Are mods allowed to answer non-meta questions?

Question

This may seem like a very simple question with a very simple answer, but it’s been bugging me. Having looked through hundreds of answers on questions on the regular site, I only see answers from regular users. Yet when I look at maybe three questions on meta, all have an answer from a mod, maybe having one comment that’s the usual “Comment section isn’t for continued discussion, this conversation has been moved here”. This begs the question:

Are mods allowed to answer non-meta questions? Are they just focusing on meta questions and close/report flags and not having enough time to answer?

Answer 1

I've seen a lot of mods answer non-meta questions. Actually, to be elected a moderator, it helps to have answered a lot of questions, both meta and normal.

There are no restrictions, except for time. There's only 24h in a day and mods simply can't do everything. Heck, there's a lot of users that moderate more than they're answering. Which is fine, since Stack Exchange is supposed to be community moderated. Moderators simply moderate more, with more responsibility and some heavy tools to help.

You can find our current list of moderators here. Just to give a couple of examples:

• rolfl's most recent answer is from March 17.
• Jamal's most recent answer is from March 31.
• Malachi's most recent answer is from June 23
• Vogel's most recent answer is from June 25.
• Simon's most recent answer is from July 6.

Note that all of them have hundreds of answers, rolfl even has over 1300. True, not all of them were written while a moderator, but I'm hoping to squash your idea that moderators don't answer non-meta questions. They do. Just not as often as they'd like to since they got a lot of other things to do. Like moderating. And other things in life (yes, they have one).

Are mods allowed to answer non-meta questions?

Yes.

Are they just focusing on meta questions and close/report flags and not having enough time to answer?

Not just on meta questions. Moderating consists of a lot more than lurking on meta. But basically, yes, a lack of time is one of the major reasons.

Answer 2

Mods can answer non-meta question just like other users. You may not see it very often here because an question on Code Review can be quite time consuming to give a full answer for, and they don't have as much time to spend on non-moderator things. You'll often see questions have been edited by a moderator.

You'll see them answer Meta questions fairly often. Some of the Meta questions can only be definitively answered by a moderator (since they have access to additional tools and data that regular users don't).