The new moderator agreement is now live for moderators to accept across the network

Question

Today, we’re announcing that the new moderator agreement is live and the existing moderators are being asked to accept it. This has been a great collaboration to get from a draft in November 2019 to the final agreement in July 2020. It’s gone through several phases of review internally, including with the Community Leadership Team, the Community Management Team, our Legal department, and we have had the assistance of our Public Platform team to build in some tooling to support a sixty-day transition period between the old and new agreements.

In addition to that, this has been reviewed on the Moderator Team which led to over 35 answers and at least five additional questions to dig deeper into specific concerns, and help get the moderators and Stack Exchange, Inc. on the same page. We spent time coming to understand those concerns and discussing how to best address them and that’s represented in this new document. In the two months since that last review, text has been adjusted, some points have been removed, and others have been added to bring this document to where it is now.

A note about terminology:

For easier reference, I’m going to be calling the two agreements “V1” (the old agreement) and “V2” (the new agreement). You can review the difference between them by looking at the version pages for the agreement. The current page /legal/moderator-agreement on any site (here's Stack Overflow's) will now host the most-recent version of the agreement, currently V2. But specific versions can be viewed by adding the URL /legal/moderator-agreement/versions/[number]. So, right now you could replace [number] with 1 or 2 to see V1 and V2.

Some of the differences and why these changes were made

With 550+ moderators, I can be sure that some of the mods may not be as comfortable with the new agreement as with the old. This agreement has grown considerably to cover much more than it once did. Some of the new elements are site policies that didn’t exist at the time, such as the Code of Conduct, while others are privacy rules that didn’t exist, like GDPR. These changes were long overdue to keep the agreement current and clear.

"Other Policies"

While we still have a bucket for “other policies”, the policies that fall into this category will now be linked together through a Help Center article and, in the case where they’re MSE posts, a tag (mod-agreement-policy). This is designed to keep the scope of this point limited while also giving us the flexibility to add small network-relevant policies that we need moderators to follow without having to update the mod agreement. Any policies that will be added to this list must be released to the moderators for review so that they are aware of them in advance.

Accepting guidance about policy

In V2 we’ve added a point about accepting guidance from Community Team members and the Senior Leadership Team. While we do our best to make policy clear, there are times where it will require some interpretation. Because of their experience in developing and working with that policy, these staff members know or have the context to better explain the intent so that moderators can better interpret what that policy is expecting of them - and, thus, what users are expecting.

Protecting user privacy, particularly their PII

When users join our sites, they expect us to protect their privacy and the personally identifiable information (PII) we collect about them is a big part of that. We grant moderators access to some of this information so that they can do their work, but we take it very seriously when this access is misused. That’s why the biggest part of V1 is still an important part of V2 - it’s designed to protect our users’ private information and prevent misuse by making our expectations for usage of PII clear.

This section has been adjusted slightly but, overall, it’s largely the same. For example, to allow collaboration between mods on the same site - as was pointed out during discussion with the mods, V1 (and an earlier draft of V2) was overly restrictive of who a moderator could disclose PII to:

V1: I will not disclose this information to anyone,

This would prevent the mods from even talking about it in a private room with co-moderators or even mentioning it to staff in a CM escalation, so the agreement has been updated to state,

V2: I will not disclose or share this information with anyone that is not a moderator or employee of Stack Exchange, Inc.

Moderator removal

While we must retain the ability to remove moderators at any time for legal reasons, we have added specific statements that we will use one of the three moderator removal processes whenever possible and that all moderators have the option to appeal all terminations through the newly-updated reinstatement and appeal process.

Whenever possible, moderator removal will follow Stack Exchange, Inc.’s moderator removal processes. I will be informed via written communication of the specific reason that I have been terminated. I have the option to appeal termination through the moderator reinstatement and appeal process.

I predict that some of y’all will ask why we need to say “whenever possible” - and I understand that. Because we can’t predict all future events, there may come times when we need to remove a moderator or can not follow one of the three processes for some reason - for example, if we attempt to communicate about an issue with a mod and they refuse to take part. This is not intended to be an excuse to never use them but an admission that, however unlikely, we legally need to retain the full right to remove someone outside of these processes. Committing to make it clear why a moderator was removed regardless of how it happens is a big improvement from the existing agreement and, along with the appeal process, should help any mods removed without a process to feel they have a recourse.

A two-way agreement - Stack Exchange, Inc. makes promises to our mods

The biggest change to this agreement is that we’ve added a section that makes the agreement two-way. The old agreement, and even early drafts of V2, made no guarantees for the moderators. This is something that we felt was important to add. In it, we explicitly grant them the protection of policies like the Press Policy, and codify that they have the freedom to speak out publicly about policies without reprisal (provided the CoC is followed) and that we will support the moderators whenever they have questions or need assistance.

As I noted, V2 is significantly longer than V1 so I’m not going into perfect detail here but please feel free to review it. We hope you feel, as we do, that this is a reasonable update to the original agreement.

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Technical aspects of the new agreement

For those of you who are interested in the behind-the scenes stuff, I thought I’d talk through how the versioning works. Starting today moderators have sixty days to accept V2 or decline it and request to step down. They can review the agreement by visiting /legal/moderator-agreement on any site, though they will need to visit it on the site/s they moderate to accept it. They will also need to accept it once on each site they moderate but do not need to accept it on both main and meta any more (in progress - this apparently didn't get built but we're working on it).

During this period, existing moderators can continue to moderate under V1 before they’ve accepted the new agreement. This is designed to give them time to consider this decision and because we know that many people are busy with life in a very complicated world right now. They can also continue to moderate even if they’ve declined the new agreement; while we hope that everyone can accept the new agreement, we understand that there may be some who cannot and we want to make sure we have time to make sure a site has sufficient coverage if one of its mods doesn’t accept.

If a moderator is newly-elected during the interim period or after, they will only have the new agreement to accept and it will act like accepting the old agreement - access to PII and many other mod tools will be withheld until the agreement is accepted. The reasoning here is that the new mods must have accepted an agreement to have access and we are not making the old agreement available for them, even during the interim. If a newly-elected moderator does not want to accept the new agreement, the CMs will reach out to them and the other moderators on their site.

The CMs will be checking in with the accept/decline status on a regular basis and will start working with mod teams during the interim period. Removing diamonds will be done manually, so it will happen gradually as we review the responses. Once the sixty days have passed, any moderator who has either declined the new agreement or hasn’t responded to the notifications to accept the new agreement but who still has their diamond will lose access to PII and some moderator tools. The CMs will contact any moderators who haven't accepted the agreement along with their teams before removing a diamond.

We will be very sensitive to moderator coverage on sites. We don’t want to leave sites with insufficient or no moderators to support them so if someone from a moderation team decides to decline the agreement, we will reach out to them and the rest of the team to determine if an election is necessary.

We do have the option to extend the deadline if it seems like the 60-day cutoff will leave sites unmoderated. If this happens, the extension will apply to all sites, not only the ones that need more time.

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A huge amount of work has gone into this agreement and I’d like to thank all of the people who helped shepherd it through the process, both my coworkers and within the moderator community. Your expertise helped make this document what it is today and - particularly to the mods - I hope you feel like this agreement is an improvement over the old one.

If anyone has questions about the agreement itself or the rollout, please post them as an answer.

Answer 1

I do want to bring out something that definitely needs to be brought out. The CM team, especially Catija and JNat, have been working really hard on this new moderator agreement. There were loads and loads of answers, and lots more comments on it when it was first shown to the moderator team (some 60 days back). Cat and JNat did manage to leave a reply to most, if not all, of them. I really do appreciate this work which they did. This shows that even though the times are different, where the staff take arbitrary and random decisions, at least the CMs are with us and want to help out the community in general.

I haven't yet read the final version of the agreement, and don't know about the issues with it currently, but the work put together by these two CMs does deserve praise. Thanks for your work.

Answer 2

There are a few parts that have loopholes big enough to drive trucks through; but I expected that given the level of trust the company and moderator community share right now.

This agreement, along with the moderator removal and the moderator reinstatement process are the three major ways to show the company is listening and wants to rebuild trust. Keep in mind, they have to satisfy two different groups, even though obstensibly the moderator agreement only affects moderators. They have to satisfy moderators, of course, but also the community at large.

The things we write down are the things we care about. The things we tout as our written policies even more so. Policies are a reflection of a company's mindset, and in order for people to be willing to work with the company, the company needs to be worthy of that work. These agreements are your best way (right now) to do that.

I've left my feedback on the moderator reinstatement process, such as it is. The reinstatement process needs serious work, but that's because the moderator removal process needs serious work.

You spawned the removal process mere days and weeks after the ill-conceived firing of a Meta.SE moderator.

This moderator agreement shows that we can achieve a more equitable solution when more effort is put into the process.

Put more effort into your removal process; resolve the many issues we've brought up. Work to endear trust with your community -- where else would future moderators come from, if not the community they work to serve?

Outside of those loopholes that codify the problems that caused the moderator exodus past October, it’s a good agreement. Since those loopholes have been codified, it is reasonable to say the events of last October could repeat themselves.

The exodus started due to an ill-timed firing that happened after questions were raised in moderator chat. An edict was given and that was that. No follow up. This policy codifies those "give the edict and leave" actions into binding upon moderators.

Particularly sections v and vi:

v. I will abide by all other officially announced moderator and user policies made available to me.

vi. I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

It was a member of either the Senior Leadership team or the Community team that did it (I’m not so sure where they fell in the hierarchy then since it’s changed since then).

My questions are simple:

• What is considered an official policy being communicated?

• Is it something said in the Teacher's Lounge? Pinned there? Posted on teams? Posted on this meta? Posted on the blog? Emailed?

• Same questions with "accepting guidance given by [employees]".

• If I see an answer and another mod isn’t checking the TL and they don’t see it, can they be fired?

• If they say "I'm not going to enforce it until we get some clarifications" can they be fired?

• The moderator agreement says "I will accept" — are we talking military or monastic obedience?

These are thorny issues that need to be spelled out more clearly than they are.

But, there were 550 moderators that saw this new agreement, and I hope they brought up these points and received acceptable answers from Stack Overflow the Company. It’s one thing to address these things in private in a non-binding way; it’s another to codify those conversations into public policy.

The agreement has enough holes that nothing has been codified to prevent another October exodus, and that worries me.

NB: I initially left my feedback in a thread on twitter. For posterity, I've included that feedback here, in an extended form.

What I'd propose to change

Again, I'm just one person, and I'm not even a moderator; but if I were thinking about coming back, this is what I'd expect to see and what I'd consider to be fair (I'm only going to focus on the parts I'd change; assume for our conversation that I'm OK with the rest of it):

The Terms of the Agreement

v. I will abide by all other officially announced public moderator and user policies made available to me.

vi. I will accept additional public guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

(new clause) viii. Nothing in this agreement shall be construed as to deny the moderator the right to ask for public community guidance on proposed or existing policies.

Stack Exchange, Inc. agrees that it will:

vi. Announce changes to the moderator agreement and all other policies covered by this agreement on https://meta.stackexchange.com no less than sixty days before the deadline to accept the new agreement with a period of at least thirty days for public discussion and review.

Scope of changes

The changes I'd make are to ensure a public forum for discussing policy changes is mandated before expecting moderators to abide by those policies. I'd also ensure that moderators are free to raise proposed policy issues with their communities in order to ensure they've been able to consider community feedback.

Answer 3

I like that it goes two ways now, that is a very clear and welcome improvement.

I find the following section to be rather weird, though:

I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

The moderator agreement was a list of serious rules, and breaking any of them is likely to result in the loss of your diamond. This rule doesn't seem to fit entirely here, and I don't see why we need a formal agreement that mods should consider guidance by the CMs seriously.

Moderators accept guidance from the CMs all the time, and not because that is written in some agreement. But because they have a lot of experience handling difficult situations, know the network and because we trust them. Their advice can easily stand on its own, it doesn't need any formal rules to be backed up or enforced.

If I were still a moderator, I'd truly hope I'd never receive any guidance from a member of the Senior Leadership Team. The one case I remember where this happened was the infamous chat message in the Teacher's Lounge that started this whole mess. That was direct guidance by a high-level SE employee to all moderators given in pretty much the worst way possible.

Putting this rule about accepting guidance among the other rules about far more serious issues into a binding agreement puts a certain level of threat behind it. If I decide to ignore advice by an SE employee, I'm suddenly also close to breaking the moderator agreement. Though the language in this rule is much weaker than in the other parts of the agreement, probably based on feedback from moderators. But if you have to weaken the language this much to make the rule palatable, why is it in there in the first place? The only purpose for this rule I can imagine is to put more force behind SE employees giving directives to moderators.

There is no need for a formal rule about listening to the CMs and considering their advice carefully, that is the default position for moderators. And the Senior Leadership Team probably shouldn't interfere with moderation directly in this way, without going through the CMs. This rule should just be removed entirely from the moderator agreement.

Answer 4

I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

Will this guidance be published for all users e.g. on Meta sites, or given just to moderators, collectively or individually? It would be concerning if there were to be one version of a policy for public consumption, and another that moderators were privately ordered to enforce.

Considering that the company get to (1) write the policies, (2) sack moderators who in their view are not abiding by or enforcing them as they'd like, & (3) take any action on any site that they see fit to, there seems to be no call for such a provision.

Answer 5

Speaking as someone who was pretty disappointed to just barely lose a moderator election last March,* I find the items making up the other half of the "two-way agreement" almost startlingly insufficient. These people are volunteers who by and large are offering its-their-livelihood levels of devotion to help this company keep its public face from collapsing into irrelevance. This agreement offers little if anything -- most importantly in the realm of protection from the company itself -- above what applies to every user.

Items i. and ii. under the "Stack Exchange, Inc. agrees" heading just confirm that moderators' privacy will be respected the same as every other user.

iii. Allow you to resign your position for any reason without penalty or repercussions.

I'm really struggling with how to respond to this one. What reasonable penalty or repercussion could possibly be applied to a resigning volunteer? The company agrees not to nuke the moderator's account?

It's simultaneously sorta nice that "the company respects your not volunteering" is affirmed, and terrifying that anyone thought it needed to be. There's certainly no comparably explicit "I will not use my mod powers to sabotage the site" in the top section -- that seems to go without saying.

vii. Provide support for your questions, requests and concerns [...]

I'm not sure how this could possibly be otherwise given the above "iv. I will abide by all other [...] policies" and "v. I will accept additional guidance given by [the company]". Responding to discussion about policies and guidance that they're expected to follow and enforce seems to be common courtesy. How about some kind of basic SLA here?

viii. Respect your right to speak openly to question and challenge policy without reprisal so long as such speech does not break the Code of Conduct.

Again, this is something that applies to every user.** This needs to be worded much more strongly for moderators, as a commitment to listen to and consider feedback that's offered from these dedicated and responsible volunteers.

[...] there may come times when we need to remove a moderator or can not follow one of the three processes for some reason [...]

Stack Exchange, Inc. reserves the right to suspend or terminate my privileges as a moderator [...]

Nope, sorry. This just isn't good enough any more. To suspend a moderator without prior notice, but pending investigation, would be perfectly understandable. For termination, the company needs to commit itself -- bind itself -- to treating moderators with a fair process commensurate with the responsibility and work it is expecting of them.

As I said, I'm not a moderator, so my opinion is perhaps not directly relevant. But I thought it was worth saying that I wouldn't even consider a mod position again after the past year if the company is going to stipulate these points and nothing more. The commitment to me as a trusted volunteer would have to be substantially strengthened.

If nothing else, it needs a Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration here of certain tenets of respect and decency shall not be construed to deny or dilute Stack Exchange's obligation to treat you with all the respect and decency due a volunteer.

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*And then after the rest of the year unfolded decided he had dodged a grenade...
**Or if it doesn't any more, just another reason for all of us to think hard about participating here.

Answer 6

As you say in your post:

Once the sixty days have passed, any moderator who has either declined the new agreement or hasn’t responded to the notifications to accept the new agreement but who still has their diamond will lose access to PII and some moderator tools.

In other words, moderators who haven't accepted the new agreement by the time the deadline lapses will have their account placed in a state similar to when a moderator is newly granted their diamond but hasn't accepted the moderator agreement yet.

However, a moderator told me something different in chat:

The diamonds will get removed is what we have been told on the moderator-side announcement

(but that they'll also expedite requests for reinstatement if you missed the deadline)

Which is correct? Can the incorrect one please be edited?

Answer 7

I have one question, it's focused on the precise language used in the agreement.

Points (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) begin with the words: "I will abide by…" but in point (v) the wording changes to "I will accept…”

(i) I will abide by the current Code of Conduct […].
(ii) I will abide by the current Terms of Service of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange sites […].
(iii) I will abide by the Privacy Policy.
(iv) I will abide by all other officially announced moderator and user policies made available to me.
(v) I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

For me “I will accept“ and “I will abide” carry the same meaning. Is there some subtle difference between the two?

Room for improvement?

At this point, changing the text of the agreement would require creating V3. I understand your point but, other than non-impactful changes like adding the link to the help center, we aren't going to be rewording the agreement. @Catija♦ (July 8)

I have since reflected on that comment, and I'm slightly puzzled. What is wrong with tweaking things if it leads to clarification and helps avoid misinterpretation? Looking at the posts submitted so far, it seems that the sticking point for many is indeed point (v). We all appreciate the time and attention that was poured into this agreement; it is the fruit of several months of drafting and negotiation, but a small edit in the "I will accept additional guidance" clause would clarify.

For example,

• “After consulting with staff for guidance, I will respect the spirit of the guidelines and adhere to follow them to the best of my abilities.” OR
• “I promise to be receptive to additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.”

Answer 8

This is designed to keep the scope of this point limited while also giving us the flexibility to add small network-relevant policies that we need moderators to follow without having to update the mod agreement.

It's the cynic in me, or isn't this "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" Darth Vader stuff right here? I'm not comfortable in any situation where I'm elected to hold a post yet I'm not fully aware of what that post ensure since it may be modified at later time. Not only that, if I don't accept them my only option is to abandon the post I was elected to serve. Why? If you need to do small tweaks to the moderator agreement, why not doing it in the moderation agreement instead of having to follow a web of documentation? How would anyone be fully aware of their responsibilities as moderator if said responsibilities are fluid?

I prefer these "tweak" are called guidance and aren't part of the moderator agreement at all.

Answer 9

In my role as part of the proto-pro-tem council - we reviewed this, though I'm under the impression the version we saw already had the rough edges knocked off. Changes were suggested (and I recognise some of the wording as mine and others) and it went through the mod team. There's a few surprises, but none of them unpleasant.

Admittedly more eyeballs finds more bugs - but I do hope we don't wait a decade before reviewing the mod agreement again. I feel like a good idea would be to have user concerns as shown here and elsewhere would find its way into future iterations of this.

Answer 10

Minor nitpick

Could point v be adjusted to use unambiguous wording:

In the current wording, it's unclear if the specifier regarding existing network-wide policies only applies to discussion or applies to questions and concerns as well. The question clarifies that this seems to apply to all three, but the agreement should not need to rely on external texts to be unambiguous.

Previous:

v. I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

Suggestion:

v. I will accept additional guidance regarding existing network-wide policies given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions.

Or, even better in my opinion, since I don't see the purpose of the wether in response to section:

v. I will accept additional guidance regarding existing network-wide policies given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team.

Answer 11

You say:

"to allow collaboration between mods on the same site..."

But right after that you say V2 says:

"I will not disclose or share this information with anyone that is not a moderator or employee of Stack Exchange, Inc."

Which doesn't make it clear that information can only be disclosed to "co-moderators", as the suggested purpose given here:

"This would prevent the mods from even talking about it in a private room with co-moderators or even mentioning it to staff in a CM escalation"

Users do not want 550+ moderators to know their name, email address and IP address, when in fact it says next to the box to fill in your email address: "Required, but never shown" when they first sign up. Without saying "this information will be available only to 550+ moderators" some users might think it's deceiving.

All you had to do was add 4 words:

"I will not disclose or share this information with anyone that is not a moderator [on the same site] or employee of Stack Exchange, Inc."

Answer 12

Thank you for explaining the intent of (v) :—

"Accept guidance" means listen to guidance and be open to it.

And:—

If a moderator is looking to understand how to interpret part of the CoC, we want them to listen to our guidance - they can choose how to act on that guidance, though.

And:—

We're asking them [moderators] to listen to us but not forcing them to comply

That's very welcome: it means that a fair judge of whether a moderator's abiding by or enforcing network-wide policies—say Community Managers involved in the Moderator Conduct Review Process, or members of the Moderator Council involved in the Moderator Reinstatement & Appeal Process—should consider only the import of those policies as written, & gives users some assurance that the moderators they elect can't be pressured, behind the scenes, into accepting interpretions that are at odds with, or that go beyond, what's written. It impels clarification of published policies through redaction rather than through scattered exegeses; whatever latitude in meaning remains is a matter for user communities to address if they see a need to.

All the same, is it not worth clarifying the intent in the Moderator Agreement itself? (I don't think it can be denied that people find "accept guidance" ambiguous—I count four posts querying the phrase here, & another six on the moderator-only site.) In a legal agreement especially, it must be liable to be read as "follow guidance", as it's hard to imagine how a moderator's failure to listen to or be open to guidance could be ascertained before sanctioning them. And, as a legal agreement, it's what's actually written that's authoritative.

Answer 13

Why has the new agreement gone live without any opportunity for non-moderator users to give feedback? Moderators did have the opportunity to give feedback, but not to discuss the draft agreement with other users on the sites they moderate–why not?

Answer 14

I have to say I think this is a mistake:

Protecting user privacy, particularly their PII

When users join our sites, they expect us to protect their privacy and the personally identifiable information (PII) we collect about them is a big part of that. We grant moderators access to some of this information so that they can do their work, but we take it very seriously when this access is misused. That’s why the biggest part of V1 is still an important part of V2 - it’s designed to protect our users’ private information and prevent misuse by making our expectations for usage of PII clear.

One of the issues on the internet is that people hide behind anonymity and then behave badly. I run websites where I encourage people to use their real name, and as a result moderation is not an issue. Instead people are civil. Of course, I don't want my email address bandied around, but I'm quite happy for everybody to know who I am. I stand by what I say.

In addition I saw nothing in the new moderator agreement about openness. Without that, well I'm afraid to say power corrupts, and it's all too easy for moderators to morph into secret police. We have open justice in society for a reason. Without that, you will always have trouble with moderators. They say Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? for a reason too.