How can we request a question to be [featured] in Meta Stack Exchange and per-site metas?

Question

What is the appropriate way for a normal user (without diamond moderator privilege) to request a question to be featured in Meta Stack Exchange and per-site metas?

• If the OP of the post is a staff member, should one post a comment in the question requesting the OP to feature the question? or...

• If the OP of the post is a staff member, should one post an answer to the question requesting the OP to feature the question? Example: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/375826 (deleted answer)

  or...

• Should a new question be posted requesting the question to be featured? Examples:

  • Add the [featured] tag to the "Updates to Privacy Policy (September 2021)" post
  • https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/375832 (deleted question) or...

• Should the question which needs to be featured be flagged as in need of moderator intervention explaining the reason for why the post should be featured? (Also, who will handle these kinda flags? Staff or mods?)

• Should one request a moderator or staff in chat to feature the post?

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What should be done if the post needs to be featured immediately (in case of time-sensitive posts)?

Answer 1

I think that you should simply write a comment beneath the question to say something like:

I think this question should be tagged as featured because …

I think that this should be done on only rare occasions when a question worthy of being featured was overlooked initially.

I think you should suggest rather than request a question be featured. Votes on your comment should keep it near the top of the comments and votes on the question should indicate to staff/moderators whether the question seems useful.

All other mechanisms you suggest are likely to interrupt the flow of Q&A (with moderation) far more.

Answer 2

What should be done if the post needs to be featured immediately (in case of time-sensitive posts)?

Practically - while it's a 2 second job, generally we trust the staff to manage it - and intervene with these tags as little as possible. In general - we hope folks do too, and not back seat drive policy with respect to that. That's to say, to a significant extent, staff should know, and when they don't, learn from their peers, what needs featuring, with only the occasional nudge from us.

As such - the first, clearest point of contact might be to comment that it would be helpful to feature network wide, and why. I think in general my answer here holds true, though admittedly - there's exceptional situations where mods may choose to add feature-tags where we feel staff are unable to and there's certain conditions met. That generally means the company actively doing things badly - and I think the current crop of folks seem to make it unlikely that a mod will have to make those decisions in a vacuum.

In addition chances are if there's a post of merit that needs to be featured, we'd let a CM know to pass on to other staff, ping a suitable point of contact if one is available - so dropping a link where we can see it and discussing it might be another approach - and most of us are regular on the Tavern on the Meta.