Introducing the Moderator Council - and its first, pro-tempore, representatives

Question

When I was a moderator, I often referred to moderation on Stack Exchange as being a janitor: cleaning up spam, deleting non-answers, removing rudeness, and eradicating a seemingly-endless stream of comments were the primary day-in-the-life tasks for me. While this term may cover what Jeff expected when he first created the role and envisioned them as “exception handlers” who do “as little as possible”, moderators have come to be so much more. Over my almost-two years as a Community Manager, my understanding of the breadth of work our moderators do has grown as I got to know the mods and the sites they manage better. Working with them, even when they disagree with me is still one of the best parts of my job.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

• Moderators are ambassadors - they are representatives of communities that are technical, artistic, scientific, international, religious and cultural - often more than one at a time.
• Moderators are mediators - they help solve problems between users, often helping them see things from other points of view.
• Moderators are collaborators - they start and guide discussions to find solutions that work for their site while keeping network standards in mind.
• Moderators are peacekeepers - they de-escalate or put an end to harmful arguments by redirecting discussion or giving people timeouts.
• Moderators are community builders - they look for ways to attract more people to their communities and keep the people they already have.

Not every moderator does all of these things but, as a group, they do all of this and more. They care greatly about their communities and want them to flourish and grow. So, I started asking - what should that position look like today and in the future? Do we need to redefine that role? How can the company help support this group of over 500 people with training - both in moderator tooling and in handling the myriad of complex social interactions with members of their community? How can we help them better understand and uphold site policy while making sure it addresses their needs? How can we better support the 170+ sites they represent?

As this network of sites has grown in number, the Community Managers have relied more and more on the efforts of the moderators to keep us informed about what their sites and the network need. We’ve tried to keep in touch in the Teachers’ Lounge and the Moderator Team but there is still room to improve. To help that, we’re working on making it easier for moderators to escalate things to us but there’s still something missing - 500+ people is a lot to talk to at the same time. We can address this by having a small group to escalate urgent or important issues or review our work before we make it public.

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The Moderator Council

Back in November when Sara and Juan announced “The Loop”, one of the things mentioned there was that we were building an advisory group of moderators - what’s now called the Moderator Council. After proposing this idea internally back in October, I was asked to lead this project along with a group of four others. Over the last few months, this team has worked through a base structure and scope for the Council to get them started.

Some examples of things we see the Council doing:

• Revisiting things like the previously-mentioned Theory of Moderation to see whether we can better capture all of the things moderators do.
• Leading discussions with the rest of the moderators about issues that are important to them. This includes being willing to listen to smaller voices who may be afraid to speak publicly, and even representing them and their ideas to us and the rest of the moderators.
• Two-way interactions with staff - including Community Managers and members of the design and development teams for Public Q&A - to bring the needs of the moderators and their communities to the company and also reviewing the plans the company has. This would include the Council giving the CMs user-centric feedback on new policy before it’s shown to all of the moderators or announced publicly.

The members of the council should also be leaders who set a positive example and encourage other moderators to speak up. We want to hear more from each of our 530+ mods. I know they all have concerns for their sites and things they are confused about or need. I’ve spent hours chatting with many of them in the Teachers’ Lounge or their mod rooms but there are many I haven’t spoken to at all. Making sure they know and feel that they have a voice and that the CMs and Public Q&A Team want to hear it is a top priority.

There are also a handful of things this council is not:

• They are advisory, not regulatory: so they are not “super-mods”. This means they won’t be asked to moderate moderators, either in the Teachers’ Lounge or Moderator Team.
• They are not a focus group. As a non-representative collection of community members, the council is not expected to workshop solutions, though they can participate in focus groups or review sessions.
• The Council is not a secret group. The members should be known and be publicly visible to all.

The Pro-Tempore Council

Starting today we have convened the first iteration of the Moderator Council - and I’m both nervous and excited. This is a group of 11 moderators from around the network who will act as a pro-tem council over the next six months with the task of working to define the scope and structure of the council. I will be facilitating and supporting them and have done a lot of planning to get this moving quickly. As I and my team were working on this basic structure, we realized that, while we could create a framework, we needed to let the moderators themselves polish it so that it would meet their needs in addition to the needs of Stack Exchange, Inc.

This polishing is the first order of business for the Pro-tem Council. It includes everything from how council members are elected and how long they are in the role, to what to do if a member steps down out of cycle. There are many questions that need to be answered, like - should the council be one of equals or should there be leadership positions or designated seats for different positions?

Pro-tem Selection Process

The Pro-tem Council has been selected through a special process that looks very similar to the old pro-tem moderator nominations for beta sites.

• Moderators nominated themselves or were nominated on a question on the Moderator Team. They were asked to include at minimum some basic information about themselves and answer the question:

  • As Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange works to listen more closely to the moderators and meta community on our sites, what do you want to see this council do? Where should the council's focus lie and how should it serve the moderators, users and visitors to this network of sites?

• After the two-week nomination period, votes were collected on OpaVote using a simple approval vote and moderators were invited to vote for up to 11 candidates with eleven days to do so (April 10-21). You can see the results of the voting at the “OpaVote” link above.

As with the old pro-tem moderator nominations, the CMs selected the eleven members of the council based on the nominations and results of the voting. Our intention was to follow the voting as much as possible, generally only making decisions in the case of a tie or if there was a specific group of moderators left out of the voting - for example, if a Stack Overflow moderator wasn’t selected. I’m happy to report that none of this was necessary - we ended up selecting the same eleven candidates who received the most votes.

So, without further ado, I present ---

The Pro-Tempore Moderator Council

(in no particular order, with introductions written by themselves)

ChrisF

Stack Overflow, Meta Stack Exchange, Software Engineering, Home Improvement, Web Applications and Community Building
Been around the internet since 1995 or thereabouts. Seen communities come and communities go. Would really like this one to stick around, so if I can help in that I'd really like to. One of the reasons Stack Exchange has lasted as long is that the users care, but if we lose that we lose everything. Hopefully with the council we can help people see that it's worth caring again.

Rubiksmoose

Role-Playing Games
Hi! I'm rubiksmoose and I've been diamond-moderating for around 10 months. I'm very active in my home community and in the TL and moderately active on MSE as well. I look forward to helping with working towards a better StackExchange as best I can!

ArtOfCode

Open Source and Hardware Recommendations
I'm Art; I've been around here for 6 years and a moderator for 4, across two sites. I helped to organise the open letter to Stack Exchange that we wrote; I also run Charcoal, the organisation that finds spam on SE sites. While the last six months have knocked my confidence and trust in SE, I still believe there's something salvageable here. We do good work for our sites as moderators, and we've long been trusted to represent them to the network - I see this Council as an extension of that: a chance to represent our communities and to help the company to learn from their recent screwups and to avoid making the same mistakes again. In short: in that letter, we volunteered to help: I want to make good on that promise.

Cascabel

Board & Card Games and Cooking
I believe in two primary focuses for the council: first, providing a human connection to the general community and its needs. This will help SE prioritize and implement efforts to address those needs. A human connection makes this easier to internalize and intuit. Second, providing awareness of unique circumstances and specialized needs. This will help rebuild trust by avoiding disasters, which tend to arise from overlooking something extremely important to some users. Direct interaction is the most straightforward way to gain this awareness.

For my part, I will always do my best to elevate perspectives and voices from smaller communities and marginalized groups. I’m committed to helping SE do right by everyone in the community.

heather

Quantum Computing
I'm heather, a moderator on Quantum Computing Stack Exchange, and I look forward to working with SE on rebuilding the relationship that was damaged this past fall and continuing to improve the network.

terdon

Unix & Linux
While SE have disappointed us and let us down repeatedly, I still hope that we might be able to salvage something and start rebuilding a modicum of trust. I am volunteering for the council in the hope that I can be part of this rebuilding. I hope this council can act as a bridge between the company and both moderators and the broader community. I hope it will help both sides communicate with each other better and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Thomas Owens

Software Engineering
I've been involved in various online communities for over 10 years. I'm looking to draw on the experiences in those communities to help repair the relationship between the company and the community and to help the Stack Exchange network continue to be a valuable resource for a long time to come. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to join the Pro-Tem Moderator Council and help the communities.

Journeyman Geek

Super User and Meta Stack Exchange
SE traditionally had a good idea of its community, and how to deal with them, never accused them of being hostile, and while firm, rarely antagonized its community. Rebuilding trust is something SE can't do alone, but I find many of the things I often talk about - shaping policy, and communication are traditional strong points of the company itself. We've had a lot of missteps, and it would be nice to help get things back on track. As part of the pro-tem mod council, I hope we can nudge things towards more community aware and friendly decisions, and try to avoid some of the communicational mistakes made in the past - sometimes minor, sometimes major. While we can't fix what feel like deliberate errors, we can try to prevent the preventable and shape policies more aware of the sentiment of the community

Tinkeringbell

Interpersonal Skills and Meta Stack Exchange
Hey! I'm Tink, and I've been active on SE for almost 3 years, and I've been moderating for 2 years. I can bring a pretty solid knowledge of most moderation tools, knowing my way around meta and an interest in sociology/human behavior/communication theory to this council. My ideal view for this council is that it works hard to make themselves unnecessary: Be a middle man that helps SO/SE improve their listening to the point where they don't need the help of a council anymore.

Undo

Stack Overflow
I'm Undo, a contributor to Stack Exchange sites since 2012 and a moderator in various capacities since 2014. I co-founded and help lead the Charcoal team - we're the folks who maintain SmokeDetector and automatically flag spam across every site on the network. I hope to see a transparent Council that provides frictionless guidance to the Company and Community, driving towards a better relationship between the Company, Moderators, and the Community at large. The Council should endeavor not to replace decision making processes currently entrusted to users & moderators, and should view itself as equals to the broader moderator community. I’m excited for the impact this Council could have on a wide range of current issues. We have a real chance to effect change for the better.

Rory Alsop aka Doktor Mayhem

Audio-Video Production, IT Security, Musical Practice & Performance, Parenting, Sound Design and The Great Outdoors
I have spent most of my career working in infosec, but am also a professional musician and a parent. I'm an introvert by nature, but have always managed people in widely varied groups... I have learned to get along and mediate. I have been a moderator here for nearly 10 years now and have enjoyed helping grow them, building communities, and working towards, and beyond, graduation when that was still a thing. Communication and trust are the two lost values that need to be rebuilt. A mod council is likely to have at least some trust in the community that SE may not, so can be an enabler of positive discussion and positive change, in both directions.

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Thanks -

To the moderators, both the 276 who weighed-in and to all of you for putting up with way too many emails and notifications while we figured out how to mail merge 536 different codes so that you could make your selections - thank you for participating! We’ll work out the technical kinks before we run the first election.

I would like to say thank you to all fifteen council candidates. Thank you for being willing to invest more of your time to help in building a connection between the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange communities and the company. For those who didn’t make it in this time, I hope you consider nominating in the future.

To the eleven selected council members - I am so very happy to get to spend time working with you on this project. My experience working with an ad-hoc group of moderators has made me hopeful about the value of having the Council. I’m looking forward to your thoughts and feedback and your efforts in making the Council a reality.

To everyone - I hope this has been a useful introduction to the Moderator Council and that you're as excited about it as I am. This is only the beginning and we’ll make sure that the final structure and scope of the Council is posted for you to see once it's defined.

If you have questions or if there are any clarifications I can make, please put them in an answer and I’ll respond as best I can.

Answer 1

The names on the list are a positive surprise to me, there are several mods on there that I didn't expect you to convince to trust SE again. That's a very positive sign, it is a leap of faith from those mods to invest time in this despite the recent actions by SE that destroyed their trust in the company.

I have no doubt that you and the other CMs take this council very seriously. But the actual test will be how the higher SE management will treat it, and whether they will take it seriously. When I was still a mod, the biggest danger to the success of the mod council I saw was that SE management would just plow ahead with some new disastrous decision while ignoring the council entirely. The success of the council is unfortunately not in the moderators nor in the CMs hands, SE management must stop making decisions that just pull the rug out under both of these groups, like the ones they made several times that caused and exacerbated this crisis.

Answer 2

Good job.

Both on the creation of the council itself, and of the people you've selected to be on the council.

The fact that you've created the council is another step in the right direction in regaining the community's trust, I think; hopefully, you (as a company; I know you do, Cat) will actually value and listen to their advice instead of merely setting up the council as a token gesture and then ignoring it. Done well, this could be a great step forwards.

I've had interactions with all eleven members of the council, at various times and in various places, and I think all eleven are excellent choices.

Thomas and ChrisF - you're some of the longest-serving moderators on the network, and that amount of knowledge and experience you've gathered is sure to prove invaluable.

Rubiks - you've been handling things in the Tavern alongside me for a bit (and, hey, Codenames), and you've always been one of the most level-headed people I've seen.

Art and Undo - your work with Smokey, userscripts, chat hacks, etc. all show your dedication to the network, and you've shown yourself to be an excellent mod.

Cascabel - I salute you, is all I'll say in public. It's not always easy or appreciated to do what's right.

heather - I know what you've been working on and look forward to continuing working with you ;)

Tink - you're certainly not afraid to speak your mind, to be frank, and it's one of the things I admire about you. The council could use your frank observations :)

Rory - having the most non-staff diamonds on the network, you've certainly got a unique perspective on things that the council can certainly make use of.

Geek and terdon - you're some of the most open-minded people I know, who aren't shy about standing up and taking a stand for what they believe in. Kudos for that, really.

You'll do an excellent job, all of you; and kudos to the company for following through. Good luck. *tips hat*

Answer 3

Question (for both the CM / Public Q&A Teams and for the MC members):

To whom is the Moderator Council answerable?

Do they answer to the rest of the moderators? Do they answer to all of the SE user / answerer / reader / curator communities? Do they answer to SO Inc.? I'm hoping, for their sanity, that it's the first one, but it'd still be good to have a clear statement of where they sit.

Also: will the MC members be asked to sign any agreement in order to take up this position, in addition to the standard moderator agreement? If so, I'm hoping that this document will be made public -- and, also, that it will not prevent them from sharing information beyond the existing personal-information limits that we have for moderators already.

Answer 4

Some standard user (not a mod) here.

Can someone very briefly tell what this change means to normal users?

I read it as:

• we will have less mods now, because some of them will be busy with another stuff;
• there is an additional burocracy layer (with all its downsides): elite moderators, chosen by mods, approved by devs;
• normal mods will have to contact council to contact devs;
• users are not directly affected.

Am I right?

I read the post and answers several times already (yestarday and today) and can't understand why everybody in this topic is so happy? Could you write a sentence which explains why I should be happy please? Maybe I am just a bad person who dislike changes and only expects bad.

Answer 5

Though the functions of council seems under construction yet, I have just two sentences as reply:

Congratulations to members of the council!

Thanks to the Stack Exchange!

I hope this would be a crucial step towards The company’s commitment to rebuilding the relationship with you, our community

Answer 6

On the whole I feel like this is a step in the right direction, and I appreciate the speed with which SO Inc is trying to step up it's community involvement game.

There's also certainly some names on the list that I feel good about seeing there. Folks I've interacted with around the network and have a lot of time and respect for, I like the idea of them being involved in fixing the disconnect between the company and the community. The two have a symbiotic relationship of sorts and it can only be of benefit to both for relationships to improve.

I'm not completely without concerns though, the council is (AFAIK) supposed to do a few things where I feel it's lacking:

Represent the wider network:

Well I can only speak for myself but I'm feeling spectacularly un-represented. I'm reasonably active across the network - however none of my top-6 accounts (three of which are fully-themed sites, so not small) have any representation.

I understand the difficulties where a site may not have had a moderator willing to run but SE was already wiling to bend the "rules" a bit to make sure there as an SO representative there are solutions that could have been found - hold special elections on the major sites for a new mod who would have also been part of the council. No one need run if they weren't willing to take on both responsibilities. Or candidates who were active members (but not mods) of sites that were not represented could have been nominated to act as a liaison/spokesperson, to give the site a voice on this council at least.

Sadly it seems as though there was no effort to try and make a realistic representation of the network - as long as SO got it's seat everyone else can go whistle. I get why SO is always going to be a priority - it's the bread and butter of SO Inc and always will be, and it thoroughly deserves to be given a commensurate level of attention. That doesn't mean the rest of the SE sites deserve to be ignored completely though.

Not be a secret group:

Yet the group was elected (at least partially) based on answers to questions SE put to them. Answers that won't be released and two members of the council have already professed that they don't want released. Which given this seems to have been largely centered around formulating what the group is actually going to be for is more than a little concerning. Someone saying that the expressly don't want their answers to what they think the council should be doing to be released is something I have no choice but to interpret as meaning it's something they think will be unpopular.

Will I be one of the users who doesn't like their aims and goals for the council? I don't know, and neither does the candidate - which is precisely the problem. It's a straight up disconnect in communication before we've already started the brave new hope for fixing communication issues. Everyone is so afraid of being "unpopular" that they try and save face by refusing to stand by something they've said or done - or even let anyone know what they said or did. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't lost some respect for the two members who openly said they didn't want that information released.

I'm not some ultra-openness and transparency nut - I completely understand the need sometimes for things to be said in private, and I understand that moderators need spaces where such things can be discussed. But this whole process, something that is supposed to be very open, being carried out behind closed doors (in effect) and then presented as a fait accompli with any "ugly" bits neatly airbrushed away feels so unnecessary, and secrets for the sake of secrets.

Answer 7

You asked the Council nominees to answer these questions:

As Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange works to listen more closely to the moderators and meta community on our sites, what do you want to see this council do? Where should the council's focus lie and how should it serve the moderators, users and visitors to this network of sites?

I'm certain that the true answers to these questions could be more refined (the council is brand new, after all,) but I'm still very interested in the nominees' answers, and how their answers lead to them being chosen to be on the council.

Would it be possible for you to share what they wrote? If not, would the council members care to share their own answers to these questions individually?

Answer 8

Looks like you've got a really solid team there. While I don't think I ever fully understood what exactly you hope to accomplish exactly, I hope this endeavor is successful.

I do want to say that I advise you to listen to your new team. The worst thing you could possibly do is create this team, only to ignore all their advice. Otherwise, what was the point?

Answer 9

When we want to create the illusion of progress, we re-organize, we form a working group ... Organizational / Bureaucratic Behavior 101

I'm glad to see some names I recognize on the council, and I hope that this move will not fall afoul of the traps that emerge when an organization reorganizes in the interest of doing something different. (Been through that more than a few times IRL, to include one outfit where we reorganized three times in five years). I had this up on my wall starting during the second re-org.

We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
~ Actually written by Charlton Ogburn in 1957, often attributed to a Gaius Petronius.

Here's hoping that this initiative can avoid that possible future.

fingers crossed

Answer 10

As an introductory exercise, I would suggest the council to review and perform a "dry run" evaluation of the reinstatement requests that were rejected prior to its arrival - as if the rejected moderator had chosen to escalate (to a then non-existent council).

That way it would be possible to carefully and thoroughly learn the ropes and polish the details of the process without pressing and stressing urgency which can happen in evaluating "live" escalation of the reinstatement requests.

(For the sake of completeness, there are also approved requests, but I hesitate to propose these for a dry run because I think this would imply the theoretical possibility of a retroactive rejection of an already approved request.)

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For similar reasons, I'd propose that the council study and evaluate suspensions that were cast on MSE during "0.015% era" tensions between company and community (excluding voting fraud and low-quality contributions).

The purpose of this exercise is pretty similar to previous one - to thoroughly test and learn mediation and two-way interaction between the company and community based on real use cases but without pressing and stressing matters of urgency that could happen in "live" handling of such issues.

Answer 11

First of all: thanks to the company for moving this idea forward, and thanks to the moderators who are willing to do even more volunteer work by participating in that council.

My answer will be about one specific sentence:

I’ve spent hours chatting with many of them in the Teachers’ Lounge or their mod rooms but there are many I haven’t spoken to at all.

As that reminds me on a question I asked last year: Is there an organized community of moderators?

with one answer stating:

Where Some moderators have never joined TL. Moreover, some mods aren't participating even in local mods chat on sites which they moderate; aren't active on Metas (even on local).

Coming from that point of view, I hope that this new moderators council finds ways to strengthen the idea of a "true" community of moderators, and thereby reducing the number of moderators who do not "participate" in any such activities. Just in case, another storm comes along one day ...

In my opinion, the problem that manifested itself last year is the fact that the "the communities" do not have (much) leverage. We users are depending on the company to listen to us, and to react to our feedback. Sure, right now, after many annoying months (or years, depending who you ask), that part is improving again.

But just in case, one day, another big conflict shows up, then it is pretty simple: 500+ moderators speaking with one voice (and all willing to follow guidance/recommendations from such a council) ... that resembles leverage.

I understand that all moderators are individuals, with their individual ideas how to act in that role, but as said: taken together, the group of moderators is the only group that is small yet "powerful" enough to stand together in times of crisis, to speak "loud enough" to be heard.

So, from my point of view: building a true community of moderators is what I hope to be a "side effect" of the new council.

Answer 12

It was mentioned:

The Council is not a secret group. The members should be known and be publicly visible to all.

I'd like to ask how will this group communicate - specifically will communication be transparent and visible? Is that even a good idea?

Answer 13

We have a dispute on English Language Learners where one of our moderators is accusing particular CMs of bad behavior. Is the moderator council helping to resolve the problem? If not, what is the appropriate process for site moderators to escalate issues involving staff?

What was the result of the six months of polishing and when is the pro-tem council slated to become more permanent?

Answer 14

Moderators are mediators - they help solve problems between users, often helping them see things from other points of view.

What do the 11, now elected, moderators, think about SO (or any site) being "unwelcoming"?

I suppose you have all written about it, personally I would like to read your thoughts about it.

(If you have addressed the issue in the past, please leave a link to the post.)

Answer 15

This is a group of 11 moderators from around the network who will act as a pro-tem council over the next six months with the task of working to define the scope and structure of the council.

Of the 11 members on the council, three are moderators (unelected) on Meta Stack Exchange; is this good practice? The US with its 50 states has a single, albeit permanent, seat on the UN Security Council. Is there a good reason why three mods from the same community should get to decide which representatives should be chosen (or elected) in the future?

Is it unreasonable to foresee a situation where three or more moderators from the three largest communities will be members of the moderator council, with as many as 150 sites unrepresented? What guarantee will you (the community managers and directors) offer users across the network that the voices and concerns of their smaller communities will be heard above the three big guns; i.e. Stack Overflow, Super User and Ask Ubuntu, in six months' time?

Answer 16

If you attempt to do something like this, at least try to keep it somewhat democratic and transparent.

Apparently these were selected by "moderator voting". Moderators in the different communities may or may not have been elected by the communities. None of them for the purpose of electing a council, or to represent the community's opinions. If at all elected, they were elected for the purpose of moderating a specific site.

Most communities do not hold regular moderator elections, but they are held when there is a need for more mods. Moderators are elected "for life" ("until they burn out") and the community cannot replace them.

This is all quite far from establishing some council of community representatives. I know (of) most people elected and they are good people, one of them I did even vote for in a mod election several years ago - but again, for the purpose of selecting them as moderator to that specific site.

Generally: I didn't vote for you. Newer members of the communities certainly did not vote on any of these. Nor did members of communities that do not hold moderator elections.

Proposal:

Hold a mod election here on Meta.SE. Let any moderator on any SE site run, should they desire to. Let any user from any community vote. Elected mods get mod rights on Meta.SE and get to be part of this council.