Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

56
  • 12
    (playing devil's advocate, sorry!) there are a lot leadership-like / community-building / community-protecting things one can do without the mod hat :) it's quite possible to be very engaged without it. you don't really need a diamond to discuss site policy / topicality Commented Jun 27 at 9:37
  • 6
    @starball - on movies:SE it took more than five meta questions to finally convince the moderators to remove the 'banal triviality' close reason. On SFF:SE we're still begging for the fourth close reason to reflect meta opinion. You can't steer the ship from the engine room. Commented Jun 27 at 10:05
  • 5
    if you find yourself fighting against the people leading it, somehow I don't think that's going to change whether you have a diamond. on the bright(?) side, it sounds like the company is interested in policy and norm changes here. Commented Jun 27 at 10:28
  • 3
    Related : Should moderator elections be automatically held? (e.g. at least once every X years? when there are < Y mods? etc.) Commented Jun 27 at 10:51
  • 6
    I guess the question is if moderators are actively driving away users (bad), being too efficient (uhh good?) or somehow tenure itself is bad. We've not asked for new mods on SU (cause we can handle the workload) and we run on replacement levels on pets (but I'd feel safer with one more). That said, if there was a popular policy that I personally disagreed with - I'd throw it a status review at the right time. That said, I'd argue that with projects dropped half way a lot of time, maybe mods arn't why proposals don't go ahead? Commented Jun 27 at 14:43
  • 10
    Moderators are followers. The community leads. Commented Jun 27 at 22:19
  • 4
    We do push for change quite a lot. We don't always get traction but I do think to an extent, in the current environment changing aspects of the status quo is essential. Its thankless, but outside a few core pillars (Plagiarism for example) - I think mods would appreciate well thought out requests for change. Even more so if we could effectively get the company to listen and understand what our needs are. Commented Jun 28 at 0:55
  • 4
    I am not. But its relevant from the view of someone who's been a non mod, mod and former mod. And I'd posit, perhaps rather than term limits, maybe we need a different scope of effective community activism, at different levels. Less focused on the mechanics and culture perhaps. We'd want people passionate about community evanglism to stick around as long as possible I'd think. Commented Jun 28 at 9:00
  • 3
    Is mods not stepping aside really the impetus behind fewer elections? I thought the current election process was just too much work for the company to run as many as would be useful. Hoid and others had been working on an alternate process before they were let go, and while I had minor disagreements with its design, I understand that a big reason for it was to reduce the cost to the company and create more new mods. Commented Jun 28 at 16:17
  • 8
    Counterpoint: math has had a number of elections in recent years. The last two barely fired. There aren't a lot of qualified people who want the job. Commented 2 days ago
  • 6
    Given 90% of mods tend to come from the same group of people who are active on meta, i doubt "term limits" will have any appreciable effect on the kinds of people that are moderators, nor on the community's ability push for change. As it is most elections don't get enough candidates for there to be any real choice anyway, even on the most active sites. More elections won't change that. Commented 2 days ago
  • 7
    @Richard I'm not sure how that is relevant. The point I was making is that Math can barely get people to stand for election, whether or not there are openings. More elections are not going to solve the problem if there is no one who actually wants to run. Commented 2 days ago
  • 7
    @Richard Again, how does that solve the problem? Math has had several elections in the last several years---we seem to hold an election every two years or so. In the last two elections, we were barely able to find qualified candidates to even run. So... fine. Remove the diamonds from the moderators you deem as inactive. What then. How does that solve the problem? Commented 2 days ago
  • 6
    @Richard yes, I understand that point but it is moot if you can't actually get anyone to stand for election. Where are these new mods supposed to come from? Commented 2 days ago
  • 6
    I think youre approaching this from the wrong angle: we dont need more mods or regular elections, we need some of the "mod only" powers to be reconsidered as privilege levels. There is no real reason why "only mods" should be able to change the close reasons, award community badges, add post notices, raise metas for [status-review], remove things from HNQ, edit the help center, etc etc. The community should be able to propose these things and get them approved by other community members. Mod powers should be relegated back to the original "exceptional circumstances" / "override when necessary" Commented 2 days ago