2022: a year in moderation

Question

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.

So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Ask Ubuntu over the past 12 months:

Action	Moderators	Community¹
All comments on a post moved to chat	81	0
Answer flags handled	7,227	928
Answers flagged	176	7,987
Comment flags handled	2,682	1,101
Comments deleted⁷	7,484	12,100
Comments flagged	62	3,720
Comments undeleted	82	0
Escalations to the Community Manager team	5	0
Posts bumped	0	8,258
Posts deleted⁶	6,179	18,563
Posts locked	36	707
Posts undeleted	105	456
Posts unlocked	8	25
Question flags handled⁵	1,293	8,287
Questions closed	1,235	5,280
Questions flagged⁵	81	9,296
Questions merged	9	0
Questions migrated	18	10
Questions protected	18	393
Questions reopened	127	115
Questions unprotected	1	1
Revisions redacted	8	0
Tag highlight language set	2	0
Tag synonyms created	4	0
Tags merged	2	0
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue	126	13,018
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue	44	10,152
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue	11	14,048
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue	14	5,331
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue	120	6,391
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue	17	961
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue	466	9,585
User banned from review	1	7
Users contacted	28	0
Users deleted	5	0
Users destroyed³	465	0
Users suspended²	16	102

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Ask Ubuntu without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.

³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.

⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.

⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.

⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Further reading:

• Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

• You can also check out this report on other sites

• Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^