180
votes
Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
Maybe SE simply shouldn't publicly show profiles for users that have no interaction at all on the site. Users that have never voted, posted or done anything at all are just noise in the user listings ...
- 185k
125
votes
Drop "not constructive", combine "noisy", reword "rude" and "other" comment flags
Adam makes it happen!
This is the new UI for flagging comments:
(for reference this was the old UI)
The first flag replaces the former "rude or offensive" flag; the last replaces "other". The ...
- 447k
124
votes
Make moderator messages anonymous
There is another reason to change this: the single name below the message sometimes gives the impression that the suspension was a lone decision by that moderator. While many suspensions are decided ...
- 185k
100
votes
Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
A further refinement to Ilmari Karonen's answer (which refines Mad Scientist's): make profiles of new accounts that haven't done anything visible only to logged-in users.
This does a few things:
...
- 182k
84
votes
Gold tag-badge holders and moderators can now edit duplicate links
Yes! Yes! Yes!
This is an excellent power tool for us as gold tag badge holders. It makes our job of closing questions as duplicates much easier.
I have personally often had questions which I closed ...
- 91.6k
82
votes
Accepted
Make moderator messages anonymous
Update August 7, 2017
Part 3 has also been implemented. A user is provided with an option to contact us (/contact), after they have already responded to a moderator message and did not receive ...
- 51.5k
77
votes
Hot Meta Posts: Allow for removal by moderators, and thoughts about future improvements
What types of content from meta sites would you like to see surfaced on the main sites that is not happening now
Something that cycles through a site's 'faq' tagged posts if there aren't any hot meta ...
- 39.3k
64
votes
Hot Meta Posts: Allow for removal by moderators, and thoughts about future improvements
It might be interesting/useful if meta posts could "become hot" even when they're not new. For instance, the system could perhaps detect "bursts" of upvotes after a sufficiently ...
- 27.3k
62
votes
CM escalations - How we got the queue back down to zero
This team does great work. I'm really proud of the creativity and devotion that Rosie and her team show every day. They do an amazing job of processing a huge number of requests from mods and ...
- 20.2k
57
votes
Accepted
What privileges and tools do staff members without a diamond have access to?
Here are the special things that a non-mod user with IsEmployee == true can do, and some special things that apply to all employees:
On per-site metas, Meta Stack Exchange, and Stack Apps:
Can add/...
- 61.7k
56
votes
Accepted
We need a dedicated plagiarism flag
UPDATE
We've built and will be releasing a plagiarism flag on 22 March 2023 (on SO only). For more info, see this MSO post - Plagiarism flag and moderator tooling launching to Stack Overflow
We can ...
- 103k
55
votes
Accepted
Automatically suspend accounts recreated after a moderator deleted the original
Adam Lear implemented this as follows:
If a user is destroyed using the "spam" option or deleted using the "no longer welcome" option, a 365-day suspension is automatically ...
- 447k
51
votes
SE is breaking the reputation privilege system
Something worth considering is that if these 'new' users get to 200 rep without understanding the system, through 'lower standards' - we have a whole bunch of users without good mentorship, or an idea ...
- 170k
50
votes
Community deletion of comments should raise a moderator flag
Raising another flag for every instance where a comment gets auto-deleted would tend to get very, very noisy. In the past 7 days, there've been 789 flag-deleted comments on just Stack Overflow - 755 ...
- 447k
49
votes
Accepted
Allow moderators to hide a revision
Up until last week, moderators would have to contact the Community Managers to redact private information from a post, but thanks to Jarrod this is now been turned on for moderators to handle.
By ...
- 51.5k
46
votes
Gold tag-badge holders and moderators can now edit duplicate links
This is soooo nice!
The most important sub-feature about this feature is the ability to finally add additional similar threads to the duplicate question. This does not necessarily need to be the ...
- 1,002
46
votes
Drop "not constructive", combine "noisy", reword "rude" and "other" comment flags
Repeating my answer on the old suggestion:
no longer needed: this comment is obsolete, chatty or otherwise unnecessary
Before this wording is cast in stone:
The title No longer needed suggests ...
- 28k
44
votes
Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
As a subtle alternative to Mad Scientist's suggestion, we could simply add a noindex meta tag to the profile pages of users with less than some minimum amount (say, 5 or 10 points) of rep. This would ...
- 31.6k
42
votes
Accepted
Show both sides of the conversation on-site when a moderator contacts a CM
We're rolling out some changes to how these work. Aside from improvements to the way these appear in the users' histories, when clicking on the "mod" menu on a user's profile and selecting the "...
- 21.5k
42
votes
Make moderator messages anonymous
I think there's something pretty important to say about the opinions that folks have expressed here, none of them are wrong.
I also want to let everyone know that we're giving this very careful ...
- 181k
42
votes
Please unlock “Fram's ban on Wikipedia…What can Stack Exchange learn from it?”
Discussions about ways to constructively resolve some of the issues SE has experienced should be on topic here. While there are many things that make SE unique, we are not so different from other ...
- 5,333
41
votes
Accepted
Why is a moderator on one SE site allowed to change my username across all communities?
Yes, moderators can push changes to your account network-wide. They can't change your name to something arbitrary, only the default "usernnnn" format.*
Why? Because, if you chose to use a ...
- 447k
41
votes
Restrict moderator tools that allow mass dumping of user emails
Please, do not break this tool. I use it all the time because it is the only tool that lets me find users by patterns.
I can’t count the number of sock networks I’ve cracked wide open with this tool. ...
- 102k
41
votes
Please follow your own policies on making new policies
On the topic of "policies" on policies, answer posts to What is the network policy regarding AI Generated content? got deleted with a staff comment saying:
Deleting this because we don't ...
- 21.4k
41
votes
Accepted
SE is breaking the reputation privilege system
TL;DR: We are not going through with these changes unless the site's community specifically asks for it.
The question of the GenAI reputation thresholds for privileges has caused some confusion and ...
- 8,857
37
votes
Drop "noisy" comment flags from the moderator queue unless an answer has 5 or more comments
Comments aren't any more useful just because they're few in number.
Here's a few examples of short comment threads which I would flag on sight as a non-mod and delete as a mod, and on which flags are ...
- 33.3k
37
votes
Accepted
Allow moderators to view close and delete vote history
We added the permissions for moderators to see close/reopen/delete/undelete votes of other users by going to their user activity page > [Votes] subtab > [All] tab. We hope it will help you ...
- 3,104
36
votes
Accepted
Show us who submitted offensive and comment flags
George's concern - and my concern, raised in a couple of places, elsewhere over the years - are still valid... Seeing who raises a flag stands a good chance of prejudicing the moderator handling that ...
- 447k
36
votes
Accepted
How do moderators decide how long to suspend users for?
There's a recommended escalation on suspensions (7/30/365) depending on how many times someone's suspended.
This is totally worth a read
Once you're done.
Lets consider - there's a pattern of ...
- 170k
34
votes
Provide a way to determine which user is spamming stars in chat
Here I interpret star spamming as starring every message so that meaningful stars are drowned out and do not appear on the starboard, or repeatedly starring and unstarring messages to create ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible