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Did Stefano Palazzo♦ use the moderator vacation tool to inform regarding Stefano Palazzo's inactivity? According to the profile, last seen is August 29 (which is approximately a month ago).

Screenshot of Stefano Palazzo's profile page as on 07/10/2020

Did any other moderators get any information regarding Stefano Palazzo's inactivity in their dashboard?


UPDATE:

As on 6th November, 2020, Stefano Palazzo is no longer a moderator :(

The date of quitting is unknown but it must be somewhere between 7th October, 2020 and 24th October, 2020.

Screenshot of Stefano Palazzo's profile page as on 06/11/2020

List of moderators as on 7th October, 2020 (old): Screenshot of list of moderators from https://askubuntu.com/users?tab=moderators (as on 07/10/2020) (from https://askubuntu.com/users?tab=moderators)

List of moderators as on 24th October, 2020 (new): Screenshot of list of moderators from https://askubuntu.com/users?tab=moderators (as on 24/10/2020) (from https://web.archive.org/web/20201024074131/https://askubuntu.com/users?tab=moderators)

List of moderators as on 7th October, 2020 (old): Screenshot of list of moderators from https://stackexchange.com/about/moderators (as on 07/10/2020) (from https://stackexchange.com/about/moderators)

List of moderators as on 6th November, 2020 (new): Screenshot of list of moderators from https://stackexchange.com/about/moderators (as on 06/11/2020) (from https://stackexchange.com/about/moderators)

Related information can be found here: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/56071902#56071902

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  • It's almost a month, not two weeks. Since mods have access to users private information, transparency regarding inactivity is good IMO. @MarkKirby Oct 7, 2020 at 10:43
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    If you want to know what happens when a mod is inactive and what to do about it, this is a different question and is a valid concern but asking why a user is inactive is asking about that users own business.
    – Mark Kirby
    Oct 7, 2020 at 10:48
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  • That is a good find, don't know why I couldn't find it :(
    – Mark Kirby
    Oct 7, 2020 at 11:03

1 Answer 1

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Firstly, I'm going to focus on this as a general question because I'm not a huge fan of calling out specific people. I'm not quite sure what your specific concerns are here. The mods who are active seem very capable and are on top of moderation issues (there are exactly zero unhandled flags), so picking on a single mod who's been MIA doesn't really make sense to me.

OK. To clear up some confusion - Moderators are able to be absent from their sites for up to four months before we start poking them about it. We don't start thinking about removing an inactive mod until they're gone for six months. On most sites, we have plenty of mods to handle flags and Meta issues even if a single mod is missing. We do, of course, have concern for them personally should they be gone without any communication and don't respond to attempts to communicate - particularly with the pandemic going on right now.

Additionally, due to the pandemic and the struggles that so many are having with keeping up with their extracurricular activities, we're being even more thoughtful about how we reach out to mods and what level of activity we expect from them. We balance this with the needs of the site - with their absence, are the other mods keeping up with things? If so, then we're OK. If the mods need help, we'll look at having an election but that still doesn't mean the absent mod would get removed unless they request removal or have hit six months of inactivity.

While moderators have access to the vacation tool, we don't require that they use it - it's completely optional and can be helpful to the rest of the team but there are certainly times where something unforeseen happens to make it so that they can't mark themselves out on vacation - which can even include being unaware of the tool at all.

So, there's not really much that can be gained from the specific info you are asking for. If you have something that isn't a directed query about a specific mod, feel free to ask but, in future, please avoid it.

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    I would like to clarify that my intention wasn't to call out anyone. I was just curious to know why one of the longest serving moderators of my community has been MIA. That's it. In case if I hurt someone, I would like to sincerely apologise. Oct 7, 2020 at 18:25
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    It's hard to have people you respect disappear, so I understand your concern. I remember one of the mods on Cooking disappearing completely for a year and no one was able to contact them. One thing that might help is to focus less on their activity stats and focus more on "I noticed that one of our really active mods hasn't been here for a while, are they OK?" And this may be a better question for chat rather than meta. :)
    – Catija
    Oct 7, 2020 at 18:48

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