My name is Thomas Ward.
- What timezone are you in and when will you be most active? The moderators we have now cover quite a broad range of times throughout the day, but there are a handful of times when there are no moderators around (Friday evening, PST, for example).
I am in the United States, Eastern US time zone. I am on throughout the entire day, and into the evening of the Eastern US time zone (until about 10PM eastern us time)
- As the site gains more and more moderators, it will become increasingly important for the existing moderators to think and act alike so that we the laymen can can know what to expect, regardless of which moderator is acting. Describe your relationship with the present moderators and why you would expect them (and not just us) to trust you as a moderator as well.
I have a good relationship with the existing moderators, and think from both their perspective and the end-user perspective. I've done a large amount of moderation through flags and pinging them, and contacting them for help with problem users who refuse to do anything but be argumentative, and I have insight into how they operate, while also having the benefit of a logical mind, and being able to analyze a situation from both their side and a user's side, which helps to be equally fair with moderation duties and decisions.
- How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable questions/answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags in comments and chat?
I have seen several cases of this, with a lot of flags on such users' comments where necessary.
This is a tricky situation - we have a user who has good questions and answers, but won't accept critique, or takes every subsequent comment as an attack against them and their beliefs.
I've been in this situation myself - go back ten years, and I was extremely defensive with my positions, to the point of providing good responses but refusing to accept criticism. I've since acknowledged that I can be wrong, but this was after many people told me that I am very good at my answers, and approached me from that perspective first. That said, I was told that there are certain ways I handle situations that are incorrect and lead to argumentativeness.
With other users, a similar approach seems to work in a lot of cases. First, acknowledge that their input is valid, and they are providing good questions and answers. Secondly, calmly discuss with them the situation, that there are people who are acknowledging their capabilities and skill-sets, but calmly inform them that they are taking an attempt to help them improve (hence the criticism) the wrong way - that criticism or comments about their post is not meant to be an attack on their capabilities, but instead to try and help them improve for the future. By bringing it up in this light, users can start to try and learn that people are trying to help them improve, rather than cause drama or issues, and that it is not necessary for them to defend their position fiercely to the point of causing undue drama.
- How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I've actually had this as a user - a moderator closed or marked something of mine something that shouldn't have been. The case of a moderator closing, deleting, etc. something that shouldn't have been hasn't changed from that of an end-user of this site - I would calmly discuss with the moderators what their reasons were, keeping my mind open, while discussing my viewpoint on the same question. I would not overrule their actions, though - I would only discuss with them to get their point of view on it.
- The existing moderator team doesn't always agree in private (the joke is if you ask 10 people the same question, you'll get 15 answers). What will you do if the majority of moderators are opposed to your point of view?
I would accept their viewpoint. It would not stop me from making known to them in private what my viewpoint is, but I would accept their viewpoint, and continue to analyze the situation from their perspective as well as my own to try and see it from their point of view instead.
- What do you think about setting up something like the Stack Overflow Close Vote Reviewers chat room (SOCVR)? Aside from a recent surge in first posts, our close vote review queue has always been rather large. Every year or so, we see posts to clean it up: 1 2 3. This has been suggested before, and IIRC, there is such a room, but inactive (and lacking publicity). While having a room by itself is not the issue, the queue size is. It's been agreed repeatedly over the years that it's a problem and something needs to be done about it. Thoughts?
I think that the queue is indeed a problem. I think that clearing the queue is a very complex problem.
The Close Vote Reviewers chat room is a good idea... in principle. In reality, I believe the core problem is both the vote cap of a relatively low number of close votes within a short period of time and the number of people actually reviewing at any given time, or over the course of the day, being extremely low compared to the number of 'problem questions and answers.'
I think this is perhaps a case of people not feeling that reviewing has any tangible reward, or that it's a waste of time because the number of incoming items far outweighs the number of reviewers and votes anyone has at any time. I also think this is possibly a case of people trying to review things, only to decide that they don't know how to do it effectively.
With regards to the lack of a reward, many people may want a reward beyond just badges. My point of view on that is that "The reward of doing review duties is that the quality of the site goes up further. If you start doing reviews on a regular basis, or even when you have a few minutes to spare, we can start cutting down on the queue and help make the site better."
With regards to the case of people not being sure how to do it effectively, I think we need to provide some type of 'better guidance' (similar to how we do review queue audits, but less annoyingly) such as a 'training course' in which we go through different types of questions, answers, etc. and give options to users to learn the system, rather than 'wasting their votes for no benefits.'
- How would you deal with a feud between two users? Consider a case where two users have it in for each other and tend to downvote and/or negatively comment on each other's posts.
This tends to need to be handled on a case by case basis.
However, from a theory perspective, I would handle this with a 'multiple strikes' system. Firstly, I would talk to both users one on one to try and get both sides of the situation. Secondly, I would then try and talk to both of them to explain that their actions are disrupting site operations, and that they need to maybe take a break from the site to avoid each other. I would then keep an eye on them to see if it continues to be disruptive.
On a second set of their feud afterwards, I would talk to them both again, but this time indicate that this is the second time I've had to touch base with them, and they need to either leave each other be, or face the possible chance of being locked out from the site.
Should the feud continue past that second warning, it may be time to consider a temporary suspension on both their accounts, with looking into reversal of their downvoting as 'serial' in nature. If it continues after the suspension lifts, it may be time for a more extended suspension on the accounts.
I know, we are supposed to avoid punishing individuals for their actions, but if a pair of individuals refuse to accept multiple attempts to defuse the situation by moderators, it may be necessary to 'force' the issue to make them realize their actions do have punishments.
- How do you deal with established users who have gained reputation, badges and privileges by illicit means? This might seem silly but it has real world applications. Things like this, where >1k rep users do something really quite wrong, happen a couple of times a year. Dealing with it smoothly is important to the continued success of the site. Example scenario.
We saw this recently in retooling of the systems behind the scenes, but we also see this on a regular basis a few times a year, as shown in the example scenario.
Using the example scenario, I would find the sockpuppet accounts, suspend the sockpuppets, and then reverse their illicit actions. I would then reach out to the users privately and indicate to them that we have caught them in the act, and indicate that their illicit actions have been reversed. I would then caution them that if they do it again, they will get accounts, privileges, and access suspended.
- How would you encourage users to improve their answer quality? For instance, someone who consistently copies another user's comments into an answer, more or less verbatim, without verifying that the information they're supplying is correct.
Funny story: I've caught this in the past. Typically, I would make comments to the individuals to stop, and indicate that constantly copying data in from other locations verbatim without verification of the information doesn't contribute to the site. I would also make a note that it can perhaps lead to complaints of infringing upon others. Ultimately, I would let the notices sit, and where necessary delete the posts if there's community agreement, and ample reasons, to remove their posts and notify them privately if they keep it up that they need to stop, and need to look into whether their posts are actually contributing to the site, or whether it's being disruptive. That said, I would also give the individual pointers on how to better contribute to the site.
- In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A moderator's job is to provide gentle, yet firm, oversight to the community. In most cases, we should not have to even be here, and only be here to review flags and such which come forth. Where we do have to act beyond going through flags, reviewing posts, and closing blatantly-close-worthy items on the site (offtopic posts, etc.), we should mediate disputes in a civil, calm, non-punitive way to help users become better, or to defuse situations. Punitive measures are a last resort - and should only be used in extreme cases of disruptivity of which multiple cases of mediation have proven ineffective, which should only ever happen rarely, and of which are the exception to the norm.
