@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog You around?

@Catija What?

You're the one who wanted to talk with me.

@Catija I was just wondering why you haven't yet responded to my emails.

The first one was to Shog, not me, so I didn't respond. And the second one I haven't gotten to because I'm not really sure what to say.

@Catija Also, it would be really nice if you didn't go look up in the database and publicly call me out for casting a close vote. There's a reason why the system keeps those private until and unless the question is actually closed.

I know I stepped a little too far in lying and saying that I didn't cast it, but I wasn't really sure what to do, seeing that an employee had disclosed private information.

Oh, wait, those are 10k tools.

@Catija As I said, I agree that I overstepped boundaries in trying to derail the investigation, but I believe that using the mod-only tool to publicly call out the close voter is a violation of the moderator agreement. I understand that as an employee you aren't bound to it, but ethically you should abide by it.

It's not a mod only tool. Anyone with 10K can see that information.

@Catija Those are only reviews, not votes. I cast my vote externally, not through review.

I don't yet have 10k so I might be wrong

Even if it's only reviews, there's not really a reason that only reviews are public and votes are private.

Why would you even do that, though? Why would you vote to close something and then come in to the Tavern and pretend like it wasn't you?

@Catija The answer is in your email inbox.

It's been there for a while.

There's nothing in that email that tells me why you'd VTC it and then talk about it in the Tavern, only why you didn't want people to know.

You brought up the close vote, you asked why someone would vote to close it.

@Catija If someone else sees a close vote, they'll quickly assume it to possibly be me in their minds, given the prior case where I close voted your "thanks" post and commented asking what your question was. But if they see a close vote, and a message from me asking who voted, they'll mentally eliminate the possibility that it's me.

But no one was even talking about that post having close votes at all... you brought it up needlessly.

Your mentioning it made me suspicious.

I wanted to see what close reviewers would think of the question. Ideally, I'd use an alternate account to cast a recommend closure flag, but Shog said it's an invalid use of a sock puppet, so I cast a vote through my main account.

Why don't you ask before you vote?

Anyone would have told you the same thing that I did... announcements are part of the purpose of meta.

@Catija Because the same people who participate here, aren't necessarily the same people who participate in the review queue.

And why would you ever even bother to close vote something from staff? It's ... senseless.

@Catija There was no question at the end - "please answer with feedback" or "any bugs in this?".

Meta doesn't require questions.

We have an entire announcement tag for announcing stuff.

@Catija Quite a few staff posts have been closed by the community.

Not announcements.

@Catija Yes, as duplicates of superseded ones.

That's completely different and you know it.

You're being intentionally obtuse.

Did you also VTC the DAG updates thread?

@Catija Check the database and you'll know

I don't need to check the database... You need to stop rules lawyering everything.

@Catija Going through my votes tab, doesn't seem like I did.

@Catija Also, going through the chat transcript, it seems like I was trying to argue a point. That's not how I thought of it initially; I just thought I was giving answers to your questions, and addressing each point individually. This and this I thought of as just statements of fact, not as arguments. Sorry it came across the wrong way.

I didn't ask "have staff posts been closed?" I asked "Why would you do it?" You make this huge effort to know what's a good fit for this site and to edit stuff and to make it a useful place. What about that post made you think it needed to be closed? You're harming the community by being pedantic about an announcement post not having a question on it. Many of the existing posts in that tag don't have a question... that's what that tag is for and there will be more of them in the future.

@Catija Look, I won't VTC announcements again.

If it's something non-pedantic (e.g. superseded, obsolete, etc.) I'll probably just flag it and let the staff deal with it.

But I humbly request that you not publicly call out my close votes again. You can ping me here or email me.

Or better yet, clear out my vote by closing and immediately reopening - which has the added advantage that I can't vote again.

I'm not here to fix what you do wrong, and clearing your close votes just looks bad. You already can't vote again if you retract your close vote. Shog's already talked to you about some of the stuff you vote to close. I think you need to learn better what to VTC and, if you're unsure, skip it.

I don't want to see you pretending not to have VTC something just to obfuscate things. If you're unsure enough that you want to see what other people think, again, skip voting and ask first. If others agree, then vote. If not, then you don't have to worry about anything and you're not being dishonest.

@Catija To better learn, it would be great if I had statistics about the percentage of my close votes resulted in which action: voted and aged away; voted and closed; voted, closed, and reopened; voted, closed, reopened, and closed again.

@Catija Okay, I'll do that.

@Catija Finally, you said you're unsure of what to put in your response email. Out of curiosity, why is that? Simple scheduling, or personal? (I won't bother if it's personal.)

@ShadowtheWelcomingWizard Hello Shadow the Welcoming Hedgehog