So any public record would likely be incomplete anyway.

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  • Web Archive records past moderators anyway. Elections are public, de-frocking should be public, too (many users are confused by sudden resignations and lose faith in the system, whatever faith there still is).
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 17:20
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    Your last sentence is probably the most important. We've had moderators step down for all sorts of reasons, including serious illnesses. Nothing would compel me to make their leaving any more public than it already is. As for more controversial situations, those get raised on meta whether we want them to be or not. We try to be open and honest answering questions, but we have no interest in publicly shaming anyone.
    – Jon Ericson Staff
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 17:31

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