243

All good things must come to an end and so must the review queues project. This project would not have been successful without the community. Thank you all for the hours of reviewing, testing, and sharing your feedback along the way. With that said, this will be our final major release. In this post, I’ll summarize the changes we’ve made to the overall queue workflows and the specific adjustments to the Reopen votes queue.

Changes to the First posts queue

First posts → First questions AND First answers queue

  • To avoid context switching, and recognizing that asking and answering require slightly different skill sets, we are creating two separate queues to handle the individual post types.
  • The purpose of these queues remains the same – helping new users learn how to use the site. With that in mind, reviewers will be able to choose from three actions: Looks OK, Edit, and Share feedback.
  • It can take time to develop the skills to write a good question or answer. A user’s first few posts may require extra attention and to help new users get the hang of things, First questions and First answers will accept up to three posts per user if their first couple aren’t successful.
  • Reviewers are encouraged to leave comments for the post-author, but now they can also choose from a few options of canned feedback which will appear as a comment from the Community account.

Canned feedback options appears in modal Canned feedback appears as a comment from Community

Changes to the Reopen votes queues

  1. “Significant edit” option

    Post edit screen with significant edit option

    • This feature appears when editing a closed question and allows editors to indicate if they’re making a minor edit (i.e. grammar, spelling) or a significant edit. By submitting an edit for review, the editor agrees that their edit attempts to resolve the question’s close reason(s) and should be considered for reopening in the Reopen votes queue.

    • Once a significant edit has been submitted, editors are still able to return to the edit screen and make further adjustments. Significant edit status will also be indicated in both revision history and post timeline pages.

    Post edit screen with significant edit submitted

  2. Significant edits in the Suggested edits queue

    • Users who do not have enough reputation to submit an edit outright will have their significant edits go into the Suggested edits queue accompanied by a post notice.

    Significant edit in Suggested edits queue post notice

    • Actions in the Suggested edits queue will change based on whether the edit has been flagged as a Significant edit. In the case of a Significant edit, reviewers will be able to Approve and reopen or Approve and leave closed.
    • It takes two approve votes (any combination of Approve and reopen or Approve and leave closed) to remove the task out of the Suggested Edits queue. If at least one of the votes is Approve and reopen, a new task will be created in the Reopen votes queue.
  3. Leave closed reasons

    • If a Reopen votes reviewer elects to leave a question closed, the reviewer will be presented with a “Leave closed reason” modal (similar to the close reason modal) that will return feedback to the editors. For example, if a question was originally closed because it lacked details, it may still require further details even after an edit, or new issues with the question might present themselves like asking too many questions at once.

    Reasons to leave a question closed appear in modal

    • In addition to inbox notifications, the closed question’s post notice will also be updated with more information.

    Post notice updated with new close reason

  4. Multiple opportunities to send question for review

    • We’ll be launching this feature without any limits – users will be able to submit multiple edits on individual posts. We’ll take a look at the data in a few weeks to see if any abuse of the feature has occurred and take mitigation steps as needed.

    • [Stack Overflow only] Reviewers will not see posts that

      1. they’ve voted to reopen since last closed, and
      2. voted to close since the post was last edited.

      Moderators are exempt from this restriction.

  5. Bug fix: “Don't cause the reopen vote of the user, whose edit pushed the closed question into the reopen queue, to invalidate the review”

    This bug fix is also included as part of this release. You can read Kyle’s detailed response here.

Other changes to the Review queues

  1. Turn off the Help & improvement queue

    • H&I has been our least productive queue. Over the last 90 days, only 9 tasks went into the queue each day on average, compared with 2,215 for First Posts (our busiest queue) and 188 for Reopen Votes (our second-to-last busiest). Consequently, this queue will be turned off. It will remain in the listing until its current items are exhausted, and will then be removed. History for and badges awarded from this queue will remain as they are.
    • With the addition of the First questions queue, we expect that questions with potential can get the same assistance they need more quickly.
    • Questions that would have ended up in this queue from Triage (with a Needs community edit action) will now enter the First questions queue.
  2. New actions for Late answers queue

    The Late answers queue has been successful in identifying and removing low quality posts, repeat answers, and spam. Reviewers were able to take any number of actions on a task, so the objective of this queue wasn’t all that obvious. To clear up any ambiguity and focus on identifying problematic answers, we’ve defined three actions: Looks OK, Edit, and Delete.

  3. Keep Triage queue (Stack Overflow only)

    • Triage will continue to handle questions only.
    • Triage will be available on all sites, but only turned on by default on Stack Overflow. Have a meta discussion and ask a moderator to if your site wishes to add the Triage queue.
  4. Name change: Low quality posts → Low quality answers (Stack Overflow only)

    This queue will continue to handle answers only.

  5. Misc. We won't issue new Reviewer or Steward badges for the queues that were turned off, but this won’t have any effect on badges already earned in these respective queues.

    Along with all these changes, here is an updated visual of the Review queues map –

    Flowchart of review queues

What about issue X, Y, Z?

As mentioned earlier, this is our final major release. We will not be pursuing the proposed suggested tasks feature at this time. We didn't feel that it was going to significantly increase curation activities on the site and therefore didn't warrant the high development cost.

There are still a few outstanding issues related to suggested edits that have proved to be technically challenging. We’ll respond in those original Meta request posts as soon as we decide on a course of action.

Feedback

Please leave your feedback and any bugs you may discover related to this release below this post. We will be monitoring this post until Friday, September 10th. Report any further issues after September 10th as new questions on Meta.

45
  • 72
    "appear as a comment from the Community account." - Neat! Aug 26, 2021 at 13:50
  • 7
    "Looks OK, Edit, and Delete" for Late Answers. Does that mean 500 reputation point users now effectively have Delete privileges? Or does that send the post to another queue? Aug 26, 2021 at 14:34
  • 10
    @Xnero You're posting a lot of comments that are already mentioned in answers or that should be answers - please don't use comments for this purpose.
    – Catija
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:01
  • 20
    As a side note, in SOpt lots of new messages are in English. I know there's a "solution" to this (go here and translate), but honestly, I'm getting tired of this "SE changes site -> messages are in English -> community translates" cycle. I'd love to see a better solution, that doesn't require the community acting after the change is made.
    – hkotsubo
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:19
  • 5
    Too bad this is featured roght now. I'd rather see Aaron's post about removing the top bar preferences featured :(
    – Luuklag
    Aug 26, 2021 at 17:37
  • 13
    Late Answers requires a downvote before being about to select delete. I love wasting my rep on DVs. I'm sure everyone wants to waste 20/40 rep going through the queue each day. Absurd. Aug 26, 2021 at 18:31
  • 10
    @JourneymanGeek posts with 0 score can receive delete and recommend deletion votes (at least in the old queue... I'm not clear yet on exactly how the new one works, but I am 100% on board with encouraging people to downvote when voting to delete. One should always be readier to downvote than to delete!)
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 8:06
  • 7
    @Zanna I have reservations about these kind of statements. I've seen more irresponsible drive-by voting than perhaps you'd imagine. Not just that, but also taunting users in the comments who haven't earned enough rep to downvote back. It only takes 1 high-rep user to throw a low rep into the question ban.
    – bad_coder
    Aug 27, 2021 at 23:24
  • 7
    @TylerH - Thanks for the info. I respect the fact that the new design can be useful on other sites where I'm not active. I was trying to say that it'd have been better if the old response options weren't completely removed - they could have been kept along with the new design.
    – TRC
    Aug 28, 2021 at 4:07
  • 6
    @bad_coder What do you mean? I said one should be more willing to downvote than to delete. If one thinks a post should be removed from the site altogether, one should surely be willing to downvote it. Would it be less bad if instead of casually downvoting, people casually delete-voted?
    – Zanna
    Aug 28, 2021 at 4:37
  • 24
    Did you even test this on non-tech sites? Why does it post comments about code on humanities sites??? Aug 29, 2021 at 5:55
  • 13
    @curiousdannii That's hardly the only such wording blunder. Here's another: apparently now all answers must be "solutions".
    – tchrist
    Aug 29, 2021 at 15:23
  • 21
    I initially upvoted this because there are some good things here, but I've changed it to a downvote after working in the new First Q&A queues. The number of options in these queues is severely limited -- I keep having to perform actual moderation (like vote to close) and then click "Looks OK" to finish the review for a post that is clearly not OK. I understand that there will be some bugs at first, but the workflow seems like it was designed by people who don't have much (if any) experience actually reviewing first posts -- many of which are not OK and/or need more than an edit or "feedback".
    – Null
    Aug 30, 2021 at 15:40
  • 12
    You know, if you guys want, there's a significant number of us here who would be happy to beta test this stuff out and give you some real user/curator feedback before you 'Final release' it out onto the entire broad spectrum of sites like this.
    – ouflak
    Aug 31, 2021 at 15:51
  • 7
    @TobyHarnish, Meta sites aren't just for questions. They are also for announcements, regular updates, and site discussions.
    – ouflak
    Aug 31, 2021 at 20:42

119 Answers 119

73

Complete list of reported feature requests and bugs1

Type Excerpt Status
Missing 'Flag', 'Close', and 'Share' buttons in First Questions/Answers - Dup: 1, 2
Missing 'Skip' button in the First Answers queue
New actions for Late Answers queue not deployed
Typo in Help Center article for First Answers queue
Blank text for "not enough reputation" message
Blank text for "reached daily limit" message on First Answers
The indicator for First Questions and First Answers is never red
Missing space between OP and OP's reputation
The "Staff" label is not aligned with the user detail in the queues
Comments cannot be deleted by moderators - Dup: 1
No way to correctly handle non-answers in First answers - Dup: 1, 2, 3
The "Learn more" button doesn't work on Stats and History tabs Dup: 1
Make the "Share feedback" and "Leave closed" modals movable
Answers reviewed in First Answers reappear in Late Answers
The "Delete" button doesn't work properly in "Late Answers"
The "edit" option is missing in "First answers" queue - Dup: 1, 2
Generic error message when submitting empty feedback
Comments cannot be flagged by users - Dup: 1, 2
Blank text for "reached daily limit" message on Reviews page
Review progress exceeds the upper bound
Selecting "Other Action" in First Questions or First Answers does not clear the post from the queue - Dup: 1
Low opacity in First Questions/Answers queues when logged out
Canned comments on international sites are in English
Triage blocks questions from getting to close queue for about a day
Feedback from First Questions and First Answers is not really anonymous
Pending edit suggestions are not visible in First Answers queue
Custom flags raised in review audits are real
Casting a close vote refreshes the page in First Questions queue - Dup: 1
Inconsistent font size in the reopen review box
Code-related comments on non-code-related sites
Capitalization issues in Help Center article for LQP queue
Canned comments are too specific to Stack Overflow
Manual flags fail bad-post audits in Triage
Question age in review is reported differently to on the question
Inline edit takes you out of First questions and into Suggested edits queue
First Answers Canned Responses Give Help Link to "How to Ask"
Selecting "Share feedback" completes audits too easily
Users aren't returned to the review page after editing if editor opens in new page
Answer went through First Answers queue twice
"Please log in to review" banner is blank for logged out users
Posting and deleting a comment allows you to complete the review
"Other action" should be "Other actions" (plural)
Weird word wrapping in queue descriptions in some non-English sites
Empty queues show no message on their respective review page
Identical comments from LQP and LA queues are not merged together - Dup: 1
Typo in FQ Help Center page references answers instead of questions
"Flag" and "Edit" links are missing from posts on completed/ inactive review pages
The URL for the Stats or History for a review queue changes to a review task URL once the page is loaded
Allow flagging posted canned/anonymous comments - Dup: 1
Bring back the "I'm done" button for First questions - Dup: 1, 2
Make the canned feedback options configurable per site
Do not abandon progress toward the First Posts Steward badge
Mention that queues are retired in pop-ups and Help Center
Update phrasing of LQP Help Center verbiage
Move the First Posts queue to the bottom
Rename the "Share feedback" option to "Share anonymous feedback"
Update the pages that reference the now-retired first posts queue
Update the Community♦ user profile to mention anonymous comments
Add "Share" button on the "Other answers" tab
Add an option to (easily) delete anonymous comments - Dup: 1
Don't show Community's comments in the Moderator dashboard
Disable replies to the community user
Make failing audits only possible at final stage
Don't notify the user who posted the anonymous comment
Change the wording of the "Submit for review" button
Remove edit link in Late Answers
Add OP shading to the revisions summary in the Reopen queue
Let site moderators customize comment text wording available on their site
Change the "Submit" button to "Continue" when the action not final
Clarify closure notice text about edits made to the post
Disable the "Edit" option for low-rep users when suggesting an edit is not possible
Custom anonymous comments - Dup: 1
Change wording of the significant edit checkbox
Non-bumping edits
Add "Ignored tags" filter to the queues - Dup: 1
Have a default, auto-checked "Keep closed" reason
Remove the "Share feedback" option from the First Questions queue
Send questions flagged as low-quality to the Close Votes queue directly
Suggestions for additional canned comments
Remove the "How do I use the First posts queue?" link from the Help Center
Replace the "Community" bot for the canned comments with a new "Review" bot
Increase close and reopen vote weight for tag badge holders
Link-only canned response
Display site-specific close reasons in the Reopen queue
Add "question isn't in the right language" canned comment on non-English sites' FQ queue
Add "from review" link to canned comments
Add "close"/ "flag" link to question in FA queue
Add link to main Review Queue dashboard/ all queues to individual queue pages - Dup: 1
Add "flag" option to LQP queue
Add comment, flag, and edit (w/o reopen) options to Reopen Votes Queue
Let sites decide whether or not they are a "code-related"
What's the plan for hiding retired queues?
What is the reason for having comments be from Community?
Will the badge stats for the Help & improvement queue be gone?
Why does the "Recommend deletion" button show a dialog similar to the flag dialog?
How to deal with answers to off-topic questions in First Answers
How does the significant edit checkbox work with the existing reopen criteria?

1 Idea stolen from here.

6
  • 13
    Maintaining the list referenced in the footnotes was a serious pain :P
    – bad_coder
    Aug 28, 2021 at 13:53
  • 15
    This is sheer beauty :) Was it manually compiled or with at least some automation involved? As I see value in making this a script/bot for this if such community wikis are to be officially endorsed. It saves up a lot of times scrolling/bookmarking/remembering who reported what. Aug 31, 2021 at 2:55
  • 7
    @Oleg It was (unfortunately) manually compiled. It's currently quite difficult to automate (and cumbersome to do manually) because not all answers follow the same format (e.g., tagging, heading, etc.) but I wrote a suggestion here for the company to implement templates for answers to announcements/product-discovery/... posts and to automatically generate an index based on that. Hopefully, it'll be conidered.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 31, 2021 at 8:50
  • 5
    @41686d6564 oh, that's a pity (but non-impossible to do, come to think of it - I might give it a shot later this week [but it obviously will need some cooperation from reporters to include something like the headers you proposed for the automation to be able to scrape titles]). This is a very, very nice idea - those "product discovery" posts really stretch the capabilities of the Q&A model. Even templates as middle ground would be great given how well they work on sites like Stack Apps. Aug 31, 2021 at 9:04
  • 11
    I wonder how many real reviewers were involved in beta testing these new review queues? I believe a lot of these bugs or missing features could have been caught in a proper testing case - especially those that are really obvious. Aug 31, 2021 at 21:02
  • Can this be added to the list of bugs: meta.stackexchange.com/a/369694/293308
    – BSMP
    Oct 29, 2021 at 1:52
116

/

No way to correctly handle non-answers in First answers

Right now, users are forced to flag the post and then pick "Looks OK".

Could the "First answers" feedback options include something along the lines of "This is not an answer" (such as link-only, "Me too," or "Thanks" answers)? It would allow us to give quick feedback on posts that should be flagged NAA without waiting for the Low Quality Answers queue to get to it—and potentially allow for the answer to be fixed without being deleted, in the case of link-only answers (which I often see fixed in response to comments). Ideally, selecting this would also flag the post as NAA, or at least send it to the low-quality queue.

Feedback dialog for new user answer with "Answer is unclear" and "Answer needs supporting information" options

None of the current options really apply to non-answers. I can flag the answer, but I'm unable to complete the review without saying that it "Looks OK" (when really it has serious issues).

29
  • 21
    ... I feel like the links to flag should still be on the post, which would allow you to flag it as NAA. Not sure why they're not there. The flag and close links also seem to be missing on questions. - Looks like it's supposed to be there but went AWOL - meta.stackexchange.com/a/369017/284336
    – Catija
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:50
  • 8
    Personally, I liked the way the "Late Answers" queue used to work (and Lisa admits it was highly successful). I can see why some would like a fast-track-to-deletion, with "Delete" direct from First/Late Answers but I also feel that the two-tier system - flagging from Late/First Answers to send it into Low Quality Posts for deletion - actually provides a good 'safety mechanism'. Aug 26, 2021 at 15:53
  • 6
    Also, I'm not sure that very new reviewers (500 rep) should really be voting to delete answers. And those with very high rep (20k+) could, anyway, vote to delete as their review action in (the old) Late Answers queue. "Late Answers" wasn't broken, so why did they fix it? Aug 26, 2021 at 15:57
  • 4
    We added flags back in, and we're going to be adding other options back in as well. I'm going to mark this as status-completed.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:51
  • 9
    @kristinalustig I think flagging should be one of the actions to end the review... there's generally nothing else to do after that. That would help to deal with some of the problems in other answers here.
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 18:27
  • 3
    people who click "No Action Needed" for every item and from now on will click "Looks OK"
    – Zanna
    Aug 28, 2021 at 6:18
  • 9
    @kristinalustig The flag issue is still there you still have to end up skipping as there is no good exit option
    – mmmmmm
    Aug 28, 2021 at 8:33
  • 15
    I have to say, I am pretty baffled that someone didn't think of NAA workflow and how you cannot complete review for such answers. This is pretty obvious stuff. Aug 28, 2021 at 9:30
  • 6
    If this is status completed, why is this the best we can do when reviewing a non answer in the First Answers queue? Aug 28, 2021 at 20:45
  • 14
    @kristinalustig, This says status-completed, but a flag as a non-answer still doesn't complete the review or allow us end it with 'I'm Done'. Do I need to clear my browser cache or something?
    – ouflak
    Aug 28, 2021 at 21:45
  • 5
    Do I select "Answer is unclear" or "Answer needs supporting information" if the answer is clearly spam? Sure, I flagged it as spam (for someone else to delete), but I sure as heck can't select "Looks OK" after doing that.
    – FreeMan
    Aug 30, 2021 at 18:23
  • 13
    Can the status-completed be removed from this as there is still No way to correctly handle non-answers in First answers?
    – Tomerikoo
    Aug 31, 2021 at 7:50
  • 5
    I've updated the status to planned - sorry for the confusion. We're working on this as we speak, as well as a bunch of other fixes, and we'll be sure to update y'all when we've gotten them out the door.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 31, 2021 at 11:44
  • 5
    I actually find it pretty remarkable that this very obvious use case have been overlooked...
    – klutt
    Aug 31, 2021 at 12:39
  • 6
    Until this is taken seriously, I'll continue to flag as "non-answer" and just click "Looks OK", as this is the option that makes most sense (although it doesn't really make any sense). Aug 31, 2021 at 20:47
107

Yaakov: This has been addressed, read all of the details here.

Please do not abandon progress toward the First Posts Steward badge.

Noticing "First answers" and "First questions" were now separate, I checked "First posts":

enter image description here

Slowly but surely, I was working toward the Steward badge with the First Posts queue:

enter image description here

As this queue is now retired, progress towards this badge is no longer possible. Please do not abandon the progress toward this badge, progress that many users have worked years for.

33
  • 40
    It would be nice if they took the effort to split out your progress on this queue so that you had it applied to the two new queues created from it, but I don't know if that amount of work is feasible.
    – TylerH
    Aug 26, 2021 at 13:57
  • 13
    @kristinalustig I think what Thomas asked for was the transfer of counts onto the new system, since First Posts = First Questions + First Answers and nothing more. Aug 26, 2021 at 14:12
  • 4
    @TylerH It is not. It is calculated by counting the number of tasks you've completed in the queue, so granting progress would require moving all the tasks between queues, which has the potential to break a lot of things since the queues are similar but functionally different.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:13
  • 24
    @kristinalustig That doesn't really answer the question. I doubt anyone expected their badges earned in FP to be removed, but we are wondering if the literal years of progress and effort we put into the FP queue will be remembered with the changes, rather than just wiped clean Aug 26, 2021 at 14:13
  • 4
    @animuson So change the criteria for badges related to First answer and First question queues such that they count tasks both in the queue itself and in the First posts queue. This should be much easier than moving tasks around in the database. Aug 26, 2021 at 14:26
  • 16
    While not 'ideal', what about just dividing the First Posts progress by 2 (round down) and then adding that amount of progress to both First Answers and First Questions? So that 451/1000 would turn into 225/1000 and 225/1000.
    – Sarov
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:31
  • 11
    @EmilJeřábek I happen to be familiar with how the badge award scripts work and know that it is not anywhere nearly as simple as you think it is. Nor do I think there is much value in people continuing to try to think up ways that it "might be easier" because it's really not. So I'll just leave it at not possible.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:40
  • 18
    This was my recommendation, as the dev who worked on it. There are technical reasons why we can't carry over the first posts counts to count towards first questions/answers scores. That said, we'll be thinking about other potential approaches to this that could address the request. Aug 26, 2021 at 16:11
  • 3
    @ThomasMarkov best to reword as a feature request if you can Aug 26, 2021 at 17:36
  • 8
    @YaakovEllis "we'll be thinking about other potential approaches to this that could address the request". While it's good to know that you might still do something about this, didn't it occur to staff that users might just be a little upset to have their work / time wiped out like this? Didn't anyone think 'Hmm, maybe we should respect the time and effort that people have invested before we split this review queue'? And what assurance do users have that staff won't do something else in the future which will negate users' time & effort, without any warning (as far as I can tell)? Aug 27, 2021 at 7:03
  • 15
    @LarsBosteen yes, it did occur to us. Yes, we talked about this (and the different options) before launch. I made the call then that we would not initially be able to transfer progress from one queue to the other. The reaction here is making us go back to the drawing board. Aug 27, 2021 at 7:25
  • 19
    @YaakovEllis Thanks for "going back to the drawing board", that's good to hear. Aug 27, 2021 at 9:11
  • 6
    @YaakovEllis What technical reasons are there? The same as for showing vote counts without 1000 reputation, "we don't have the code for this"? If I can look at a user's review history and manually count questions and answers, obviously, a program can do the same. Aug 28, 2021 at 3:30
  • 8
    Why not just turn the First Posts queue into either the First Questions or First Answers queue, like what was done for Low Quanlity Answers? That way, the First Posts count will still be retained as one of the two new queues. Aug 28, 2021 at 8:35
  • 10
    Proposed fix is detailed here Sep 2, 2021 at 18:05
102

Bring back the "I'm done" button for First questions

I just looked at a post in the First questions queue which consisted of a large and unreadable screenshot of the code and some text asking a question about that code.

None of the canned comments really fitted for that post, an edit by me would be no improvement and it definitely doesn't look OK. So I could downvote and/or leave a "uncanned" comment, but I could not complete the review. So I'm asking for a means to complete the review just as the "I'm done" button was.

10
  • 33
    There needs to be an option to cast a close vote that would end the review. I am stuck on a similar problem.
    – Dharman
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:47
  • 34
    There's no way to end a review properly in the First Answers queue. After flagging a post, and you don't want to leave a comment, the only choice is "Looks OK".. ?!? Aug 26, 2021 at 15:49
  • 11
    Also for first answers.
    – GoodDeeds
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:19
  • 6
    Also, the template responses have probably left NO way for us to complete the reviews of questions considered homework questions - where the OP puts zero effort into the question, and directly posts the assignment expecting us to answer it for them (eg. Name these alkanes). Such questions are specially common on Chem.SE and Physics.SE. In that case - 'looks OK' doesn't work, editing (to show effort) should be done by the OP, not us - and for 'share feedback', neither is the question broad, nor unclear. There's no option to just downvote and comment - the review can't be completed. Do fix it.
    – TRC
    Aug 27, 2021 at 6:35
  • 12
    yeah please fix this. We're going to end up with millions of useless canned comments because we're forced to do something after downvoting and flagging etc
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 9:09
  • 16
    Agreed that this is a good idea. I'm going to be working on adding this option back in. Might take a few days, but I'll mark this as status-planned. Thanks for the feedback.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:52
  • 5
    @kristinalustig Can we also have that "I'm done" instead of just one action automatically completing the review. There may be occasions where more than one action (Edit and leave a custom comment, for example) would be appropriate. Or downvote and delete-vote (in First Answers, for the latter). Aug 28, 2021 at 20:59
  • 2
    One possible implementation of this: taking actions like flagging the post or voting to close could change the "Looks OK" option into "I'm done".
    – Ryan M
    Sep 2, 2021 at 6:43
  • 3
    FYI: A fix for this was deployed today. At least on Stack Overflow—and, presumably, other sites—there is now a new Other Action button that remains grayed out until either a) the post is flagged or voted on, or b) a comment is added or upvoted. I've included details on this on the corresponding Meta Stack Overflow thread. Thank you, @kristinalustig. Sep 8, 2021 at 2:09
  • 2
    You beat me to it, Jeremy! I got this out yesterday, you should be able to use the "Other action" button like you had used the "I'm done" action in the past.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 8, 2021 at 14:40
89

Entirely Wrong "\l\a\n\g\u\a\g\e"

The English Language & Usage site should not be telling people to post code examples, but somehow it nonetheless is:

screenshot of wrong comment on ELU

We even have comments complaining about people’s “solutions”:

screenshot of yet another bad comments

This makes no sense given how rarely “solutions” is an appropriate description of an answer on non-coding sites.

Yet Another Bug: Indelible Comments

  • Mods can now delete all community comments
  • Any user who is able to flag can flag these comments as no longer needed

Every time some silly bit of text is chosen for these, a comment cascade spews forth from random users about how silly and inappropriate these messages about computer code are on a non-programming site, cluttering up the post's comments.

Nobody can flag or delete these, not even moderators! Oh you have the buttons, but these are false-flag operations: they won’t let you do it despite the buttons inviting you to try.

That means we cannot even fix the problems these are creating for us. Sure, we can delete the spew cascade, but that does no good: we are not permitted to delete the offending comments that caused the problem in the first place. So soon enough the silly comments will be repeated.

It's an ugly site-maintenance issue, and those entrusted with site maintenance are for the first time ever forbidden from carrying out their appointed task of cleaning up comments that cause the site problems.

This is a big mess. Please fix it.

Feature Request

The choice of text for many of these only works on coding sites. Which ones are allowed, and how their text should read, should be something that the site moderators can configure for their own sites.

8
  • 11
    We're getting this too. Citations from Koine Greek lexicons aren't code! Aug 29, 2021 at 4:06
  • 9
    @curiousdannii Well it's all Greek to me...
    – TylerH
    Aug 30, 2021 at 14:11
  • 1
    As a band-aid while this situation is being resolved, moderators can edit these comments to something more appropriate.
    – Chris
    Aug 30, 2021 at 23:19
  • 11
    Mods can now delete community user comments Sep 2, 2021 at 21:24
  • 3
    @YaakovEllis Thank you very, very much! I really appreciate how this got fixed so quickly. I hope you guys don't get depressed from all the negative feedback you must receive anytime anything at all ever changes, no matter how insignificant. Thank you for your work.
    – tchrist
    Sep 3, 2021 at 0:05
  • 2
    @YaakovEllis Yay, ordinary users can flag a community user's useless comment! Sep 7, 2021 at 17:31
  • 1
    @YaakovEllis Seems like this now has a potentially exciting short-to-medium–term benefit that wouldn't have been otherwise possible without the new user-flaggability! That's right, I'm looking at the opportunity for a cool new number-crunching post-implementation assessment post coming to an MSE post near you in six to eight nominal time units, since per Mari-Lou's comment, you'll now be able measure how often those auto-comments get flagged across the various SE communities, and what sorts of flags they incur. Hope this helps.
    – tchrist
    Sep 7, 2021 at 17:42
  • @YaakovEllis Can this post be tagged as completed given the fix here? Sep 14, 2021 at 19:41
70

Please bring the skip button back

enter image description here

Can the skip button be also added again? I am still yet to go in college and am not aware of most concepts. In those times I used to skip the review. But in the new update skip button is not present. So can you please add the Skip button here?

4
  • 2
    Side-note: the skip button is missing only for "first answers", not "first questions" Aug 26, 2021 at 14:14
  • 14
    Yeah, that's my bad. It's getting added back in now, will be live soon!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:17
  • 14
    Added back in - skip away!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:23
  • 2
    @kristinalustig Thanks for adding the skip button. It is very helpful for someone like me who has rep but not knowledge of various topics. Aug 26, 2021 at 15:25
65

Please allow us to flag the canned comments, and I don't think the system knows when a post has been corrected.

Enter image description here

Please allow users to flag the canned comments for no longer needed (NLN). We're smart enough to know when the post has been corrected, which brings me to my second point: Is the system really smart enough to know when a post has been corrected?

6
  • 4
    In case it's looking at voting score for example: we've had answers resolve all their flaggable issues but still be bad solutions (but valid answers). Aug 26, 2021 at 20:23
  • 17
    I uh... share your skepticism? This particular part of the codebase seems pretty old so I'm doing some archaeological digging and asking around to figure out why we are making this claim here and what in particular it pertains to.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 13:28
  • 4
    @kristinalustig Like if I am voting to delete an answer based on a lack of meaningful citations/support, I don't really see the system being able to reliably determine when the quality of citations and support has been improved, that's something reviewers have to determine. Anyway, thanks for looking into it. Aug 27, 2021 at 13:32
  • 2
    @kristinalustig This bug-feature adds noise, not signal, to any SE site it erupts on. The value proposition to SE sites over 'the rest of the internet" is "more signal, less noise" - this particular addition is utterly at odds with that core value. If SE wants people to get frustrated with the community mod function - which is a key element to SE sites running smoothly - this is a fine example of how to dis-incentivize unpaid volunteers from spending their time in that necessary function. I expect that you are in the fix it team, but management needs to hear this message. Sep 2, 2021 at 13:33
  • 2
    I flagged this answer as NAA, and left the canned comment. The answer has been improved. The flag has been marked helpful (so that part of the system seems to assume it's an improvement), but the canned comment is still there and still unflaggable. At the very least the helpful NAA flag should allow me to flag the comment I raised.
    – David Buck
    Sep 3, 2021 at 11:44
  • 1
    users can now flag Community authored comments as "no longer needed" Sep 9, 2021 at 18:51
60

The image with canned reasons for the first questions queue and the one showing a canned reason on an answer both show canned comments that are specific to code. I'm not sure if you're planning on only rolling these out to Stack Overflow or other code-specific sites for now, your post doesn't mention that, so I'm assuming you're planning on rolling out these networkwide (I can't check, but I see the new queues on e.g. IPS, there's nothing in them so I don't know if that means those same canned comments are there).
In that case: Don't show the code-specific feedback reasons in first answers/questions queues on all sites please. There are plenty of sites around where these would be nonsensical to have.
Kristina just confirmed in the comment section that the code specific reasons shouldn't show up on non-code related sites.

So that only leaves me with the bonus point request: Please give each site the option to add their own reasons to this dialog, while we might not need more or less code, but there are other details that we might want to bring attention to. (On request, I've also turned that into a separate question here)

15
  • +20 for the last sentence alone!
    – FreeMan
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:04
  • 7
    The code-specific options shouldn't be showing on any non-code-related site. If you're seeing that anywhere, please let us know!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:07
  • @kristinalustig Thank you! That's good to know, I've edited the post accordingly :)
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:55
  • 6
    On the second request - if there are general things that might make sense to add to this dialog, then we would definitely revisit that, but the overhead required to allow sites to add their own reasons would be quite substantial. I recommend creating a feature request in a separate post for this particular request, as it's too large in scope for us to handle as a part of our post-launch fixes.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:06
  • @kristinalustig Sure, done!
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:40
  • 4
    @kristinalustig We just got a code related comment on rpg.se: Can a Black Dragon Hatchling be raised to be good? Or is it inherently evil? Aug 26, 2021 at 19:14
  • 3
    @ThomasMarkov Yeah, and? What, are you saying black dragons can't write code?! (Or maybe that only someone inherently evil can write code?)
    – Sarov
    Aug 26, 2021 at 19:35
  • 3
    @Sarov I can't say that I've ever met a black dragon that could write code. But I guess absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Aug 26, 2021 at 19:36
  • 2
    @kristinalustig I noticed the code-related comment is also there on the answer on Anime.SE Aug 27, 2021 at 2:04
  • 8
    The option "answer needs supporting information" is worded in terms of code ("please provide working code or citations to the documentation"). This option appears on all sites, and removing it would leave the "First answers" queue with only one canned feedback option, which seems too little. That option should be reworded on non-code-related sites, or (much better) customizable by the site mods.
    – wimi
    Aug 27, 2021 at 6:48
  • 5
    Also, the template responses have probably left NO way for us to complete the reviews of questions considered homework questions - where the OP puts zero effort into the question, and directly posts the assignment expecting us to answer it for them (eg. Name these alkanes). Such questions are specially common atleast on Chem.SE and Physics.SE. In that case - 'looks OK' doesn't work, editing (to show effort) should be done by the OP, not us - and for 'share feedback', neither is the question broad, nor unclear. There's no option to just downvote and comment - the review can't be completed.
    – TRC
    Aug 27, 2021 at 7:00
  • 3
    @kristinalustig Letting you know, as requested: code-specific comments are appearing on SFF. Aug 29, 2021 at 3:17
  • 2
    @kristinalustig: I think this may have been linked elsewhere, but code-specific comments have appeared on Physics. Aug 31, 2021 at 2:41
  • @kristinalustig I don't know if you are still hunting for more, but looks like Arqade also has a code related canned comment i.stack.imgur.com/AhY98.png - should I leave an answer on this question for it?
    – Timothy G.
    Sep 9, 2021 at 14:48
  • 2
    Hey all - thanks for all your feedback. We're rewording the "Share feedback" answer options so that they don't specifically mention code. It's waiting for review, so should be pushed today or tomorrow.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 9, 2021 at 18:04
57

In the First Answers and First Questions review queues, most post menu items are gone. Only the 'Follow' link is shown:

enter image description here

Flagging/voting to close is essential for these queues, and sharing may help too (I use it quite often to report a post to Smoke Detector.)

15
  • 6
    Good catch - I'm going in and updating that now, should be fixed within the next couple of hours.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:08
  • This should work just fine now, let me know if there are any issues!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:06
  • 2
    @kristinalustig Thanks for bringing this back, but even after I flagged I still can't complete the review.
    – Dharman
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:09
  • I would say the guidance here would be to flag and then if sharing feedback isn't appropriate, just to skip and move on to the next answer.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:24
  • @kristinalustig Any chance you accidentally added "flag" to Triage by mistake in the process? Because there seems to already be an option for that in this queue. Aug 26, 2021 at 15:41
  • 2
    @Unconsidered there is a very substantial (approx 100%) chance that I did that! Talking with Lisa (designer) to figure out exactly which queues should have which post menu items. Might take me a day or two to get it all ironed out.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:47
  • 15
    @kristinalustig "the guidance here would be to flag and then if sharing feedback isn't appropriate, just to skip and move on" -- why is that? Isn't flagging an answer or voting to close a question an action that reviews the post? They take the same amount of effort as any choosing any other option, so not counting them as a review seems odd, particularly when none of the other options may even be appropriate. The older version had an "I am done" button, which would be very useful here.
    – GoodDeeds
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:11
  • 12
    This has not been completely fixed. The "Flag" button is there but the "Close" button is still missing in the First Questions review. Aug 26, 2021 at 21:33
  • 6
    @kristinalustig thanks for the fix, but could you please have a look at Eric's comment? The 'close' link is still missing. I know I can access it via Flag as well, but it's one more click - that tends to add up after a while :)
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 4:47
  • 4
    Ideally put all the buttons back...
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 9:09
  • 13
    Hey all, thank you so much for all the feedback. Lisa and I spent a long time talking about this yesterday, and we determined that it makes the most sense to add in the entire post menu to the First Questions, First Answers, and Late Answers queues (except for the Edit button, because there's already an edit action). I'm going to be working on this and other fixes today and next week. We'll get these fixes in ASAP, thanks for your patience.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:38
  • 3
    I'm not using those new queues because most times they're useless. If I vote, comment or flag, it doesn't count as an action. I can't vote to close. Edit is not an option when the question is not salvageable (why can't I close in those cases? Closing should be a valid option in FQ queue), and the canned comments are so generic that don't apply in most cases. I've tried to use them, but I gave up. For now, I'm doing everything outside the queues. I really hope SE reviews all of it
    – hkotsubo
    Sep 3, 2021 at 12:54
  • 3
    @kristinalustig Any update on when we will get vote to close back? Sep 6, 2021 at 17:02
  • 3
    I'm planning on shipping it today, we're just having some build issues right now. I'll update y'all/all the relevant answers once I can actually get it pushed to production.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 7, 2021 at 14:39
  • 2
    This fix is shipped and should be live for First Questions, First Answers, and Late Answers queues. Please let me know if you have any issues with the update!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 8, 2021 at 14:26
54

Disable replies to the community user

Just saw an interaction with one of the canned community responses out in the wild:

New user attempting to respond to the Community user

The Community user left a canned comment ("Please provide additional details [...]"), and the user responded by asking what they wanted more detail about.

This of course will notify no one. And the user's question is valid. Could there be a modal or link to the community user description explaining to users what triggered this response?

8
  • 21
    That's part of the reason why I don't like using the Community ♦ user's name for this. Something like "Automated comment" would've been better. And hovering over / clicking on the "username" would explain what that is.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 19:13
  • 3
    @41686d6564 something tells me users will gleefully keep replying to "Automated comment" as well :) I don't think anything short of a big red message explaining that this is an automated comment hat can't be replied to (while ensuring the comment cannot be added) will stop them. Aug 26, 2021 at 20:20
  • 26
    @41686d6564 Or identify the Community user as a bot! That was requested here, and declined but only due to being out of scope for the release. I've requested it here formally: Please use the new Mod/Staff badge tech to identify Community as a bot Aug 26, 2021 at 21:09
  • 3
    @doppelgreener Identifying Community as a bot would make it more confusing: users could easily think their posts had been reviewed by the bot and it sent an automatic comment.
    – Anonymous
    Aug 27, 2021 at 22:00
  • @Anonymous I've seen some of those comments on post and the relevance for the post is.. very disappointing. So perhaps the resemblance isn't really off. Aug 29, 2021 at 7:56
  • @Anonymous Possibly, but the current situation is worse so that would still be an improvement.
    – Mast
    Aug 29, 2021 at 8:25
  • 6
    I think you guys are missing the point: a user should be able to reply, but the actual reviewer should be notified instead! Or whom should a user be asking otherwise? There's about as much point in disabling reply as in replying itself...
    – EvgenKo423
    Sep 1, 2021 at 17:29
  • 1
    We're not going to disable comments, but the bot tag and tooltip that Yaakov has added should mitigate this issue. I'm going to status-declined this for now and if our fix doesn't seem like it's working after a bit, please submit this as its own feature request.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 17, 2021 at 15:10
46

Exclude Community actions from popping up as "moderator actions" on the Moderator dashboard.

enter image description here

Comments from the Community user shows up as a moderator action on the dashboard. This is a bit of a distraction as every review now posts the comment as a Community user. Can we exclude the Community user's actions from showing up on the dash?

4
42

Add an option to (easily) delete anonymous comments

I suppose you keep track of which user posts the comment even though it's displayed under the Community ♦ user's name. If it's not feasible to add a Delete button visible only to the user who posted the comment, then maybe a single "No longer needed" flag (by them) should delete the comment instantly similar to what happens when flagging "thanks" comments and the like.

9
  • 2
    Adding a delete option would certainly be preferred. Having to flag one's own comment seems excessive. Aug 26, 2021 at 16:17
  • @Unconsidered That's what I prefer too but I added that as a fallback in hopes that this doesn't get declined. Note that "No longer needed" flags don't affect your account in any way. Plus those comments are technically not under your name anyway.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:23
  • I guess that depends on the perception of "don't affect your account in any way". I don't want to raise my flag-count. So I'm not inclined to flag anything, for any reason. Aug 26, 2021 at 16:31
  • If they were going to track ownership/original author of the comment, then there's no need to add conditional flag weight code; just add said delete option.
    – TylerH
    Aug 26, 2021 at 18:32
  • 27
    Please let me (as a mod) delete these comments!
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 10:01
  • 1
    @Zanna Not even mods can clean them up?
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 27, 2021 at 10:50
  • 11
    Nope! I just get a notification saying the comment will be deleted automatically when the post gets fixed, but of course such comments can be wrongly posted. I think I'd rather not have these comments at all
    – Zanna
    Aug 27, 2021 at 10:52
  • 2
    @Zanna you (as a mod) can now delete these comments Sep 2, 2021 at 21:25
  • 1
    @YaakovEllis hallelujah!!
    – Zanna
    Sep 3, 2021 at 0:59
39

Since the Community♦ user is now posting comments on behalf of the review queue, this should be reflected in the profile description.

Especially given these will be posted on the posts on new users, that activity should be reflected in the profile to help against confusion. It could be as simple as a bullet (possibly on top of the list) which says:

  • Post comments on behalf of the review queues.
38

Rename the "Share feedback" option to "Share anonymous feedback" or add the word "anonymous" to its description

It's not immediately obvious that that option is used to provide anonymous feedback. It's only mentioned after one selects the option and then clicks Submit (and in a place where it's easily missed). I think to encourage people to provide feedback, it should be highlighted that it will be anonymous.

I'd prefer something like this:

enter image description here

But if you need the option's title to be concise, then at least add it to the description:

enter image description here

5
  • 2
    Makes sense! I'll work on this change and it'll be out today or tomorrow.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:36
  • 3
    @kristinalustig You might want to take this into account while deciding on the wording.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 22:30
  • 2
    Ah, good call. I'll need to think about this more and talk it over with the team to determine how to proceed. Still planning on doing something to fix this, so I'll leave it status-planned.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 13:00
  • 5
    Why not have two options? One for anonymous feedback and one for regular. I don't really care having my name appear on the comment and this way OPs can ping you with further questions. As brought up in other answers here, users can't reply to the anonymous community comment and are left with more questions
    – Tomerikoo
    Aug 28, 2021 at 8:25
  • As we're planning on having two options for feedback (both anonymous and non), I'm going to decline this particular suggested implementation of the fix.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 17, 2021 at 15:39
36

Feedback from First Questions and First Answers is not really anonymous

Feedback not anonymous

While certainly the vast majority of first posters will not know how to access the information, as can be seen in the gif above, it is trivial to identify who provided the "anonymous" feedback. Moreover, experienced users may also form opinions about users based on their feedback. Security though obscurity is not really security.

Perhaps there is an alternative wording that more clearly describes that the feedback is less immediately tied to you but doesn't call it "anonymous"?

4
  • 4
    If/when the "I'm done" button is restored, the review result could be changed to "Reviewed" (or whatever will be used for "I'm done") instead of "Share feedback". That way, it's not immediately obvious the exact action that the user selected. It could still be inferred if they're the only reviewer or by comparing the time of the comment to the time of the review.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 22:19
  • 5
    FYI, I had requested highlighting the word "anonymous" and it got a [status-planned]. I just pinged the staff member about this so that they can hopefully take it into account.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 22:33
  • 5
    What’s even the point of providing feedback, if it’s going to be that trivial, to determine who provided the feedback. Might as well just submit it as the user themselves, add a sentence to whatever they typed (no matter what the length is), explaining the feedback was an commentary from the review queue. Revenge downvotes are a real problem especially on Stack Overflow. Users will find any community, they have the ability to downvote contribute, that is shared between the reviewer on themselves
    – Ramhound
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:23
  • 7
    Perhaps "unattributed" might be a better word than anonymous. Personally, I don't think it should be anonymous anyway - if a new user needs help understanding what's required, they should be able to ask. Attributing comments to Community is as bad as sending emails from [email protected].... Aug 28, 2021 at 10:30
28

UPDATE: I've noticed SE is trying to fix some of these issues, but the fixes create problems of their own. Since these have't been implemented yet, I've made a separate answer on that post to address those issues.


Reviewers are encouraged to leave comments for the post-author, but now they can also choose from a few options of canned feedback which will appear as a comment from the Community account.

Sounds neat, but when you think about it:

1. It allows any user with 500 reputation to comment as official Stack Exchange

First of all, Community appears as a moderator. A lot of users would delete their posts if a moderator didn't approve (can you honestly say that a moderator's comment doesn't hold more weight then a user with 500 reputation?). Worse, anyone who reads the description on the Community account sees that it is an official Stack Exchange account. They would think that it is Stack Exchange itself (or an employee sending it from the community account), and with good reason, unless they happened to read this post.

2. It's anonymous

Users who send this are not responsible for their comments. Say a user were to have a personal feud with a user, or with a specific tag (such as not liking a particular programming language). They could choose "Question is unclear" on every question that meets that criteria, with little fear of retribution.

3. Replies are broken

Users could be very confused by this. They make a post that has too much code, and someone who reviews it would send the appropriate comment. They try to ask how to shorten it, but don't get a response. This could encourage reviewers to not care as much about a comment, due to not having to reply or be responsible in any way for it.

4. Users without knowledge of the new review queue workflow could think it's an auto-comment

Since Community is a bot, it would be reasonable to assume a comment from Community would be based on an algorithm, not a human review.

5. You can upvote your own comment.

The strange thing is, you can't unupvote it.


What is the reason for having comments be from Community?

9
  • 5
    What? Did you want them to be from @Anonymous instead? ;-)
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 27, 2021 at 21:56
  • 8
    On a more serious note though, I've said that I don't like the fact that it's posted under the Community user's name. I think there should be a different way to communicate the fact that this is an automated comment based on review.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 27, 2021 at 21:58
  • 2
    *mostly anonymous
    – Kevin B
    Aug 27, 2021 at 22:01
  • @KevinB What do you mean?
    – Anonymous
    Aug 27, 2021 at 22:01
  • 2
    the timestamp and review are visible in the timeline, and will match up with the comment's timestamp
    – Kevin B
    Aug 27, 2021 at 22:02
  • 1
    @KevinB Good point, but it's still a problem; on a site like Stack Overflow, it could go unnoticed for a long time, possibly forever...
    – Anonymous
    Aug 27, 2021 at 22:03
  • 9
    I agree 100% with this. The loss of accountability and dubious aura of authority are really bad. All comments should belong to their authors so they can be meaningfully challenged. This turns review into a throwaway task
    – Zanna
    Aug 28, 2021 at 11:31
  • 4
    @41686d6564 No, not Anonymous (although Community is anonymous). They should be by the reviewer, attributed as "X - from review" as they used to be (which would presumably satisfy your second comment). To make them Community comments is ill-thought-out and counterproductive. Aug 30, 2021 at 15:50
  • 2
    I think I might repost all of this with the last line removed and flagged [bug], since the process has several fundamental design flaws. Aug 30, 2021 at 15:53
26

Make failing an audit only possible after selecting a feedback option and attempting to submit the dialog

I've gotten the "STOP! Look and Listen" message twice so far after choosing the "Share feedback" option when I actually didn't intend to post the comment. I just needed to open the dialog to test something. Can you please make failing the audit only occur at the final stage of submitting a feedback?

This is not only useful for testing. If someone actually encounters an audit while reviewing and they decided to click "Share feedback" to see what canned comments are available and to check if any of them is applicable, it's not fair to make them fail the audit when they intended to go back if they didn't find something applicable.

4
  • 2
    Unfortunately this isn't new. One has been able to fail or pass an audit by any attempt to interact with the post or modals before submitting the review (pressing "I'm done" or "No actions needed") for a long time. Aug 28, 2021 at 5:23
  • 1
    Can you please submit this as a separate feature request? We're not going to be able to implement this in this round of bug fixes but I agree with you that it's worth revisiting.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 17, 2021 at 15:48
  • @kristinalustig as far as I can tell this existing feature request fits: "STOP! Look and Listen" audit tricked me, "The only way to increase review count... is to click specific button(s) like I'm Done or No Action Needed - as long as this did not happen, it is wrong to assume test completed..."
    – gnat
    Sep 17, 2021 at 15:53
  • 2
    Yeah, it does fit. Thank you for pointing it out.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 17, 2021 at 15:57
25

Thanks for the update, Lisa, and all the work the team(s) have put in on the review queues!

I will say I'm most disappointed that you have decided to abandon the plan for expanding/improving filtering options in the queues, specifically the options to:

  • Select tags you don't want to see review items for
  • Select more than three tags for questions you do want to see

In my opinion, these two changes would have made the most impact to the Close/Reopen review queues out of everything (except for perhaps the "significant edit" change, which I look forward to seeing in action). I hope you'll reconsider implementing those two key features soon.

EDIT - This is now a standalone feature request here: Please re-consider adding the ability to select 'ignored' tags in the review queues

9
  • Are they concretely abandoned or more of a "not yet" thing? Aug 26, 2021 at 14:07
  • 3
    Overhauling the filters and working on a new My Tasks view is completely off the roadmap and we don't have plans to come back to it. That said, if there are specific items (like a negative tag filter) that you would like to suggest as one-off features, please post a new feature-request. If there is enough demand for something, we can reconsider. However, adding more tags is something that most likely wont happen - the query perf for these can go way down with more tags, and the tag filtering (especially with more than one tag) is used by only a very miniscule percentage of reviewers. Aug 26, 2021 at 14:47
  • @YaakovEllis "the tag filtering (especially with more than one tag) is used by only a very miniscule percentage of reviewers" Interesting. I thought most top-reviewers used this feature.
    – Berriel
    Aug 26, 2021 at 18:00
  • @Berriel "most top reviewers" can use the feature and still be a very small percentage of total reviewers. While not the best contextual representation of the picture, consider there are quite possibly as many total reviewers (e.g. folks who have done at least 1 review) as there are reviews done by the top reviewers altogether. If I had to guess I would say regular usage of the tag filters is probably around 1 to 3%. Of course, I strongly believe if the 'ignored tags' feature existed, it would get used a lot more.
    – TylerH
    Aug 26, 2021 at 18:39
  • @YaakovEllis I'm disappointed that the filters were not expanded to cover closure sub-reasons (suggested here). Is it infeasible, or just not worth the dev time? (I didn't press harder at the time because the response indicated that it was already being implemented.) There's a lot regarding the user-facing side of filters that can be built up client-side using userscripts, but there's useful features that can only be achieved with database-level filtering.
    – E.P.
    Aug 30, 2021 at 11:54
  • @E.P. more not worth the dev time. Filters are hardly used at all, and creating special filters for different queues would take quite some time. Also, some types of new filtering will require more fundamental changes to the review queue queries which right now are some of the most expensive in the sytem (this is a reason why we limit tag filters to three, btw). So it is not just adding the UI - some filter changes require significant backend work. If filters were widely used then there would be more of a reason to do this. But as it is… Aug 30, 2021 at 11:59
  • 1
    @YaakovEllis That sounds (partly) like a reverse view on the problem -- another way to see it is "filters are not used enough; how can their UI and functionality be expanded to make people use them more?" ;-). Filters used to be extremely hard to discover, and I would bet that the improved discoverability in the new UI will significantly increase their usage. But still, it's a fair point. Thanks for the quick and clear feedback.
    – E.P.
    Aug 30, 2021 at 12:05
  • 1
    @E.P. I understand (and we talked about this factor as well). Another factor here is that we have been working on Review Queues for a year and a half now and the team needs to move on to other things (like all of the Outdated Answers stuff). This is not to say that we aren't going to touch this, and we will never work on filters or My Tasks. So if you feel strongly - put in a new feature request and hopefully it can get good feedback and votes. (contd) Aug 30, 2021 at 12:14
  • 1
    @E.P. (contd) Suggestion: better to put in smaller, more concrete FRs addressing specific areas where there is reason to think that we can see big improvements, and try to back it up. Much easier for us to find time to work on smaller items versus "Please upgrade all the filters" (which ends up being a much much larger project). Aug 30, 2021 at 12:15
24

When finishing 20 reviews, in the First Answers review queue, there's no actual text to tell you, you've completed the daily limit.

enter image description here

7
  • 1
    Already status-planned: meta.stackexchange.com/a/369035/798831, just an empty banner.
    – Ollie
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:47
  • 8
    This is actually a different string than the one reported elsewhere. Also gonna get this one out today.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:58
  • 6
    I pushed this fix out today, so it will be live either today or Monday, depending on how confident we are to push to production on a Friday afternoon. :)
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:58
  • 2
    @kristinalustig: FYI: I assume this will be addressed by your fix, since it sounds like it's just a missing string token from e.g. a localization file, but this issue also appears on the /review page, where this message is similarly displayed below the appropriate review queue. Aug 27, 2021 at 19:18
  • 2
    @kristinalustig: FYI: The empty textbox also exists at Your daily reviews 40 /40 Aug 29, 2021 at 11:44
  • 1
    @kristinalustig This appears to have broken again. Reported in meta.stackexchange.com/a/369614/165261
    – Ryan M
    Sep 9, 2021 at 12:36
  • 2
    @kristinalustig: Is this the same as this similar bug on the main review queues page?
    – V2Blast
    Sep 22, 2021 at 20:15
23

The "edit" option is still missing in "First answers" queue.

I can't both edit the answer and leave feedback at the same time.

2
  • 9
    We're talking more about this - and more generally about taking multiple actions in this queue - on Monday. It's a totally valid point, updates on the status forthcoming.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:55
  • 2
    You can do this now! Thanks for the feedback.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 8, 2021 at 14:42
22

I just realized something. I do not know if for now this is so, but I do not see it very correct. I am a user of the Stack Overflow community in Spanish and I have seen an automatic community comment, but this one is in English. Is this correct?

But the dialog box is also in English:

Enter image description here

I have also seen that these comments cannot be deleted or edited, which would be a bit annoying since the official language is Spanish.

You can see the comment here.

11
  • Was the dialog also in English or was it localized?
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:56
  • the dialog box is in english
    – Christian
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:02
  • You should probably include that in the answer. You selected an English comment from the dialog, which is a good indication that the posted comment will be in English. Still a bug though, I believe.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:06
  • 1
    I assume you need to ask the folks that help with translation in transifix to find those new strings and offer translations for them.
    – rene
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:21
  • 1
    As I understand it, SE relies on volunteers to translate (commonly site moderators?), or at least update the translations for, the UI elements which SE marks as translatable. The issue here may be just that the specific text has not yet been translated (i.e. the issue will be resolved as soon as a volunteer has the time to add a translation for all the new text in the recent update). On the other hand, it could easily be that SE didn't mark that text as translatable, which would mean the volunteers can't add a translation for it until SE adds it as translatable.
    – Makyen
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:24
  • @Makyen sure, but the dialog box also in english
    – Christian
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:35
  • @Christian As I understand it, the dialog and comments being in English is fully consistent with either of the two possibilities I presented. That doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be fixed, just that it's either something which hasn't been done yet within the normal pipeline for localized sites (probable), or that SE forgot about including these portions of text in what can be translated (possible, as it does happen).
    – Makyen
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:40
  • 5
    These strings do need to be translated - as of yet, they're still really new and the community hasn't gotten to it yet. I'm sorry about the delay!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 16:56
  • 9
    I'm an active user in SOpt and we're facing the same issues there. TBH, I'm getting tired of this "SE changes site -> messages are in English -> community translates" cycle. It baffles me that this site (one of the most accessed in the world) can't find a better solution for internationalization - one that doesn't require the community to act after changes are made...
    – hkotsubo
    Aug 26, 2021 at 20:16
  • 3
    @hkotsubo I hear you. Many times when we change an existing string only slightly, we use a translation fallback so that it still returns the old translated string until the new one is translated. That doesn't resolve situations like these where there are entire paragraphs of text that aren't translated. I totally agree that this is an accessibility issue and isn't fair to users of SOpt, SOjp, etc. I'm not sure what I can do about this internally but I'm going to start a conversation about it to see what solutions we may be able to put in place to avoid this sort of gap. Thanks for speaking up.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 13:04
  • 1
    @kristinalustig Thank you so much for your reply! I thought about posting a feature request, but unfortunately I don't have any ideas... Anyway, if you come up with something, I'd really appreciate if you could post here in Meta, and I'll be glad to help (by providing feedback, suggestions to improve, etc). Thanks again, I can't wait to see what you'll bring to us!
    – hkotsubo
    Aug 27, 2021 at 13:12
22

Custom flags raised in review audits are real

Also, passing audits is too hard (but that's related to this answer and this one which are way more important than the issue I'm pointing out here).

I noticed that a First Question I was reviewing was actually an audit (it had already been deleted) and I was trying to figure out how to pass the audit... downvoting didn't work (I think it should) so I tried flagging... only the custom option was available so I went ahead and wrote something and raised the flag... that still didn't pass the audit (I think it should!) Finally I clicked on the Leave Feedback option and passed (phew).

Then I went to see if my flag was real and sure enough it was. I don't remember that happening before and apparently it's not what's supposed to happen?

2
  • I spent some time trying to reproduce this in my developer environment, but wasn't able to reproduce the problem. I tried this several times, including adding a flag to an audit where the original post was deleted. Would you be able to let me know when the last time you encountered this was, or a link to any of the posts where this happened for you? I'm wondering if there's some extra conditions necessary for this bug to happen and just need that extra troubleshooting information 🤔 Let me know and I'll try to dig in more!
    – Kyle Pollard StaffMod
    Sep 27, 2021 at 14:51
  • 1
    @KylePollard oh... maybe it automagically got fixed! Here's the post where I encountered this. I've just been through all the posts in the queues that have a flag button available and I didn't find any audits to test. I'll have another look on Wednesday. Thanks a lot for your time!
    – Zanna
    Sep 27, 2021 at 17:08
21

Clicking the "Learn more" button in a review queue's Stats or History pages simply does nothing.

Ordinarily, this opens up a panel with a "Hey, congrats, you can now use this queue!" panel, but if the user hasn't actually earned the privilege to use that queue, nothing happens.

Here's an example from the Suggested Edits queue on Arqade:

Gif of me pressing the Learn more button to no avail

I suppose this is meant to actually open up the onboarding modal like it correctly does from the "Review tasks" page on each queue.

16
  • 3
  • 1
    In a given queue, the Learn more button should actually re-open the modal on the page that shows all the introductory information for the queue. Are you getting any sort of console error regarding the modal? I can't repro this currently.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:54
  • In a queue that I have the reputation to use, then what you describe happens as expected, @kristinalustig . In a queue that I don't have the reputation to use, simply nothing happens. There are no console errors generated.
    – Spevacus
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:55
  • That's odd - When I view the close votes queue here on MSE in incognito, it loads properly. The same is true with Suggested edits. I tried it on Arqade, too and it worked just fine. i.stack.imgur.com/hD6Tp.png
    – Catija
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:03
  • Can't repro here either, not even for queues where my test user doesn't have permissions. Doing a bit more checking around to see if anyone else here can.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:04
  • @Catija Huh, I've reproduced that behavior as well. Is it possible that you need to be logged into an account, but just not have the privilege? Edit: Strange that Lristina can't repro on a test user.
    – Spevacus
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:04
  • Do you have any userscripts on your non-incognito windows that might be intercepting the modal?
    – Catija
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:05
  • @Catija I've disabled them and am still experiencing the same thing. However, I've noticed just now that the modal DOES appear from the "Review tasks" page, but NOT from the Stats and History pages. Gif: i.imgur.com/iQf1DA2.gif
    – Spevacus
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:07
  • 2
    I'm able to confirm that the modal doesn't pop up when I'm in incognito on the stats page. gaming.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/stats
    – Catija
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:08
  • 4
    I can also repro this now, specifically on Gaming stackexchange. I spent a while digging through the code trying to find some reason why this isn't happening and I'm coming up empty. Going to put this in status-review and spend some more time today and tomorrow trying to find the root cause.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 15:35
  • Are you sure it's just the queues that you can't review and not solely dependant on the tab? A similar issue was just reported. Could it be the same bug?
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 26, 2021 at 17:23
  • @41686d6564 You're right, I had thought it was working from those pages but it's not... Odd. I've updated my answer to reflect that.
    – Spevacus
    Aug 26, 2021 at 17:24
  • 2
    if anyone needs a hand in understanding why the modal does not open in other tabs: the "review-v2-transpiled.en.js" file containing the script that controls modal opening is only loaded when you are on the "review tasks" tab. It is not loaded anywhere else (because it is not included in the pages that are loaded when switching to these tabs) - hence no functionality. That's it, no mystery there. Aug 26, 2021 at 18:11
  • 3
    Yeah, figured out that the modal html was in ReviewTask instead of ReviewNav. Going to do some juggling and get this fixed, but might not get to it until next week. Thanks for reporting!
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 12:55
  • 1
    I shipped a fix for this today, so it should be live either later today or tomorrow.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 9, 2021 at 18:57
21

The "Delete" button doesn't work properly in "Late Answers".

As a 20k+ user, I see the "Delete" button; I believe this appears as "Recommend Deletion" to those reviewers with < 20k reputation (as in "Low Quality Answers"). However, when trying this option on a zero-scored answer, I see a "You cannot delete this post" message, and I have nothing to do but "Skip" (well, I suppose I could downvote, refresh, then "Delete").

In the "Low quality" queue, I can "Delete" zero-scored posts (or, at least, I could before the changes – yet to test it since) but, for those with positive scores, the button label changes to "Recommend deletion".

Should this be the same for "Late Answers"?


EDIT: I've just noticed that label-change (to "Recommend deletion") also happens in the new Late Answers queue for posts with a nett positive score. So, what remains is to: either apply that change also for zero-scored posts; or, as in LQ, allow 20k users to actually cast a delete vote on those.

6
  • 1
    I'm starting to look into this right now. In the meantime, are you able to share with me an example of a post that you tried to delete but got an error message for? Low Quality queue and Late Answers are using the exact same function to dictate delete permissions logic so any problem in one of them is likely to be a problem in both.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 1, 2021 at 13:20
  • @kristinalustig I can have a look, but I've exhausted my quota for today - can you wait until tomorrow? In the meantime, I found a way to 'trick' the system: I downvote first, then select "Delete" and then (review is now complete), go back and undo my downvote. (But maybe I shouldn't be telling you that I'm doing this ...) Sep 1, 2021 at 13:22
  • But the "Delete" button still works in Low quality answers: stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/29715462 Also, I definitely tried "Delete" on one post (today) that was zero-scored and it failed. Sep 1, 2021 at 13:26
  • 1
    Thanks for the extra info. That "trick" you just mentioned might actually be a hint as to why it's not working! I'll dig into it a bit more.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 1, 2021 at 13:34
  • @kristinalustig For example: gis.stackexchange.com/review/late-answers/214233 It says "You cannot delete this post" Sep 1, 2021 at 14:10
  • 5
    Hah - I figured it out! Deep in the depths of our Delete code was a check to make sure that deletions from review were actually from review, and it just manually checked only for the Low Quality queue instead of for any queue that has the delete functionality built in. I should be able to get this fix out today or tomorrow. Thanks for the examples and details, all.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 1, 2021 at 14:51
19

In the first answer queue: Pending edit suggestions are not visible and are not taken into account when editing. I just declined a suggest edit in this review because there is no way to see that an edit is pending and the edit UI doesn't warn you when saving the changes.

For users without full edit privilege, it seems that editing is also not blocked, but they aren't able to save it, as explained on meta.SO.

2
  • A note: that is a first questions review, not a first answers review.
    – Ryan M
    Aug 29, 2021 at 11:17
  • From what I understand, it is the same in both queues.
    – BDL
    Aug 29, 2021 at 11:45
19

When reviewing First Questions, I often see something I can improve to the question. I choose the Edit action, submit the edit, and then I'm already taken to the next review queue item. I might want to upvote the question or leave a comment, and I have to go back in order to do that. I prefer the old workflow in the First Posts queue, which allowed you to do multiple actions in any order you like.

2
  • 1
    Is this the same as Dharman's comment on his report here? meta.stackexchange.com/a/369045/253521 re: "I can't both edit the answer and leave feedback at the same time."
    – TylerH
    Aug 27, 2021 at 18:24
  • 2
    @TylerH yeah, more or less. I searched for "First Questions" but it applies to "First Answers" too, it seems.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 18:27
17

2. New actions for Late answers queue

The Late answers queue has been successful in identifying and removing low quality posts, repeat answers, and spam. Reviewers were able to take any number of actions on a task, so the objective of this queue wasn’t all that obvious. To clear up any ambiguity and focus on identifying problematic answers, we’ve defined three actions: Looks OK, Edit, and Delete.

Looks like that change isn't deployed yet:

enter image description here

Review item: https://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers/29668488 (it has a higher number than other review queue items from after the changes, e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/review/first-answers/29668209)

1
  • 2
    Thanks Glorfindel! I fully missed turning on that setting (in the sea of 25 settings we needed to turn on for this launch). It should be turned on now.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 14:25
16

Update the pages that reference the now-retired first posts queue

Some examples of pages that do this:

16

I'm reviewing a (not-an) answer in the First Answers review queue. After flagging and downvoting it, I realize 'Looks OK' and 'Edit' don't apply, so I choose 'Share feedback'. None of the comments apply, so I don't select one of the radio buttons, so I click the 'Share feedback' button anyway, and I'm greeted with an error message:

An error occurred when submitting your feedback. Please try again.

enter image description here

3
  • Is the bug you're reporting that it's a toast with a generic error message instead of a validation message or that there's no review action for non-answers? If it's the former, great. If it's the latter, that was reported here and here.
    – 41686d6564
    Aug 27, 2021 at 20:05
  • 6
    @41686d6564 two bugs: I want to leave another comment which counts as feedback, and I don't expect the 'Share feedback' to be enabled if I don't select an option.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Aug 27, 2021 at 20:07
  • 1
    I have encountered this several times... I've already left a constructive comment on the NAA, flagged etc. but then cannot "complete the review task". Frustrating (and puts me off reviewing).
    – MrWhite
    Aug 30, 2021 at 12:10
15

The modals for these two new queues don't seem to be movable like modals in the other review queues are. Sometimes I like to drag them out of the way by their title section.

Is this deliberate?

Tested on Stack Overflow with Firefox 92.0b8 and Chrome 92.0.4515.159 on Windows 10.

This impacts the new reopen modal as well.

7
  • 1
    Ugh, yes the modals absolutely need to be draggable!
    – TylerH
    Aug 26, 2021 at 18:28
  • 4
    Not intentional - I'll look into it to see what's happened.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Aug 26, 2021 at 18:55
  • @kristinalustig hint: controller on the dataset should be se-draggable (on the .s-modal--dialog element) pulse the se-draggable-target should be set to handle on the element that is the handle for the drag behaviour Aug 26, 2021 at 18:59
  • as a preview: and voila Aug 26, 2021 at 19:05
  • 3
    I fixed this today, it should be live either today or tomorrow.
    – kristinalustig StaffMod
    Sep 9, 2021 at 18:57
  • @kristinalustig yay, we will be able to drag the modal around :) On a more serious note - thank you! Was the above a correct guess? Sep 9, 2021 at 19:02
  • @kristinalustig, thanks for fixing the modals in the two new queues! Before this issue was resolved, but somewhat after posting this answer, I edited it to note that this also affects the new repoen modal. That modal still cannot be moved. Any chance we can fix it, too?
    – Chris
    Sep 27, 2021 at 18:18

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .