I have recently observed a trend of with moderators of SE sites actively influencing moderator elections on sites they have minimal-to-none participation in as Q&A users (e.g. 1-10 posts over lifetime on the site).
Just to be clear, by "influencing", I do not mean constructive unbiased particip...
I'm relatively ignorant of the politics and general mechanics of SE elections, but I imagine moderators participating on other stacks where they are not moderators themselves act as general users? In other words, they have as much right to participate in elections (including endorsing and opposing candidates) as anyone else? I mean all pertinent information about them is public, including the fact that they are mods on other stacks, so if people want to discount or give their opinions greater weight (presumably they know what characteristics are helpful in mods?), they are free to do so.
It would be nice if you could cite specific incidents here. You've referenced violations of the "Be Nice" policy in your comment on mad Scientist's answer; knowing what those are and what other "interferences" you've seen would be helpful.
@Yannis - what I question is emphathically not endorsing/opposing as a concept; but doing so by people who seem to have insufficient knowledge of the candidate's activity on the site where elections are being held due to not participating on the site. Coupled with the significant weight of a word from a diamond mod, it's not something that seems to be engaged in lightly.
@DanBron - I specifically addressed that in the first paragraph. If a site user happens to have an opinion as a site user, and just happens to be a moderator elsewhere, that's 100% within desirable activity and definitly NOT what I asked about.
Downvotes are from the tone of persecution and playing the victim of having your actions and behaviour from other sites called out when running for a moderator position because linked accounts are not a public thing
Is a candidate's activity on one SE likely that different from on another? Is there a reason someone familiar with a user (mod or not) should not question their aptitude based on their knowledge of that user? If a user is an ass on one site and well behaved on another site... do they really show the qualities one wants in a mod?
@random - projecting much? I'm not even running for election. And one of the things I questions was specifically endorsements, which clearly has nothing to do with persecution, is it?
@DVK Most people won't even recognize external mods, they don't have a diamond next to their name. And I still strongly object that behaviour on other sites is irrelevant to elections. I think users that misbehaved on other SE sites should have to answer about that if they decide to nominate themselves, those actions still reflect their character.
@DVK I guess I still don't see the difference between a "low participation user voting" and a "low participation user voting who also happens to be a mod on other stacks".
Stop making this about mods, DVK. Your objections are valid for anyone who has, in your opinion, too low participation on a site. Being a mod has nothing to do with it.
@DVK Ok, change "voting" in my previous comment to "participating" (including commenting to endorse/oppose). What's the difference between Bob-low-activity-user and Alice-low-activity-user-and-also-mod-on-different-stack? I'm not arguing or resisting you here -- I was serious wheni said I have little experience with SE elections -- I'm just trying to get you to elaborate on your perspective.
@DanBron - because very few people in practice tend to form snap judgement based on what bob-low-activity-user says (the election I observed actually DID have exactly that happen - and everyone and their grandmother's dog essentially brushed aside comments from said Bob). However, I routinely observed that anything said by a person with a diamond automatically gains respect just from the diamond attached.
They don't have a diamond attached on their comments unless they're a moderator on the site. And there is no overlay or asterisk on a comment saying they're a moderator on another site. What you have to do here then is to reach around for it
@DVK That point is relevant and worth including in your question. With actual (username redacted) quotes, and reactions to those quotes, if you can. Also highlight the focus on endorsing/opposing via commentary, rather than voting. That changes the focus of your question here, too. PS: I personally have not voted on this Meta-question yet.
@Andy - I suppose so. The tone of the comment was far from neutral, and the word choice somewhat disturbing.
The real question (not the one the OP asked) is about separation of sites; is each site entitled to its own culture? Should diamond holders be cognizant of this culture and customs before going to another site's elections?
@Andy - I tried not to point fingers! HARD! But since you asked directly, yes yours was one of at least 3 examples - but NOT the only one. If it was, I would have asked you in private as a user, not called it a trend and asked in public.
@Yannis - rep is meaningless, sorry. I have high-ish (500-1000+) rep on sites where I can 100% certainly state I know nothing about the site, or its culture, or its users; and would 100% certainly refrain from voting, never mind commenting on, that site's elections.
@Andy - and to be crystal clear, I see very little difference conceptually between your comment and ArtOfCode's following comment, despite one being pro and one con.
@DVK You don't need to be familiar with a site to know that someone with a long history of abusive comments (for example) won't be a great moderator. You are putting too much emphasis on things like site culture, that, ultimately, don't really matter much in being a moderator.
And here's a more concrete (and familiar) example: Wouldn't you want the diamonds who handled this bizarre situation to speak up if the culrprit decides to run for moderator?
@Yannis - not really, no. I wouldn't mind the diamonds telling me who attacked me (or at least 'yes/no' of whether it was clearly an innocent prank with bad timing) just for my own peace of mind. But I definitely wouldn't reveal - or ask diamonds to reveal - that info publicly. As usual, I'm trying to be consistent :)
@Yannis - I'm not sure you're reading the question I was writing? Where did I say anything about knowing site culture mattering much? Hopefully, most sites have similar culture, at large. Knowing information and context (like, did the user post bad comments on THIS site? And was that genuine poor behavior or were they provoked beyond reasonableness) is what matters. I observed existing moderators posting abusive comments (in one case, asnwers), yet nobody stripped their diamonds.
Outright revealing that info would probably be against the mod agreement @DVK. However, if someone has shown they can't be trusted with PII, I'd expect the people who know it for a fact to do whatever they can to convince me that I shouldn't be voting for them (and thus giving them access to my PII).
@Yannis - sorry, how's PII involved in this confused. Your link to my question involved using my publicly known email address. And yes, in that hypotherical PII involving case, I would say CM team would be within full rights to block someone from running, since PII access and handling is an incredibly huge deal.
@DVK Re site culture: Here's a link to your comment, where you say that you would "100% certainly refrain from voting, never mind commenting on, that site's elections" if you "know nothing about the site, or its culture, or its users".
@Yannis - Ah, ok, sorry, I see where I inadvertently made this confusing. I was talking about my own standards in that comment. When it comes to abstract stuff, I agree with you that site culture shouldn't be taken into consideration; since it ought to be reasonably homogeneous (and if it isn't, the site has bigger problems)
One thing we can agree on is that seeing downvotes on something we like is manipulative, and upvotes on those we don't like are pity votes. As is the case and as is the nature of only allowing moderators to vote on this question
@HDE226868 - here's what an actual good moderating behavior would be, in my own practice: post a polite comment explaining why the question wording seems incorrect or biased; post suggested better wording, reverse DV to UV if that suggestion is taken. What you and your teammates did was the opposite - you deliberately tried to prejudice normal users against considering this a valid question via mass downvoting, before anyone has a chance to see it and upvote because they don't think questioning a moderator is a crime.
@DVK What answer do you want? Its a loaded question. You might as well ask "is it accepted if moderators beat their spouses". Your premise is that they are interfering in the election. As I said in my comment, I don't believe that is a valid premise.
@Beofett - May be my ESL ears are showing, but activity described seems to fit the definition to a "T": "take part or intervene in an activity without invitation or necessity". Frankly, I'd be happy to use a less loaded term, if anyone bothered to offer one.
@MadScientist - Ironic isn't it. You just protested getting judged by people who don't get to hear your side of the story, or understand full context. That's precisely what I am not comfortable with, situation wise - BOTH as far as what happened to my question (everyone assumed it was about Andy and rushed to defend him, even though I have prior cases I equally object to, including suppor of candidates); and in the election itself, except we exchange the weight of opinion of mass of redditors, for weight of opinion of several moderators (and trust me, moderator's opinions are valued by many)
@DVK I was unaware that commenting on a community's election required an invitation. Which users are authorized to issue such invitations? How much reputation is required to issue an invitation?
@Beofett - I'm guessing 50 like normal comments. But do you honestly not see a difference between doing something because you are genuinely interested in a site and community; vs. in a specific candidate? How many times have the user posted on Meta? Zero? How many moderation activities have they done on a site? Zero? That's a red flag to me that their motivation is other than concern for the community. As I said to Yannis, I am that way on some sites, and would voluntarily refrain from interefering in elections there even if I have 50+ rep that lets me.
@Beofett - don't need to waste time. No other users will see it thanks to moderators efforts (even if not deliberate) to downvote it off the Meta front page. And I got my own answer from what was posted so far. Nobody is even remotely interested to introspect if affecting "democratic" elections on a site one is in no way connected to or knows about, is something that may not be a great idea.
I find it fascinating how strong the insistence (and not just yours, DVK) is that this question got downvoted solely because of a conspiracy of moderators. I'm not a moderator. I didn't hear about this because a moderator told me about it. I saw it because it was linked by a non-moderator user. I downvoted it because I think its a loaded question, not because of some mythical conspiracy.
@Beofett - to be clear - I'm not alleging a conspiracy. Just the effect, whether intentional or not. However, if I'm an experienced moderator who knows about -10 score effect, and I see a question at -9, I just might resist adding extra DV specifically so as to NOT prevent the user's question from being seen. Matter of fact, have done so, even on very poor questions.
Ooh, election drama. puts on tin foil hat Pitch forks for all! Regular: E Left handed: Ǝ … now we can regulate all those darnèd unmarked moderators going around with the nerve to comment on elections for communities they're part of without some mysterious invitation!
@bjb568 - how to regulate that? EASY? Let people think if what they are doing is really a good idea or it has negative side effects they didn't consider. Not everything really needs to be a formal rule, some things can just be self-awareness directed.
@DVK Again, I'm not solely referring to your comments. I will say that I (was) an experienced moderator, and I have to admit I'm not certain what you mean by "the -10 effect". I know that I'm more likely to click on a question with a low negative score, but I'd put that at about -3, rather than -10, as a threshold. I certainly am not aware that I somehow "stop seeing" questions just because they hit -10. And I don't see why moderators should be required to vote differently on sites they don't moderate.
@Beofett - I saw mentions (admittely, never saw an actual rule) that posts below -10 drop off the front page even if recent. Usually in context of some hugely offensive post that people want deleted, and others stated "don't worry, even if not deleted ASAP nobody will see it anymore"
@Beofett - why moderators should vote differently? As I said, -10 rule being one reason. A concept of "conflict of interest" being another. Moderators can vote any way they want. Whether they should consider abstaining from vote on something that if liked, reduces their power, is a different question.
Most anyone engaged with meta discussion is not stuck on the home page but on Questions, sorted by Activity, and no amount of negative vote score will disappear it. Unless the target audience are those not at all engaged and just glancing the home page then we 100% have a conspiracy or we just want to 100% believe all false premises and loaded questions are 89% in their right mind
@random - sorry, I am biased by my own usage patterns. I only read MSE in new question order. It would be interesting to find stats to see if I'm in the minority or majority of site users, but I have no idea how to find that out.
That again is another question and should not be compounded with the state of things here. Feel free to continue this discussion in chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2691/…
Your comments were deleted because they were flagged, @gnat. Possibly because you seem to think that voting on a post which proposes disenfranchising a group of voters by members of that group is somehow dishonorable. As usual, if you have anything of lasting value to say, put it in an answer; otherwise, assume that moderators will share your disdain for your own words and and remove them at the first sign of trouble.
@Shog9 - since the post (1) doesn't actually propose anything - merely asks if something is a good idea and (2) doesn't propose anything that I personally wouldn't follow (not affecting elections in a community I haven't put any effort to become a member of), I think your comment isn't really accurately describing the situation at all. The worst you can say about my proposal is that it aims to question whether moderators should be aiming for the same standard I hold myself to - not "disenfranchise" them.
@Shog9 - Also, the way the whole election was handled seems to prove gnat's point to a "T". Otherwise, the candidates - and existing mods - would also have to answer questions like "have you been involved in events that drove a respected user off the site? What efforts have you made to actually reconcile and positively resolve the situation as a moderator should instead of escalating it?". Or, another one: "recently, a user publicly disparaged another user all over the site in a sustained campaign. What efforts have you contributed to defuse the situation?".
@Shog9 - also, I would ask that you actually include ALL users who left the site due to issues. I can count at least 4 reasonably valuable contributors off the top of my head, with 1 more openly considering it - not 1-2 as being portaied. You may consider it healthy as a CM... but not everyone would agree.
Calling participation "interference" attributes a negative quality to it, @DVK. You've since edited the wording here, but that was how it was posted, and how it read during the time period where it picked up most of its negative feedback: the first revision (along with the responses to a number of comments during that period) was little more than passive-aggressive griping about one moderator's endorsement of a candidate in an election on another site. As for how this election has been handled... I have a few things to say about that, but they don't belong here.
@Shog9 - when I downvote a post over a specific issue, and the user fixes the issue, I take the pains to go back and reverse my downvote. The fact that (seemingly) none of downvoters did it after the edit proves you wrong. Of course, any suggestion that moderators are held to the same standard I hold myself to would be a bad thing, right? (I will omit the slightly onerous but more constructive avenue of attempting to fix the issue with the post, as I don't do that nearly consistently enough to expect others to).
@Shog9 - Re: election - if you meant what I did with my profile re: election... I'll honestly admit not proud of it and mostly hated the fact that I had to. The person left me no other choice after I attempted 4 different ways to amicably resolve the issue.
You corrected the most egregious problem, DVK, but hardly fixed the post. You say you've recently observed a trend, and perhaps only recently you have... But I'm skeptical. You've been around for a while; you have accounts and significant amounts of participation on quite a number of sites, some of which have had very controversial elections in the past. If nothing else, I find it hard to believe you've missed all of the modern (post-SE) elections on Stack Overflow wherein moderators from other sites commented (and even ran) freely. This question is a lot more specific than it lets on.
@Shog9 - None of the elections I voted in I was aware of any significant controversy, at least on a systemic level. An example would help. SO - OK, this may be true, inasmuch I don't know 99.99% of SO politics, don't really know any users who aren't Perl tag regulars, so I simply read candidate's pitches and voted for whoever seemed most reasonably in line of what would make a good moderator without consulting what other people thought about the candidate. In large part, because who is SO mod is not that relevant to my SO site activity, from past experience. Rarely run into any of them on SO.
Controversy is orthogonal to the activity itself, @DVK. I've straight-up endorsed candidates in elections going back years now, but a couple of folks hit the roof when I simply said a few nice things in this one. I've seen moderators straight-up post details of past suspensions in the comments under candidates' nominations in past elections, but here we have folks trying to burn the place down over a request for candidates to be candid themselves. As noted in my answer, there's nothing new or unusual here... Except maybe the amount of drama over hum-drum activity itself.
@Shog9 - however, your approach is what's troubling. Instead of saying "user raised a possible issue. What are the merits?", the FIRST approach taken - by you and others - seems to be "forget the merits, user is nefarious because they don't fall in line, let's find an excuse to refute/ignore what they say and go ad hominem". The former is what you did in your answer. The latter is what everyone else did, and you do in your comments.
@Shog9 - this may be likely because this election was happening at a somewhat volatile situation overall. Sensitivities change when there's tension and drama. The very fact that disparate users - who can't mutually stand each other - raised the same issue - should be a Big Red Flag to you that it's about the situation, not the users.
How can you call that my first approach when I posted a straight answer three days before saying anything else? The only reason I'm even back here is that folks were flagging the comments. Anyway... My gut feeling as to the situation is that there's been a power struggle among some of the top users for a while now, and the moderator role has been used as or seen as a tie-breaker. Which... Honestly seems a wee bit silly to me, but it explains an awful lot of the bizarre behavior we've had to deal with over this time period.
@Shog9 - that's exactly what I said. Your answer was approach #1. Your comments are approach #2. You might notice that when you took approach #1, you mostly convinced me (I still have reservations in specific cases, but totally see your point in a theoretical case, even if not wholly 100% agree).
@Shog9 - Do you have an email address? I would like to explain in detail how I feel the situation - which is a BIT close to what you said but not quite - and these comments are absolutely the wrong place for it.
@Shog9 - remember, I'm banned from system-wide chat? :) Can't drop there even if I wanted to. And I don't want to even if I could - I seem to do FAR better in 1 on 1 than public forum communication wise.
There are three chat servers, @DVK. That one exists solely to serve this site (and also employees in private rooms). It's REALLY hard to get banned there, and if you ever do you probably have bigger problems.
@Shog9 - Oups, didn't know that. Thanks! I'll still email if you don't mind. I have a lot to say (hopefully, you'll find some of it useful or at least informational) and would like to compose it in a proper format and in calmness of my editor :) As you might have observed, I tend to go all defensive and then off-tangent in public conversations.
@Shog9 - BTW, I don't wanna raise a flag and invite more mods, but feel free to nuke any portion of this comment thread you deem obsolete/not useful. I copied it all in the unlikely case I said anything worth copy/pasting into my email.
