Stack Overflow (in Russian) - "no changes" policy and regulations

Question

The problem

We got some strange process for rule changes established on ruSO.

Standard way to change something on SE is:

1. Someone asks a question on meta, describing a problem (in free form, no restrictions).
2. Possible solutions are posted as answers.
3. If top/best solution implies rules change, then up to CM to review and apply those changes (or reject them).

For some reason, CM that supervises ruSO forced a bit more complicated process:

1. Someone asks a question on meta, describing a problem (in free form, no restrictions).
2. Possible solutions are posted as answers, voted, etc.
3. Someone (not necessary the original question author) creates a new question on meta, in specific form
4. All solution discussed in original post are posted again as answers.
5. The second post is used to vote for solutions (again), for some unspecified period of time. Then is up to CM to review and apply those changes (or reject them).

Is seems that we got stuck with that workflow.

Questions are never posted second time just for re-voting. Those regulations was published as some "how to create an initiative question". Most of the users have no idea that they should follow some kind of "initiative question" regulations, or will be totally ignored by CM otherwise.

We have only one Russian-speaking CM, and all site requests are actually redirected to him). That CM stated that he has no idea what happens on ruSO meta.

I did that "question-discussion-question-vote-CM" quest twice. Both times it took several months to complete it. No chance that regular meta user will ever complete it.

Recent example

We have a discussion on "homework" questions (yes, we still have that as a off-topic close reason. Consensus is "do not use that specific close reason", so we need the close reason removed. Nope, "you have to follow The Process, ask the same question again, post the same answers again, but this time for voting only".

Ok, asked site mods do implement the same change.

Apparently, there is network level process to change off-topic close reasons. Any moderator can edit close reasons, approval is required by at least two other mods. It is clearly stated that mods can (and even should) change off-topic close reasons based on community feedback on meta.

Discuss it with your community
moderators can deactivate reasons at any time
Monitor the use of your off-topic reasons

And what happens when ruSO moderator actually getting a consensus to "delete homework reason based on community feedback"? Yep, that CM jumps in and states that is not up to moderators to make a decision. He states that he is totally not aware on what happens on meta, however, he also states that only he can decide on that. Even more, is it not up to moderators to decide on any changes made on site:

It is not up to mods to decide. They were elected to do some other stuff. No one ever allowed them (granted them the right) to make a decisions.
(Original: Решение модераторы не принимают. Модераторы выбираются совсем для другого. Им никто свой голос никогда не передавал.)

Obvious exception for "The Process" are changes pushed by CM. Example - the same "homework" deletion reason was added by CM based on a chat discussion with several users, with no voting and other bureaucracy stuff.

Consequences

We have no community-initiated changes applied since March 2018. We lost a lot of active community members in 2018 when that Process with single person bottleneck was officially declared (mostly for "no democracy here" reasons).

How common is approach for other sites? Is it normal for non-top SE sites (SO/SU) to have that specific formal change process? I never seen that "nope, no changes because the question not following our untold regulations, ask it again, and this time try to follow The Process" anywhere except ruSO.

Long term consequences

Just to make it clear: Those regulations are not just "a set of recommendations", as CM states in the answer below. They are rules, and those rules are actually enforced by CM.

For historical reasons - we had our site joined to network with existing content and an active user base. Before the join that site was owned and supported by that specific CM. He was the one to make a final decision and implement it. When the site was joined SE, local community assumed that rules are the same. So when CM published "regulations" - community had no idea those regulations are optional. It was accepted as

Company representative declared that company will review all community decisions and either accept them or reject them

Kind of "fine, Stack Exchange declared we have no democracy here, but it is up to company to decide".

Is it something that specific CM enforces for ruSO site only? If yes - can we please change that back to normal?

TLDR:

Stack Overflow (in Russian) site has an extremely bureaucratic change process established by a specific CM that prevents any changes to be implemented. Site Meta is not monitored by that CM. All mod-to CM team requests are redirected to the same CM. We got a decision bottleneck, almost no changes since March 2018.

Any idea how to fix that?

Answer 1

Theory of Moderation:

3. Give people as much agency as you can. The people closest to the issues tend to be the ones that are best suited to make the best decisions.

And we (moderators) even have option to disable close reasons ourselves. I don't even understand: why do we have to wait CM at all. Should we?

Answer 2

The Story

Let us complement the story a bit.

_{The story below is how I recall it, I might miss something. So, please add nuances in the comments to make it really full, if you have anything to add, especially with links.}

The story starts from 2009

Stack Overflow in Russian has an interesting history, which began in 2009, when the first version of the community was launched. Over the next five years, we have been creating a Russian-speaking developer community from scratch on an open source engine. In 2015, the community migrated to the Stack Exchange platform.

In the first five years, we discovered many interesting findings. For example, we identified the best practices for translating the user interface, and found heuristics for moderating the site. As I remember, the first closing reasons were migrated with the community, as well as were the practices for selecting new ones.

Dispute about phrases in closing reasons in 2015

On the old engine, the closing reasons were set by the site administrator, there were a limited number of them. I don’t remember any friction in five years. In the new engine, to the contrast, it became possible for users add new reasons themselves. So, by the end of 2015, there had been a number of conflicts about what texts we should use: different users wanted to see different phrases, and there was no formal way to choose the best.

As an answer to the tension in the community, a guide was proposed for suggesting a change in a closing reason or adding a new one: Why do we close questions?. Please take a look at it. I think it is quite good. In fact, this is The Process that is referred to in this question. Actually, the process itself is described at the very end of the question and boils down to a few recommendations:

The closing reasons can and should be changed. When proposing changes, please make sure that a new closing reason or the rephrased version:

• Solves problems assigned to this tool
• Contains a clear description of the mistakes made by the asker
• Contains a set of specific steps, by following which, the question will satisfy the rules of the community
• Contains a call to action - to edit the question

Please note that the closing reason will be applied to the family of questions but read in the context of one, that is, it should be written in general terms, on the one hand, but contain specific recommendations on the other.

As you can see, the steps are quite reasonable and simple. At the same time, they reduced wars greatly.

Let us do X!

Another interesting case occurred in the end of 2017. The essence of the problem was that until that moment, the community has been more or less a single “swan”: in case of a problem, we discussed it on Meta, detailed, justified, and made decisions based on the best ideas. Usually, the best ideas got a lot of upvotes.

Suddenly, both a crab and a pike appeared - users who wanted to see the site according to their personal understanding of it. “What gets the implementation? - It seems like most upvoted answers. Well, let's play the game!”

Q: Let us do X!
A1: Yes, let us do.
A2: No, let us do not.

We have faced a tendency when users were asking questions containing only a call, like “Let's do X” and two answers “Yes, let us!” “No, don't!” That was it. In other words, the questions were biased themselves, they did not contain any explanation of why we had to change something at all, there was not a single hint in the answers why “yes” is better than “no”. When the users received some upvotes on “yes”, they pinged me and demanded “the community decision” be implemented.

After weighing the pros and cons, a set of recommendations for new initiatives were proposed. They come down to the following:

• Do no harm. The initiative should improve the site without breaking the current ecosystem.
• Start with a description of the problem that you want to solve with the initiative.
• "Do not change" option has priority. Arguments should be made to show that a system with the change will become better than it is now.
• Minimum changes at a time. Do not start many initiatives at the same time.
• Add the featured tag to the initiative so that the decision is really made by the community.
• Recommended structure: add in the question only a description of the problem, everything else should be in an answer to make the question unbiased.

History means a lot

A community is like a piece of marble on which we, the users, carve a pattern together. Although all communities are of the same marble and users have in hands the same hammers and chisels, the pattern will almost never be the same. Communities have different processes, because they have encountered different problems over their histories.

Current case

“Consensus is "do not use that specific close reason"

The case is kind of correlated with the story above. The question on MSOru says:

What needs to be done with questions like “I need to solve a homework and I haven’t done anything”?

The most upvoted answer says:

Do nothing. These may be normal questions.

In your answer you say:

We need to downvote such questions.

Another answer says that we need to close such questions.

I might be wrong, but as I can see, neither in the question nor in the answers there is a discussion “Let's remove or change the closing reason related to homework”. Even in your answer there is not even a hint of doing that. If you hadn’t written that it was a question about the closing reason, I would not have guessed. I am sure, as many other users.

The process was proposed to prevent such misunderstandings: ask a question in an unambiguous form, discuss with the whole community, change the site settings accordingly.

Bottleneck

It seems to me that in such questions there is no bottleneck in any form because usually community managers just proposing ways of doing something to avoid future possible troubles or do it in a way that reduce drama. For example, in our case, as a community manager, I am not interested in any specific set of closing reasons. I do not participate in the decision-making process on the closing reasons, only ask you to discuss the issue with the entire community in an explicit form:

1. Community recognises and understands the problem and how it is going to be solved.
2. Community leaves an artifact by which future users will be able to understand why the current users have made this decision.

Otherwise, when a new user appears who sees in another meta question a clear call for adding another closing reason, chaos will occur.

In other words, in this case, if it might be said in this way, having a team after a football match a community manager is not in the position of deciding how much and what each player should drink, they are in the position of giving everyone a cup and ensure that each player has a chance to drink what they want not harming others.