2015 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

Question

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. One of the proposed questions covered the ground of two other proposed questions combined - I've thus opted to skip it in favor of the two questions. In turn, I added one of our backup questions to bring up the number of questions to 10.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Oh, and please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!

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A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Answer 1

Mat's Mug

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

This is a situation that can safely be referred to as, well, a complete mess. If my estimate is correct then a question with 2 answers in 3 days wouldn't have gone hot, and if my calculations are correct it would have generated about 150 rep for 3 users. But that's beside the point (I was just curious about the rep-score impact of such a situation) - regardless of how much rep is involved, a mess is a mess, and messing with users' rep score isn't something to be done lightly.

I think this is a rare and serious enough situation to contact a Community Manager and ask for assistance, but I would also invite the involved users in a chatroom, to make sure everybody is on the same page and let the answerers vent their probable frustrations and voice their concerns. At the end of the day, it's just one answer gone - it's easily caught up with another answer on another question.

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What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

I can't help but mention @Duga here. She's (yes, it's a she) being a tremendously useful tool to prevent low-quality migrations and cross-posts already, and even if a direct migration path from Stack Overflow to Code Review is implemented, I'm pretty sure there will still be comments on these posts, that @Duga will pick up.

I truly believe accepting or rejecting migrations is mostly a community thing, that any user with close/reopen privileges can contribute to, and that shouldn't require much moderator intervention in itself, except if/when things heat up.

If the quality of migrated questions turns out being consistently sub-par, I'll be happy to post on Meta.SO about it, to remind everyone the #1 golden rule for migrating posts: don't. migrate. crap.

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As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

I'd enter the foreign chat room and lurk a little, get a feel of the general mood and, if the discussion is really heated and I'm the only moderator in there and there's no room owner present, I'd ping the offender with a friendly reminder to keep things civilized. If things degenerate further I'd kick-mute as a warning.

The idea is that I'd go with an incremental approach - being trigger-happy with banning users I don't know in a chat room I don't frequent doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

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A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

If a user has an issue with an action I took, then it's likely that I have already interacted with that user to justify that action: there's no point trying to justify it further, unless I had been unclear.

Especially if I'm offended by the way that user is calling me out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise, I'd step out and head into the moderators' chat room, where I'd seek support and/or assistance.

Throwing oil onto the fire is never a good idea; I'd rather see someone that's not directly involved put it out instead.

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How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

A first intervention would be to leave a comment on a recently flagged comment thread - if the comments happen to be under one of their answers, I'd write an impersonal comment to remind everyone that comments should be constructive and used for clarifying a question or answer; the author of the post would get pinged with my comment. If the comments are under another user's post, I'd make a more personal @ comment to ensure the user gets the ping.

A second intervention would be less subtle, and would kindly @ask the user to have these discussions in chat, since we're not a discussion forum.

A third intervention would simply wipe out the comment thread, with a note saying comments were removed, please use chat for discussions.

Idea being, as I said earlier, to be incremental in interventions.

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How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would ping them in the moderator chat room and ask why they closed/deleted/etc a question, and explain why I feel it shouldn't have been.

Then we'd either agree (either way) or MORTAAAAL KOMBAAAAT!! take it to meta for the community to decide.

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"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

I see this mostly as being the 5^th user to cast a close vote, or only casting a binding vote when site activity is low and a question is blatantly off-topic.

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As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

visited 713 days, 191 consecutive - and that hiccup was an accident. From my very first meta-answer on this site:

From this day on I will make sure I visit as often as possible, read as many posts as I can and vote as often as possible. If we all do that the site will eventually come out of beta.

That was 2013-09-04. Yes, I'll be sticking around.

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Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

That's a rather interesting question. To some degree, yes, downvoting can be considered a moderation tool. For the longest time, I've considered upvoting as a user retention tool, a way to reward contributors that bring value to the site.

If CR's up:down ratio is 15:1, mine is currently something like 40:1, which I've heard could be considered "outright alarming". I have over 12K votes under my belt, and I'm proud to be responsible for over 11K upvotes on this site - I've probably generated well over 100K rep with these votes. Of course, we're not in 2013 anymore, things have changed.

But let me take you back there. This is the first answer I received on my first meta question:

There's a reason why this site is still in beta:

NOBODY VOTES

Simple. Sorry for caps but it's true.

_{https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/a/851/23788}

That was September 13, 2013. Then this happened:

And it happened for a reason: the voting culture on this site has dramatically changed from what it was, TONS of rep was generated, user base pretty much tripled, and daily visits went from ~8K to ~40K during that time frame.

And we did this as a community - my votes alone couldn't have done that, I only get 40 a day anyway. But I reckon inciting people to upvote, and upvote a lot. This was in response to our CM review, where voting and reputation was specifically identified as being a serious problem:

Voting is an odd beast here. When we reviewed the site, the front page had a dearth of voting. Even looking now, in the last 100 questions asked and the last 100 answers posted, less than 10 of each have scores past 3 with several negatively rated. Now, there are users who vote - vote a lot in fact, as most of the top users have hundreds of votes under their belts (with decent downvote rates as well). But in spite of this, there’s still a humongous bed of users sitting in the ~100-200 reputation range and not actually in the major privilege levels. So for where-ever all the votes are going, it ain’t accumulating.

I like to think my votes have contributed to revert that.

With that said, these issues are a thing of the past now, and I tend to downvote more and more, although I still prefer not voting on a question I'm closing anyway, and keep that vote to reward a deserving question/answer instead. But if a bad post hasn't hit -2, I'll downvote it, yes.

I don't see much use in casting the 6^th or 7^th downvote on a question; it seems to me that -3 is enough to get the message across.

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In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

These thresholds are for graduated sites. We're talking 2K rep for 10K moderator tools, and 4K rep for 20K trusted user. I've had these privileges for quite a while now, and I don't really know what other tools moderators have at their disposal (I only have a bit of a slight idea) - but this is Stack Exchange, and a diamond next to my name would mean this community has given me the responsibility to use whatever powers are given to me, ...with moderation.

One thing I think being a moderator will make me more effective with, is my meta participation. Other than that, it will definitely make me more effective with handling flags, and I hope to learn new tricks to discover suspicious voting patterns (/sock-puppets /vote-fraud), by being less focused on ranking ahead of @SimonAndréForsberg my own account and more on the site itself, its content and, more importantly, its users.

Answer 2

Janos

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

First of all, it's suspicious that somebody would post confidential content by mistake and leave it around for 3 days. Our site has a very attentive user base, and if something looks like potentially confidential or sensitive content, somebody would have nudged the user. I've actually seen this happen a few times.

That being said, if the request looks credible and legitimate, I would discuss with my fellow moderators, and ultimately ask the Community Manager for assistance.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

Thanks to Simon's @Duga, we could get a glimpse to what is to come. And so far, it's not so bad:

• Several bad migrations from SO have been successfully averted
• The SO community is hopefully starting to get the hang of this site

If large-scale low-quality migrations do happen, we should:

• Contact the moderators of the originating sites, to explain clearly why the migrated posts shouldn't have been migrated
• I would expect those moderators to disseminate our conclusions in their community, and educate their users, perhaps in meta and blog posts. We would work together with them to make the message as clear as possible, and prevent further bad migrations

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

Take action:

• Kindly ask everybody to mind their language, please, calm down, and move on. Swearing and name-calling are inappropriate on the SE Network
• If they don't listen, ask again more assertively
• If they still don't listen, kick them

Cleaning up:

• Copy the conversation with relevant context to a private room for evidence, forensics
• Remove offensive messages to prevent further damage
• Contact the mods of the site, to give them the heads up, as there might be further hostility, backlash, or even vandalism by the misbehaving users

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

If I'm called out publicly on meta or chat, I'll respond right there. Comments are not suitable for discussions, so I would respond and at the same time invite to public or private chat, depending on the situation.

I'm a nice guy and I don't bite. I treat people with respect in general, and as a mod, I would have to be especially careful and reassure the user that I'm not just abusing my position. If I was out of line, I'm sure I can be convinced, and we can move on. If we cannot agree, then we can include the other mods and users in the discussion, or take it to meta and let the community be the judge.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

If the flags/comments are not appropriate, I'd invite the user to a private chat, explain why the flags/comments are not appropriate, and hopefully we'd work something out. If we cannot agree, then we can open the question on meta and let the community decide.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Invite to a chat, work it out. If we cannot agree, invite the other mods too. If we still cannot agree, then post on meta.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

There are clear-cut cases. The power of the moderator is useful there, to spare the rest of the community from crap. Even as regular user, I sometimes wish for such power.

Even as regular user, I'm extremely careful with my close/reopen/delete votes. That's why I have low score on the review queues: it's not that I don't review, but I don't like to misjudge, so I very often just hit "Skip".

I've been wondering about the binding votes of moderators, and if they have two buttons: one as regular user, and one as moderator. I would like that, and vote as regular user in the less than 100% clear-cut cases, which is most of the time.

If there is no vote-as-regular-user button (probably), then I'd prefer to wait for 4 other votes, and cast mine as the 5th, when it makes no difference that I'm a mod.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

I'm not a big fan of promises. Promises by other people don't mean a lot to me. Do, or do not. Don't promise. I give you the following facts that might guide you better than promises:

• History: I'm known around here as a slow & steady contributor, putting in 2-3 answers a day on average.
• Commitment: with 1179 total answers, I'm the 2nd top contributor of answers, giving answer to 4% of all questions.
• Motivation: I have a vested interest in the practice of code reviews. I'm extremely critical: I look around in the world, and see poorly done software everywhere. It doesn't have to be that way, and I believe that code reviews would be instrumental to making a difference. I'd like to think that the increased popularity of Code Review will inspire more developers in real life to spread the practice of code reviews, leading to better software, for the benefit of all

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I'm very conscious of my vote actions, especially when casting the first vote, because sometimes it can start an avalanche, which can go both ways.

The first downvote can trigger gang-downvoting by trigger-happy users. Downvotes also bruise egos, so for the friendly image of the site, I very rarely downvote inexperienced users, and guide them with comments instead.

The first upvote is also dangerous on poor posts, as it misleads those wanting to learn, setting a bad precedent.

I often hover the mouse over the arrow buttons to re-read their tooltip, which either help making the final decision, or I just move on without voting.

I don't vote up-down willy-nilly. I often remind the Santas of the chat room to not upvote without thinking. I think I downvote enough. But maybe I upvote a bit too much.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I will be more committed to moderation activities. So far I've been just a user, and focused more on enjoying the site than participating in moderation. The moderator role comes with serious responsibilities that I will have to fulfill. I take responsibilities seriously, and make sure I don't let down those counting on me.

Answer 3

200_success

Deleting sensitive posts: Deny deletion, but try to be helpful

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

In many media, such as Usenet, posts aren't even editable. The fact that Stack Exchange posts are editable should not be abused.

My initial response would be to deny the deletion request, while asking for clarification on exactly what the concern is. Possible solutions might be to disguise the code by editing away identifying characteristics in the question and answers — in which case I would do that, then ask Stack Exchange staff to expunge the revision history. Another possibility is to dissociate the post from the account. If neither solution is acceptable, then in accordance with Stack Exchange policy, the owner of the content should file a takedown request, which is handled by Stack Exchange staff, not the moderators. In that case, I would try to compensate for the answerers' lost reputation points by upvoting some of their other posts.

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Migration paths: Yes, tentatively

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

Code Review should have an option to migrate questions to Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow should probably have an option to migrate to Code Review, but…

• Stack Overflow moderators should have a say in whether they like the idea
• If too many questions get inappropriately flagged or migrated, we should then remove that migration path. (Stack Overflow has had a pretty good track record lately of sending the kind of questions we want.)

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Moderating chat: With a light touch

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

I look at chat flags, but I rarely end up handling them. I believe that Bridge Building chat room flags would be best handled by Bridge Building moderators. As an outsider to their community, I lack the context to know what they consider appropriate, who their regulars are, whether they have repeat troublemakers, etc. (In my opinion, options for moderator actions on chat are rather heavy-handed, and inappropriately executing a flag is as likely to aggravate the situation as it is to calm things down.) By the time I finish investigating, one of the many other moderators has already handled it — usually within seconds. Furthermore, there is little to be gained by being dragged into some other community's issues.

If something inappropriate happens in a Code Review chat room, my preferred actions are verbal warning and redacting. Deleting and suspending may be necessary if the polite measures don't work. (The 2nd Monitor is such a friendly and trouble-free chat room, though!)

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Controversial actions: If I was right, the community would say so

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

First of all, I would consider the possibility that I made a mistake or misinterpreted something, in which case I should just reverse the action and apologize.

Disagreements and misunderstandings are best handled through chat, so I would invite the disgruntled user. If my original action was justified, other chat participants will likely make my case for me. (Moderators are just representatives of the community.) If I don't get overwhelming support, then reversing the action is probably the right course of action (taking it to Meta if appropriate).

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Problematic users: We want a healthy community

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Assuming that gentler measures such as chat discussions and mod messages haven't worked…

A healthy community can survive the loss of any one user, no matter how much of an expert he or she may be. However, one toxic user can drive away many good ones.

The ideal outcome would be for the problematic user to leave of their own accord. We can usually find ways to make that happen. =)

To be clear, civil and polite disagreement should be tolerated or even encouraged, not punished.

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Moderator disagreements: No big deal

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Moderators are human, and can make mistakes. Fortunately, nearly every action is reversible.

I'll turn this question around and ask: what if another moderator undoes one of my actions? Then it's likely that the original decision was either a mistake or too controversial. By reversing my action, they might even be doing me a favour by preventing backlash. In that case, community involvement (on chat or meta) might be better than the original unilateral action.

By that reasoning, if I disagree with another moderator's action, I would do one of the following:

• ask moderators for a second opinion
• ask the chat room for a second opinion
• start a meta post
• just reverse the action unilaterally

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Binding decisions:

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

It does take a few weeks to get used to the new behaviour of the same buttons. Based on my experience, I have arrived at these guidelines:

On obvious decisions, I apply my binding vote. There is little sense in wasting four other users' time to review the same text.

In time-sensitive situations, I'll shoot first and ask questions later by asking for a second opinion in the chat room. In these situations, an "Unclear what you are asking" closure might be less accusatory and more appropriate than some of the other closure reasons.

In less-obvious situations, it's better to be the community decide. I might cast the fourth or fifth vote.

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Commitment: I'll be around long enough

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

Stage 1 of being an addict is denial. =)

Nearly all of the candidates have been around long enough that I wouldn't be concerned about them just disappearing.

I don't think that holding onto my moderator post forever is in Code Review's best interest. We have so many qualified candidates for so few positions! I'd rather do a good job for another year or so and yield the post to another deserving member than hang on forever.

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Downvotes: Voting is a private matter

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

If a question is unsuitable in its current form but is redeemable, a moderator can just close it; downvoting on top of that just discourages the poster unnecessarily.

How users vote is a private matter, as long as it is not fraudulent or capricious. My voting record, as well as everyone else's, is public knowledge. Draw your own conclusions.

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Effectiveness: Huh? Just elect the best candidates

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

That is an odd question— being a moderator is about what is best for the community, not what is best for me. Voters should elect whichever candidates they think will best perform moderator-only tasks such as responding to disgruntled users, handling flags in a timely and appropriate manner, managing tags, etc.

Answer 4

Simon André Forsberg

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

This is problematic because in one way, they have licensed it away already. I believe the Terms of Service are there for a reason. I would not simply remove it without asking any questions. I would start a personal chat with the user and direct them to the Stack Exchange team.

If they ask about it, I would give them several reasons for why I cannot simply remove the question (hard to verify if his claim about the boss is true, users spending time to help, other users gets reputation, other users would lose reputation, a possible future visitor would go without some extra knowledge...)

Overall, I believe this lies above my pay-grade. (Oh, wait, moderators don't get paid!)

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What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

Just like we have been educating Stack Overflow users, thanks to the many comments that @Duga shares in chat, we might also need to educate Code Review users about what kind of questions belong on Stack Overflow. (Simply saying "This code doesn't work" is not enough, Stack Overflow wants specifics).

I think we should try having Stack Overflow as a migration target, maybe also Database Administrators or related sites. I am also willing to try having Code Review as a migration target on Stack Overflow. If we find that there are too many rejected migrations, or too many low-quality questions that get migrated overall, then I will push for removing that specific troubled migration path.

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As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

First course of action will be to delete any offensive messages and kick users that cause problems. This will buy me some time to read up more on the situation and get in contact with site moderators. I will post in the chat room to clarify that I find the behavior unacceptable. If/When the users come back and continue to be offensive, I will gradually step up the actions to include suspending users from chat. I will start with short period suspensions, and as I read up more on the history of the chat room I might decide on longer suspensions.

If my investigation of the chat room history leaves me more concerned about the message quality in the room, then I will keep an eye or a half on that room for the upcoming weeks or months to make sure that things cool down.

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A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

Most importantly, I will try my best to remain calm. I will look at the action I took again, and try to see it from the user's perspective. Maybe I will see that I could have handled the situation better, in which case I will apologize and try to make it right. Otherwise, if I cannot find that I did anything wrong, I will try to explain my action, and ask the other moderators or the rest of the community about what they think about the situation.

Knowing the Code Review regulars, I think it is quite likely that they might have replied to the user before I had the chance to do so, but I still think it is important that the user hears something from me as well.

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How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I will look at the users history to see if this is something that has been going on for a while, or if it only started to happen recently. I will chat with the user privately for a bit to suggest the user to be a bit more careful with the comments, while still making sure the user feels appreciated for all the positive contributions he or she has made to the site.

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How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I will ping the moderator and ask about it in chat. I will ask them about why it is closed/deleted, then I will tell them why I think it shouldn't have been. We might end up having a discussion about it, and if we continue to disagree I will suggest that we take it to meta to ask for community input.

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"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

When I notice that a question already have four close votes, only then will I use my close vote as if I were an ordinary user.

I will be more hesitant when I vote decide the fate of a question. Whenever I think that it is in a gray area, I will avoid closing a question. Earlier I could vote as I wanted to because my vote was just one of many, if I become a moderator I am not just one in the crowd of voters anymore. I will use my moderator hammer on questions that I find are clearly off-topic.

Instead of voting to close a question as I would have done if I wouldn't have been a moderator, I will be more likely to add a comment to clarify any possible concerns that I have over the question. I believe a good comment can be worth more than five close votes in the long term.

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As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

I already spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site. I have developed @Duga that has helped drastically in detecting bad suggestions to post on Code Review, probably one of the most popular bots on Stack Exchange. I have also developed a code to answer userscript and a Code Review Shield. I believe those things clearly show how serious I am about Code Review.

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Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I consider up and downvoting as a moderation tool just like any other voting is (voting to close, voting to delete). About 10% of my votes are downvotes, most of those downvotes are on questions, I do think I downvote enough questions. With a total of more than 2700 votes on questions, I think I upvote enough questions as well.

Whenever I see a bad question, I downvote it (and/or vote to close). Recently, I have raised my requirements a bit for a question to be upvoted. I don't upvote questions just for the case of upvoting.

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In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Effective on what? Effective on moderating the site, I presume. (It will certainly not help me do the dishes any faster)

Instead of having to trouble moderators with my comment flags, I will get the enjoyment of handling other users' flags. I will know that every time I mark a flag as "helpful", I will help that user get one step closer to the shiny Marshal badge.

I will have more tools at my disposal to get an overview of the site and of specific users (both in chat and on the main site), which will help me either verify or contradict any suspicions that may arise about user behavior.

Answer 5

Vogel612

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

First things first: Just outright deleting the question is a non-option.

The problem with this question is the problem we regularly deal with when questions are asked. It's most probably not possible to edit the question into something that does satisfy the boss, while keeping the answers viable. Unfortunately the only option is to ask the flagger to take it upon themselves... Their boss will need to file a DMCA Takedown notice in accordance with the FAQ and TOS. The DMCA notice then will have to be dealt with on the side of StackExchange.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

The root cause of this is uninformed decisions made by users of larger other sites. Primarily it's accordingly important to educate these users. @Duga already is a great help with this and the regulars in The 2nd Monitor (and more and more SO users) do a great job with that.

The next part of the problem is the difference in what's expected for questions on other sites and here. This discrepancy is normal, and something that makes the whole SE Network idea work so well. It is important to give guidance (and a helping hand) to the OP of a migrated question, so their experience of the network isn't negatively affected. After all we want "repeat customers" :)

An option would be to leave user-based migrations disabled for now, but we could use the extra traffic they bring. Then again pointing a firehose at someone doesn't really help that much against thirst.
It boils down to a judgement call weighing additional content (and possibly users) against the implied quality problems.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

The first thing I'd try is get a hold of one of the site moderators, if available. They are bound to have a better overview of the whole situation than me, and if I act rashly, the consequences for the other site may be dire.

On the other hand if I don't act at all the consequences are on the same or greater scale. So the next step would be stepping in and trying to defuse the situation. Calling the participants to objectivity may help.

If it doesn't the tool of choice would be a short timed chat-suspension. This prevents more immediate damage and gives some time for a site mod to show up and allows me to better assess the situation.

Appropriate follow-up actions may be longer chat-suspensions for the involved persons. In consultation with the site mods, the penalty-box (on-site suspension) may be another option.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

The first duty of a moderator is to make decisions on behalf of the community. The second is to explain them clearly and rationally. Point being: Any action I take has their reasons. I'll lay those reasons out clearly (as far as possible).

As soon as the situation shows signs of spinning out of control, I'd pull myself out of the situation. My fellow moderators in most cases will have a better overview of the situation, and can deal with this more rationally. Taking a short break and leaving the field to someone calm is the best option.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Valuable answers on the one side, there's a few things that just aren't okay on the network. It's important to judge the post and not the user. As such I would "pull them aside" and lead a private conversation, explaining why some things are not okay the way they are.

It's important to make clear that the user is a valued contributor. It's also important to mainain the rules. In the end the rules must prevail, else a community is bound to die down. Quality contributions are no excuse for permanent toxicity.

In summary: Work with the user to "correct" (that's such a strong word) the behavior observed. Upon repeated violations without any signs of improvement, the correct action to take is a suspension.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

The wrong way to go about it is calling it out publicly or reversing the decision. That's bound to lead to problems within the moderator team. This means the way to handle this is first and foremost: conversation.
I'd contact the mod in the moderator room. Maybe I've overlooked something, maybe it was a mistake.
From there on it's ... an open plain.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

This shift is the one thing that scares me the most about being a moderator. This adjustment is something that I have to learn, and fast. For the start I'll decide for clear-cut cases, to get a feeling for this, then I'll move on to thinking more and more about the fuzzy areas of decision.

I know I've got a great community in the second monitor. These people see things that I might have missed. I can learn much from them, so I'd try to consult them when I'm unsure.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review

I've been around since I started coming here. In the almost 500 Days since I joined I can count only 7 days where I didn't visit the site. I think this shows how serious I am about this site.

I think I may be more addicted to codereview than to caffeine, and boy that's a statment :D

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I don't consider downvotes to be a moderation tool. Downvotes are a tool of Quality-Control. It's important to keep these two separate. Moderation is taking out the garbage. Downvoting (and quality-control) is a matter of polishing diamonds.

The "worst of the worst" will be posts that need deletion. Downvoting on top of that seems "overkill". The high upvote to downvote ratio is a testament of the quality that codereview actually has. If that changes, and that ratio is just showing that the community doesn't downvote "wrong" or low-quality answers, time's ripe for a call to action on meta.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Sure the tools coming with 10k are nice... But they are just a very limited subset of the overview a moderator has. Instead of having to ask a mod to investigate a suspicious user I find, I can do that myself.

Instead of having to ask a mod to smoke out suspicious voting activity, I can do that myself. Instead of having to rally votes in the 2nd monitor for a clear case, I can do that myself. A moderator has an expanded toolkit, and I think I can make use of that toolkit :)

Answer 6

Jamal

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

As a whole, mods are not obligated to fulfill any 3rd party requests for post removals. Pursuing this would involve seeking more information about that party and possibly legal info. Mods are also not required to get in the middle of anything that could involve the law. A CM would only remove such content (sometimes without warning) if given a good reason, such as a takedown request.

As such, I would continue to clear the flag and mention something like this:

Questions with more than one answer shouldn't be deleted. If you have a reason for having this content deleted anyway, contact SE directly via Contact Us.

The OP may not see this feedback, and if he/she tries to vandalize the post beyond removing just the confidential material, I would do a rollback and leave a similar comment. I would still remove the relevant info myself and see if a CM should remove the history. If it continues anyway, I would lock the post and send a relevant mod message without a suspension. I may also mention account disassociation as an option (initiated by a CM), which only the OP can authorize.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

After graduating, we should only expect mod-authorized migrations from sites that don't share a migration path with us. Informing those mods is just a matter of talking with them on Teacher's Lounge. They may also relay this info to their community at any time.

As for community-initiated migrations, it may not be so different from what we're already doing with our chatbot, Duga. We'll continue to educate other users on our scope to make better commenting and/or voting decisions regarding our site. The nice thing about the migration paths is that it would take five users to vote in favor of it, so it may decrease the chances of bad migrations. However, users without close vote privileges may continue to leave comments.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

Assuming I'm the only mod around to handle it, I would delete any offending messages and then warn others to keep down the language or leave for a while (no kick) to take a break. Otherwise, I would kick users or suspend if necessary. If it gets way out of hand, I would freeze the room and report it on Teacher's Lounge for any other mod to assess.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

I would take the user to a private chatroom to help sort it out without the intervention of other users. I would hear what they have to say and back up my reasoning with resources around the site. If at any time the user won't listen to me and/or if I get heated up, then I'll have another mod take over. If I was wrong, then I would apologize for it and make any corrections.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would start by purging comments if necessary and making a comment of my own to have comments stay constructive. If it was primarily that user that causes the disruptions, then I would ping him/her and link to chat for extended but constructive comments. If the user doesn't abide, then I would bring him/her to private chat or send a mod message as a warning. This would mostly depend on the severity of the situation. If nothing else works out, even after hearing from other mods, I would suspend the user to give them a break.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would bring this up in the mod room, with or without a moderator review flag on that particular post. It seems weird to have an extended argument with another mod in public since we're supposed to be on relatively similar footing. If this ends up being something worth mentioning in public chat or Meta, then it can be taken there.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

As a pro-tem, I'm already aware of how this is done. The other mods and I do still slam blatantly off-topic questions shut, but I can reduce this for myself to allow the community to do more closing. Of course, I wouldn't interfere if I'm unsure of the question, unless I just make a mistake.

As for spam/offensive posts, this may take a little more consideration, unless it's a blatant violation. Spam/offensive mod flags take immediate effect, either by hobbling the user's IP (new user) or by deducting 100 rep. Luckily, such flags can be removed if needed, but that's rare as mods are generally good at spotting obvious spam/offensive material.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

Considering I've never made a hiatus and am both the current top editor and voter on the site, I'd say yes to all. My love and enthusiasm for the site is very strong and I hope others can see that just as well. Oh, and I was also one of the few "Revivalists" of the site. I didn't come here just to help with accomplishing that. I also intend on staying here as long as I possibly can.

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I am aware that a sign of a good moderator is one that provides numerous (but not necessarily massive numbers of) votes. I do see downvotes as a form of moderation, but not necessarily a tool. Mods carry much of the work of purging bad content and downvotes help with this.

I do feel that I upvote and downvote enough questions. However, over time, I've started to change my expectations the questions I upvote or downvote. I will upvote questions that interest me and downvote questions that I feel should be removed or are just lacking quality. As always, I'm willing to take back my downvotes as soon as a question improves.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

As seen on Meta, I am hugely in favor of mass cleanups. Moderator powers do make this easier, and I do have the time to do such things in the background as needed. This also includes flag-handling, which I do enjoy. Overall, I like being in such a position that allows me to help keep the site running smoothly. I feel that my moderation skills surpass my technical skills, which is okay with me at this point. I believe that I am benefiting the site in ways that cannot be accomplished as a regular user.

Answer 7

Hosch250

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

Sensitive posts are a serious legal issue with Code Review. On many other sites, anonymizing the code and removing sensitive information would be more possible than on Code Review, where we require the original, working code.

The first step I would take is to attempt to contact the boss and see if he could explain what is wrong with the post and if there is a possible acceptable compromise, or if the entire post is sensitive and should be removed.

In the event a compromise is not possible, I would delete the post and request a CM completely remove it. Legally, I cannot do otherwise - the content was illegally licensed to SE by someone who did not have the authority to do so.

If I am able to reach an acceptable compromise (such as removing a section of code not discussed in any answers), I would edit the post and request a CM remove the revision history to prevent future visitors from seeing it.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

First of all, we have @Duga to help us catch comments suggesting migrations from SO, and have been fairly successful in educating SO users before they migrate bad posts. Duga will be a very valuable tool for aiding in this situation, and I intend to use her to her full potential.

However, this will likely be a real attention-demanding issue. In this case, I would leave a comment explaining what was wrong with the post, notifying the migration voters, and explain to the OP how they could make their question suitable for Code Review if they wish to leave it up for review, and point them to the help center for future reference. Education and patience is our best weapon here.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

First of all, remain calm. As a moderator, we must not aggravate the issue.

In response to this, I will read the log and remove any offensive and threatening posts.

Next, if there are site mods in the room addressing the issue, I will remain as support only, and not interfere.

If there are no site mods handling the situation and one person is clearly being a troll or otherwise deserves to be kicked and/or suspended and/or banned, I will do so and stay in the room until it is clear the issue is solved, including until after the limit of any suspension to ensure no users come back and start making trouble again, in which case a ban may be necessary.

Depending on how bad the situation is, I may need to temporarily lock the room so no one but moderators can talk to let everyone cool down a bit, leaving a comment as to why I took the action and what I expect of the users when the room is unlocked.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

I would calmly explain why I took the issue, and listen to the user's complaint. If I decide I was in the wrong, I will revert my action, if possible, and apologize. If I feel I was in the right, I will invite the user to post on meta, answer the meta question with my explanation, and let the community decide between us, accepting the community's decision and taking action based on it.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would notify the user that the issue has come to the moderators' attention, and ask if they could try to keep the comments more polite. Depending on the user's reaction and future behavior, I may need to give them a moderator warning, and perhaps a suspension. As a moderator, I need to guard the health of the site, and regular arguments and flags caused by a certain user cannot be allowed.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would privately contact the mod and ask them if they would mind explaining why they took that specific action on that post. We should be able to work any disagreements out privately. If I still completely disagree with the action after the explanation, I will post question on meta being polite and not mentioning any names to discuss the issue, and apologize to the other mod if my disagreement is wrong.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

I have handled the switch from having to flag for off-topic posts and having my flags reviewed by the community and moderators to having the outright freedom of voting to close. I have handled the switch from having my edits reviewed to having full freedom over my edits. I currently have full privileges on the site, and have for a while. Becoming a moderator will be an adjustment, but adjustments and learning are commonplace with me between learning programming and college, so it will be nothing new.

In the event I make a mistake, I will apologize to the user, and remember my mistake for the next time.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

Yes, I am in Code Review for the long haul - I have no other way to get feedback about my code, and I am active in Rubberduck, the VBE add-in, which is coordinated through GitHub and Code Review.

I already do spend hours on CR - I usually have CR open on a second tab on my laptop all day, and am on my computer for several hours each day. Being an online college student helps with this as I have to interact with my university on my computer, therefore giving me a good reason to be on it a lot.

Am I addicted to Code Review? I have to say that I'm about as addicted to Code Review as I am to anything else. Logging in to CR is the first thing I do when I get on my computer, and closing my CR browser tab is the last thing I do before I get off each night.

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I am one of Code Review's biggest upvoters, with 4746 upvotes and 7 downvotes (I have downvoted other, now removed, posts). When I first joined, it was the friendliness of CR that made me stick around, and no matter how big we are, there is always at least one more person we can help.

I do believe I upvote enough questions, having almost as many question upvotes as answer upvotes. I should downvote generally poor quality posts more, but much of the time, I feel going right to the final action (removing a post, or converting it into a comment) without the intermediary downvote is strong enough. Maybe that is because it probably would be strong enough with me.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Being a moderator will put me directly in the middle of many issues that I could avoid as a normal user. I will have more responsibility to maintain the health of the site, and the ability to handle flags directly. By becoming a moderator, I will essentially be accepting a front-line battle position to help keep Code Review healthily active and strong. As a normal user, I don't have any requirements to help moderate the site, although I have moderation tools available at higher reputation levels. As a moderator, I will have to actively moderate the site, including training new users, removing bad and offensive content, and more. Essentially, as a normal user, I only am responsible for my conduct; as a moderator, I am responsible for handling and correcting all bad conduct and actions.

Answer 8

Phrancis

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

I would invite the user to a private chat to discuss first. I would emphasize the Stack Exchange terms of use and license agreements as far as code/content posted to SE is concerned, and also inform them that they should have asked their boss first for permission to post the code.

I would then inform them that I could mark the question as Deleted so that most users would not be able to see it, only those that have high enough reputation. If the user persists and says that it absolutely must be removed, I would contact SE staff and request removal of the post records, and give a stern warning to the user to check first next time, as well as issue an apology to the answerers on behalf of the user for the loss of reputation.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

I think migration paths will take some adjustment, but at the same time will bring opportunity to work more closely with other sites, particularly Stack Overflow. Multiple times each day, we get "broken code" questions that could be migrated to SO, as well as SO recommendations to CR, both of which the community currently handle quite well. I personally think that with the help of the CR community, moderating migrations should not be that large of a burden.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

I would first give it a moment to see if a moderator from BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com responds to the flag, in order not to over-step on their own site.

If not promptly handled by their site mods, I would first issue a warning in chat. Then, depending on the severity of the incident, I would either kick offenders, ban them temporarily from chat, or freeze the room for a moment to let things cool off, if the whole room is involved.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

On SE, almost all things happen in the open, and I would handle it in the open as well, with honesty. I would consult other mods to see if said action is justifiable or not. I would respond with an honest apology if I acted unjustifiably, and otherwise I would explain in detail the reasoning behind said action.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would invite the user to a private chat room, in order not to call them out publicly, and ask them to explain the reasoning behind those arguments/flags in comments. If possible, we can discuss and rectify the situation. Short of a rectification, I would bring it to Meta.CR as a general question as to what types of comments are useful, and which are not, so that we have a record of what the community feels for future reference.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Discuss with the mod, in private if possible, the reasoning behind closing/deleting. If needed, try to bring someone who is knowledgeable in the technologies involved, to see if the code is really broken/hypothetical/etc. If need be, it can be brought up on Meta.CR as specific-question.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

I hope to have to "decide" as little as possible, trusting the community to handle day-to-day things. After all, mods should be exception-handlers, not all-powerful lords that make every decision.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

I already do spend multiple hours a day on Code Review, often in chat, helping with day-to-day things. So, short answer, yes, I'm in it for the long run. addicted-to-cr

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

Yes, I think I up- and down-vote appropriately. I think the "spirit" of CR in general is a bit more welcoming, and since every question comes through the main chat room, they get more exposure, often getting closed/deleted before many down-votes can be cast. I think that in itself speaks volumes about how much the community cares about our dear CR site.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

A high reputation indicates a good technical knowledge and ability to post useful answers, as well as good questions. Moderation is a much different ordeal, where people skills are more important than technical skills. I think I excel at people skills in general, and one-on-one talks in particular.

Answer 9

Donald.McLean

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

One of the advantages of current mod experience: I know that SE has procedures in place for dealing with this problem. I've never encountered the situation myself, but for the most part, mods and CMs got to a fair amount of effort to resolve these issues. Individual circumstances vary though, so a hard and fast answer is difficult to give.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

This kind of migration is an advantage in that it represents legitimacy to folks on other sites who often do not feel that beta sites are "real". Yes, it comes with problems - that's why we have mods.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

I rarely engage in moderating in chat rooms associated with sites where I am not a mod unless I am familiar with the room, context, and situation. There are just too many ways to overreact and do the wrong thing.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer - but I have already encountered this. The user's answer was deleted for legitimate reasons and there was no upside to engaging with them, so I ignored them.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

SE has standard procedures and policies for dealing with these kinds of situations: after a point, you send a mod message and if it persists, suspensions of increasing duration.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would generally be inclined to back them up - that's what team members do. However, if I disagree with the action, there's a good chance that someone else does too. If the issues comes up on meta or in chat, I will make my case for changing the ruling.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

I've already run into this issue many times. In the most egregious cases, mods act. In the less cut-and-dried instances, it's up to the community to decide (by voting) and so I'll wait until something resembling a consensus forms. Mods can be (and have) gotten smacked down by their community for aggressively closing and/or deleting questions.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

I've been here for three years already. What more would I need to do to prove my commitment?

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

Downvoting is absolutely a legitimate moderation tool. It is the duty of mods to downvote questions and answers that are not off topic but could use improvement. On sites where I'm a mod, I downvote more often than on sites where I am not.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Senior users and mods have different roles - similar to the roles of officers and enlisted in the military. I have been a mod, and shown that I can do a mod's job - something not everyone can do.

Answer 10

Quill

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

Determining the confidentiality of the code is the first thing I would do, as it may be false concern, however unlikely.

Following that, the author of the post should be contacted and whether the confidential code can be edited out without making the post off-topic. If so, the post should be edited, and the revision history locked or deleted by CMs

Otherwise, the author should be referred to relevant parties at Stack Exchange.

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

Creating drama, especially between sibling sites on the Stack Exchange Network, is certainly not what anyone wants. But, if a site (and this applies to CR migrating out also), is migrating consistently off-topic questions, then a friendly conversation (potentially supervised by a CM) between relevant site mods to better understand each other should occur. From there, mods can act on their new-found knowledge and help the citizens on the site better understand too.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

Although culture can vary per site and per room, swearing, name calling, and potential threats are not appropriate for any room on the Stack Exchange network.

I would join the room, and find out whether one of the site's mods is online. If so, only pitch in when necessary, provide potential support to this mod.

If there wasn't one of the site's mods online, I would remove all the offending comments and warn the users that it's unacceptable behaviour, and that if they didn't stop, they'd both get kickmuted from the chat room. From there, the chat room, and peace can be maintained until a CM or Site Mod comes online to take over from the work you've done.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

Simply being a mod does not make you exempt from issue. So long as the user was willing to calmly discuss the issue with me, in a private chat room, I can better understand the user's point of view, and help resolve this issue.

If the user was being a troll, however, I would simply resolve it with the offending post removed, or closed.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would invite the user to a private chat room, and discuss tactics on how they can work on improving their communications with other users. Otherwise, I'd suggest they ask fellow users in another chat room to help them construct their comments before they post them.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would express to that mod my concerns, and how I feel they made a mistake, in a logical and calm format, as to achieve resolution.

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

So long as it's not blatantly off-topic, instead of being first to put the post through a review queue, I can wait and see the community's reaction and decisions towards the post, and make my own judgment call.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

In the last little while, my rep on Code Review has spiked, and has been increasing very-very fast:

Code Review is going to 'graduate' soon, and with that (not only our new design!), will come a flurry of users, posts, answers, and the community will need to step up responsibility. As either a moderator, or an informed user, want to stay, to help lay the foundations for these new users, and to stay in the long run. I often unhealthily large amounts of time on Code Review, either surfing for zombies, lurking / posting in The 2nd Monitor, or writing code, and to me, writing code goes hand in hand with CR & 2nd Monitor. Code Review is a fantastic place, except some harsh words here and there, I can't really see why anyone would want to leave :-)

Can I prove it?, well, I have a 3D printer at my disposal, I could 3D print the current site designed logo. Jokes aside, this community is wonderful, and I want to stay a part of it.

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

Personally, no, I don't downvote enough questions, but usually, the off-topic questions are handled by the community without the need for downvoting, and oftentimes, I should be using them. Personally, I have close to a 10-to-1 ratio, I'm hoping for at least 8 or 7 to-1.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Being a moderator holds weight, more weight than an average user commenting on a scenario. I think that although parts of the moderation tools available to mods are available to 10k or 20k < users, the tools available as moderator will be help me be more effective in furthering the community.

Answer 11

Malachi

A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?

First I would lock it immediately and/or soft delete it (regular delete where privileged users can still see it with a link), and then go through the process of verifying those claims, if there is such a process. If there is no way of verifying that I would talk with the other mods ASAP and get ready to purge the question. Someone possibly getting fired trumps any reputation earned from the question for any and all users, in my opinion, but I would still first discuss with any moderators available. If I was alone on Code Review (I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the surprise in your cereal box...) I would soft delete (but only if the OP is the one requesting that it be removed).

Edit:

This is a pretty clear cut procedure, The current moderators have filled us in on that. But hey you don't learn everything before you need to know everything, that is how life is. Point is, a lot of these potential moderators have a pretty good relationship with previous moderators and Community Managers, plus we will have more than enough help should we be unclear about what action to take.

Action needed

Have user fill out a take down request with SE if soft delete isn't good enough for them

What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?

I think that most of us have been keeping a good eye on what comes through our site and that the only thing that will change is that there will be more migrations happening. Thanks to Duga and @Simon we have been catching quite a bit of bad migrations before they happen, and educating SO users about what Code Review is all about, most of them 20k users (on SO) so I know they will be watching , and doing their part to make their site better and not migrating crap as well. As far as what I do on a daily basis, I don't think it will change too much in this aspect, a lot of other users are also watching and taking initiative to comment and educate users on SO before they try to Migrate something that shouldn't be migrated, if needed I also comment or flag with custom message for SO moderators to say, I think it is a good migration candidate.

We have made it quite clear what we want to see on Code Review, and so there are lines that have been drawn and they are Crystal clear, as long as we follow the rules that we have already set, we should have no issues. Consistency is key.

As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?

I am unfamiliar with “The Suspension” chat room; I don’t know the atmosphere there, so I would probably not worry too much about it unless there are flags being thrown.   I would probably drop into the Moderators chat room and ping the BridgeBuilding Moderators to see if they are around and let them handle the situation in their own chat room, I may watch but it would be completely up to them.   So, let’s say there are flags being thrown and no BB Moderator around, I would probably drop in and say something like “You guys are getting flags thrown in your direction, would you please tone it down a bit” and see what happens.
  All of this would happen after I quickly read the conversation to see what is going on, and check out previously flagged messages, suspension histories and edit histories for the time of the conversation.   If the two are being truly unruly, I would kick/mute them and then explain my actions. I would purge the bad chat messages, wait an appropriate amount of time and unMute/unKick them and see what happens, or I might let the site moderators handle that when they get back.   If the individuals involved are not First-Time-Offenders then their consequences may be more severe or come at a quicker pace. But again, I would first consult the Site Moderators if they are available.

A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?

Calmly. This is a rather vague question, I guess I would take a step back and look at what happened, what the user is saying, what other moderators have to say about the situation and whether or not my action benefits the community or not. Then I could formulate a response whether it be an apology or a statement as to why I did what I did and the Meta/FAQ/Help page to back it up.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would get their attention in chat and see if we can work it out. I would have to explain to them how the comments they are leaving are hurting our community and hope that they understand, I would also draw upon my fellow moderators if we needed to come up with a solution that would not alienate the user from contributing good content to the site. If the user builds up the back yard but then destroys the front yard the user really isn't contributing more than a user that isn't doing anything.

So it really depends on the situation and whether or not the user is receptive to constructive suggestion.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Talk to them, see why they did it maybe I might agree with them, if not I would let them know how I feel about the answer/question. you really don't know until it comes up, because every question/answer is unique.

The people in the chat room are people that I would not hesitate to ask questions, and a good lot of them are up for moderator positions I don't see a wall between me and any of them, I think that we would be able to talk about anything Code Review Related

"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?

During the Revival there was much discussion in chat about borderline stuff, which is the way it should be. With the great discussions over the past 2 years, the Community has really defined the line between on-topic and off-topic, I know I keep saying this, but if I am unsure then it is most likely a good Meta Question, and if it isn't then it is something I would leave to the people who know those tags and the CR Rules so that they can make the decision, there are plenty of people with enough Rep to take care of the everyday stuff. Now, if there is something where a decision cannot be made by the community, then I would take a look at it, confer with the other moderators and figure out what the best course of action is; if there aren't any other moderators around then I would make a call and comment that if there is a viewpoint that isn't being seen it should be handled with a Meta Question.

As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review?

Being the person that asked this question, how do I show you, as a community that I am around for the long haul?

My join date is a good sign of longevity, next would be that I nearly have 20k reputation already, let's look at some of the other things that make for a good Candidate Story...

• First Reversal Badge (Gold) On Code Review

  • This came on a question that was badly formulated and the user was a little skeptical of the Code Review process at first, but after some editing and a couple attempts (I lost my first draft of the answer, grrr, it was AWESOME too) at getting the answer near perfect, along with editing the question itself, the user came back and awarded me the accept. I don't give up easily.

• I was one of the first batch of users to get the Generalist badge

• I have 9 tags with over 100 score
• I have 46 tags with over 20 score
• I have answered questions in over 200 tags
• I have 389 answers out there, (if you upvote them all I will give you a cookie, JK)
• I have 48 questions, I usually ask a question or two every month, sometimes more, sometimes less.
• I have earned 68 Badge types
  • 41 Revivals
  • 20 Nice Answer
  • 19 Necromancer
  • 2 Yearling (I have been around over 2 years)
  • 5 Enlightened
• I have edited 727 posts to the date of this post
• 209 Helpful flags
• I have cast 4965 votes as of this post

I am one of the first 3 that started the Great Revival _{(Note: @Jamal, @Mat'sMug)}

A lot of the time that I was not on the site, I was actually living about 180 miles from my family so I traveled to see them on the weekends, otherwise I would have a cool number of visited days like @Mat or any of the others.

I now make use of the Stack App on my Android smartphone and also ChatSEy to talk in chat.

Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?

I got my voting badges rather quickly. I vote down if I see something that needs to be down voted, as a community user I can use my votes to vote up or down, and will continue to do so even as a moderator, those votes don't change because I become a moderator, but they are part of the process of community moderation.

My voting statistics

• 4463 UP
• 502 DOWN
• 2540 Question Votes
• 2425 Answer Votes

I think that I vote enough, in both directions and on both Questions and Answers.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I am already a Trusted User on Beta Code Review, but when something happens in chat, I am rather limited in the scope of how I can handle the situation. Being a room owner in The 2nd Monitor I can now kick/mute if I need to, but only in that chat room. If someone is going off the rails on a comment thread, I can only flag the comment and hope that a moderator is around to see my flag, as a moderator I will have more options to calm the situation.

Most of the other situations surrounding questions and answers are being dealt with fairly well by the community and they are in agreement a majority of the time. This is where the Theory of Moderation comes in and I should just be the exception handler.