A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
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
While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together. And what could be more festive than a big pile of numbers? So here is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Ask Ubuntu over the past 12 months:
Action Moderators Community¹
----------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended² 15 62
Users destroyed³ 508 0
Users deleted 10 0
Users contacted 37 0
User suspensions lifted early 2 0
User banned from review 0 12
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue 153 21,742
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue 6 3,352
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue 27 21,994
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue 0 11,884
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue 2 37,414
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue 50 19,947
Tags merged 2 0
Tag synonyms proposed 3 5
Tag synonyms created 7 0
Tag highlight language set 1 0
Revisions redacted 4 0
Questions unprotected 0 15
Questions reopened 59 257
Questions protected 84 621
Questions migrated 38 24
Questions merged 15 0
Questions flagged⁵ 200 27,657
Questions closed 800 9,678
Question flags handled⁵ 1,708 26,141
Posts unlocked 8 15
Posts undeleted 77 674
Posts locked 23 4,317
Posts deleted⁶ 5,675 32,726
Posts bumped 0 8,621
Escalations to the Community Manager team 3 0
Comments undeleted 83 0
Comments flagged 2 14,279
Comments deleted⁷ 7,513 30,022
Comment flags handled 3,515 10,765
Bounties canceled 4 0
Answers flagged 172 17,760
Answer flags handled 11,917 6,028
All comments on a post moved to chat 152 0
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).
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? I posted a similar report here last year: 2018: 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 you all a happy new year...