Policy for SE employees influencing community decisions using mod powers

Question

Under what conditions, if ever, is it acceptable for SE employees to influence community matters on the Meta site of a community they do not actively participate in by upvoting or downvoting posts?

I’m not talking about removing spam or obviously remove-worthy content, but about using voting powers, granted only as part of the employee mod diamond and not earned as privilege, to modify the outcome of community-related votes by upvoting or downvoting individual posts.

Examples for community matters:

• questions of scope
• community projects (for example: contests or blogs)
• community ads

Answer 1

Most of the time it is a bad idea for SE employees to intervene in anything but obvious cases (the big exception is if the mods are unavailable). Moderator actions by unfamiliar users are much more likely to create some controversy than if the site mods had performed them. So in any case that isn't entirely obvious, SE employees should generally prefer to notify the site mods and let them handle it. Jeff and Joel used to be more active in using mod powers, and I experienced that on Skeptics as a mod directly. They certainly had a point when they acted, but it would have been much smoother if they had asked us mods to handle those issues instead of acting themselves on issues that weren't settled at that time.

There are some exceptions that we just have to accept, these are mostly legal issues like DMCA notices.

I personally don't think it's a big deal if an SE employee performs a mod action. But there are a lot of ways to screw this up that create drama and additional work for the mods. One thing I'd like to emphasize is that site mods should feel comfortable to override SE employees when they perform moderator actions, unless the SE employees indicate that there are legal reasons or they're enforcing the "Be Nice" rules. The details of running a site are up to the local community, if SE has a fundamental issue with how a site is run they have to take it to meta and discuss it directly with the mods. Otherwise the sites should feel free to set their rules within the scope of the code of conduct.

I misread the question when answering, and my points are about the main site. But my answer isn't really different for meta. They should behave the same way as the site mods, and if there is conflict the site mods should feel free to override the decisions of SE employees unless they indicate that there are legal reasons or that the issue is violating one of the few global rules like the code of conduct.

And there are no rules about who can vote on meta sites. I have proposed in the past to only allow users active on the main site to cast votes on meta, but that didn't go anywhere. It doesn't seem useful to try to establish any rules on voting as it is secret, so you could never enforce them anyway

Answer 2

My short two cents: I see no problem if it's restricted to upvote or downvote only. Those are not mod powers, anyone can gain them quickly enough. Most employees have the association bonus so can upvote anywhere anyway, the missing 20 rep for downvote are really trivial.

I do have a problem with using actual mod/high rep powers like closing questions, deleting posts etc.

Answer 3

My personal perspective:

First off, in my opinion, a hard-and-fast rule is not appropriate here. Voting is private, so a rule banning voting not enforceable. There's no point in making a rule that can't be enforced. Also, what makes sense will depend on the context, so a bright-line rule is not appropriate. Instead, I think it makes the most sense to focus on norms and principles, and what we'd advocate for.

Our general principle is that of self-governance: a site is run by the site's community, and we want policy decisions to be made by those who are part of the community, rather than by outsiders. We'd also like people to be informed about the issues before voting. Generally speaking, we'd probably discourage people who aren't active in the community and aren't informed about the issues from voting on policy questions.

Another principle is that of self-governance: empirically, communities seem to work better when they make their own decisions and are given authority and empowered to do that. So, if SE employees vote on a heated issue, there's a risk that this sense gets violated, and that can lead to dysfunctional results. I would hope that SE employees will take this into account before taking a position.

But I think it's also important to recognize that there are situations where SE employees may have an important and valuable contribution to make. They may bring useful experience from other sites, or a helpful perspective. It would be great to have them involved in those cases.

I also think it doesn't make sense to lump all SE employees together. To give an example, there may be a significant difference between a CM vs a marketing representative. A CM is likely going to bring a lot of experience in related matters, and I'd love to have CMs participating in our meta discussions.

As a general rule of thumb, I think we should trust SE employees to self-assess the situation, and welcome and encourage them to participate in meta discussions and upvote or downvote posts if they feel that the benefits outweigh the risks. If it becomes a problem, we could discuss, but I don't think it's worth setting a more specific general rule.

Lest it be unclear, I think it's absolutely appropriate for SE employees to participate in meta discussion by posting questions, answers, and comments.

Finally, I'd like to provide some context. You mention "using voting powers, granted only as part of the employee mod diamond and not earned as privilege" -- I think some perspective is in order here. It only takes 101 reputation to have the privilege to upvote, and 125 reputation to have the privilege to downvote. Are we really arguing about a privilege that's granted to people at 101 reputation, or 125 reputation? There's nothing magical about the reputation threshold; it's a heuristic for identifying people who have some experience with the site and some exposure to the model. Indeed, you can gain 101 reputation via the association bonus with no experience or activity on the site at all, as long as you have some activity on some other Stack Exchange site. I think it's likely that most SE employees are going to have that at least as much as someone who uses their association bonus to upvote a post on Meta, or a new user who just received 125 reputation, so I can't see a big deal here with SE employees having that privilege.

Related: Should Community Managers remain impartial during Moderator elections?.

Answer 4

It's not on. Voting on Meta posts, while rarely constituting anything like a formal poll, is used to gauge community opinion, & affects the process of forming a consensus on site norms & policies; people who don't belong to the community, though welcome to contribute to the discussion, shouldn't vote—doubly so when they might well be presumed to be voting in the interests of the company they work for.