I wasn't sure what you meant by "link to that comment". Anyway even when I posted that screenshot, I was a bit nervous about it because I thought it was frowned upon to do that. Was it really necessary to say "I asked this question a month ago [here], so I'm no asking it on Meta" ? I think you're right that it would have had a different outcome because anyone looking at my activity on other SE's would assume bad faith or something otherwise, but I think I was just unlucky, and usually you
Robert wasn't answering me so I thought maybe he didn't want that attention.
Anyway the point is, I had no idea that people would look me up on other sites and assume that I was trying to de-throne my moderators because of anything specific. I guess in retrospect that completely makes sense that they would do that (and think that), but you can imagine, that for someone who wasn't trying to de-throne anyone in particular, they would not even think about it at all. Hence I didn't think to link to the question I asked Robert. Does it make sense?
@user1271772 feel free to flag - if its not nice, as an experienced user I should know better. That said, I literally felt that the question was aimed at getting a specific answer, which ended up getting cherry picked from other answers.
As a mod, elsewhere, and a former mod pro tem, I've always felt that its better to focus on specific issues rather than personalities, or even trying to change major parts of the system cause... you're unhappy with specific aspects of it
I'd probably descibe them as one part babysitter, one part tech evangelist, one part... well, I don't know what some of the stuff they do in the shadows are - seems to include product development and such ;p
But Robert Garisto was commenting a lot on the Quantum Computing SE, and he even answered one of my Meta posts with a very long answer, so I thought he would reply to my comment
What people might not have seen, was that I tried to get our SE moderators to also be owners of the main quantum computing chat room. Something that was finally done 2 days ago when the original owner resigned and the 3 moderators of the SE were assigned to be owners
It happens pretty frequently that users who have negative run-ins with moderators will come and ask a question on MSE either blatantly or tangentially complaining about the mods on a site they use and pushing for their demodding... So, when users come to MSE and talk about moderators having term limits or removing them regularly... well... a lot of the MSE regulars are protective of the mods. :) (or are mods).
Well @JourneymanGeek, I didn't even know that what I was suggesting would be considered so drastic!
For some reason I have a memory of someone's CV saying that he acted as a moderator on SO for "two terms" so I thought there was some finite-length term
@user1271772 So, the way the RO system works, if a RO steps down and there isn't one assigned to a room, the system will automatically assign the RO status to the most-active user in the room... which might just give it back to that same person. To prevent this, moderators will sometimes give themselves the RO status. But we don't need it to act as ROs.
Because in my life, every type of "moderator" serves for some finite-length term. Like on someone's CV it would say "served on Journal of Mathematical Physics Editorial Board from 2005-2009"
SO has at least one election pretty much annually. They have 25 mods currently, so it's not uncommon for one of them to step down or for the site to decide that it needs another hand.
So maybe it was right than on SO the moderators change rather regularly and someone had a CV that said he served for "2 terms" meaning he was successful in 2 elections
If you get elected and then voluntarily step down you can always come back whenever you wish. So, for example, Bill the Lizard could ask for his diamond back if he wanted to.
@user1271772 I can't speak for the people who voted on your post. I haven't actually even read it very closely, to be honest, or voted on it. But the first part of your statement is absolutely true.
In my original Meta post (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312300/…) I just asked "how often do pro tempore moderators change", because I saw someone's CV that said he acted for "2 terms" as an SO moderator
I had also asked Robert Cartaino "when is the next election" or something like that in a comment, but he didn't reply. So I was just asking because I wanted to know how often it happens.
I didn't know it would remind people of other users that asked that type of thing due to "bitterness" against some specific moderator, but I guess I was unlucky and it is the case that a lot of people asked those types of questions before.
@Catija, that is in my second Meta post, but the first meta post (the one I linked to just now), it was a lot more simple... just "how often do they change"
You didn't just ask how often... That's not how the question currently reads but the initial revision until the latest one was still poking at "how do I get rid of a moderator?"
@Catija: My question got the marking "an answer is already found here" and it was linked to a page called "what recourse do I have if I don't like a moderators decision"
Pro-tem mods are changed for the same reasons that Journeyman Geek mentioned before - 1. more help is needed, so moderator/s are added 2. A moderator steps down 3. A moderator is removed (rare)
But my question was not about what recourse I have, which I already knew! It was about when they change (because I thought there was some fixed-length term). When I found out they don't change, I asked if it would be possible to change that
Ok @SomewhatMemorableName, I didn't know about the board games and cards Meta. I just looked at the main Meta and didn't see the question there.
@Catija, you're right that I wrote "What can we do if we feel it would be better for the pro tem moderators to be changed?" originally I thought the title itself was enough, but it wouldn't let me post without writing some content (I think)
Ok anyway, thanks for explaining more details to me. I understand better why the question was so ill-received (because it looked like I was trying to change the system and you don't like when people do that, and usually when people ask questions about changing mods they ask about it and most people here don't like that). I think you guys should do it in a friendlier way though...
That happens sometimes. And sometimes if you're hitting those limits, it's good to do some research to see what you can find and talk about that... maybe link to the moderator FAQ post and point out that it's not made clear how long they serve.
Some people have a diamond after their username (e.g. Michael Myers ♦)
What special privileges do diamond moderators have?
How can I become a diamond moderator?
Who are the diamond moderators? How many are there?
For more information, see Who are the site moderators, and what is their ro...
Maybe you remember when you first started asking questions, maybe 9 years ago, you didn't like the feeling of having your question "closed" or "marked as duplicate" especially if the other question didn't have an answer to what you were asking (which is the case for me.... I had already read that "what recourse do I have..." question and still spent time asking a new question because that question had nothing to do with how often they change
I've only been here for three years. ;) And I still don't like having my questions closed or downvoted. It's not fun at all... But I've learned how to avoid that over time. You're always welcome to run a question by the experienced users in chat before posting it... your question may already even be answered. :)
And that's OK. The voting on Metas in general, and MSE specifically don't always meet my preferences... but I encourage you not to give up. I've learned a lot here and the people are good people - which is part of why they are so protective of the mods :D
But during this conversation, people are just downvoting it more, and they even downvoted my answer to it, which I thought was perfect
I could not accept Monica Cello's answer because she said "Periodically changing all the moderators would be disruptive for no good outcome" and "no good outcome" doesn't seem correct at all. There's always "pros and cons" to everything.... it's not like changing the mods every 2 years would have cons with no pros !!!
I could not accept Glorfindel's answer because he said "First of all, asking this question right after a confrontation with a ♦ moderator is a bad idea" which was just an outright false accusation against me, and also .... how can it be acceptable to answer a general question with some attack on the user that asked it? That answer is not going to be useful to people 10 years from now, that was only directed at ME.
@user1271772 "Changing the mods" is not the same thing as having an election... you should be considerate of your wording... there's a much bigger change in status quo between term-limiting moderators to a two-year term and asking the entire moderator team to run in a new election and giving the users the chance to decide again...
But, it's also important to realize that elections are work for both the moderators and the staff... and with 170+ sites, that's a huge amount of work, particularly when elections take 3 weeks to complete each. Requiring every site to re-elect every moderator every two years is a daunting thought.
@Catija And... there's so much to learn about how to effectively moderate, that I might not have started it if I'd had to change after a year or two ...
I didn't know all these things (about how much work it is, and that bad faith is assumed when talking about changing moderators so people asking about it should be VERY careful in their wording).
But even though I didn't like Monica and Gorfindel's answers, which were both slightly aggressive against me and trying to "teach" me how to behave, I combined the main points from each of them into my answer:
... How about this... I'm going to go and have some lunch. I'll write an answer to your question when I get back and, if you like it, you can accept it instead. Will that help?
Gorfindel said it would be too much effort to hold elections so often, and Monica said that there should be discussions on the site's own Meta about how people feel about things. I combined these two things and wrote this: meta.stackexchange.com/a/312587/391772
@Tinkeringbell: you should always be VERY careful about everything you do, not just on SE, but it's hard to explain but.... I didn't even know what I had to be careful about, if that makes sense to you. I didn't know that a lot of mods have been frustrated about people trying to change mods in the past... you know what I mean?
All the advice people are giving me here is appreciated, but at the time I wrote that post, I didn't expect so many people would downvote and I didn't understand why. Furthermore some people started kicking me when I was already down on the ground (such as the edit to Gordfindel's answer)
@user1271772 I'm sorry to learn that you felt some of those responders where slightly aggresive. I'm pretty sure none of them actually is or means to be that. It might help if you read those response with in the back of your mind: although I think this reads as beig aggressive, the flower in chat said it is not. Does't really get rid of the bad taste you already have, but might help to cope with it ...
@Shadow chaos-emerald-pls Please reopen this and close the other one as a duplicate. This one has an answer from me linking to a recent chat message from an employee, while the target is unanswered: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312561/…
I see people are constantly notifying each other of problematic meta questions here, so maybe people discussed it here, which lead to more people collectively agreeing with each other that it was a terrible question.
But why is my answer to it getting so much negative response?
is it really worse than the other two answers? I think it's better
Since I do get pinged periodically here, a quick announcement: I'm going on vacation for a month! And I'm actually gonna try to not check work things. See y'all in August.
@user1271772 all I can say it is just a couple of down votes and leaving a comment as you did doesn't help at all, self-answers on controversial posts are frowned upon by some people and I personally don't think your answer is better.
I see, but the question is whether or not there are ANY benefits of rotating mods
In my opinion there's always pros and cons and the consensus here (which I don't agree with but it's the consensus) is that there's more cons than pros
@rene: How about this: When the "real" elections come around, if we'd experienced mod group A and mod group B, and people generally love mod group B but were always angry with mod group A, wouldn't it help people make better informed decisions in the election?
@rene: or more simply, one mod group for too long can have a strong influence on what's allowed and what's not, which is not necessarily the best for the SE
@user1271772 that is my problem with it. It is not a love context. Mods need to be impopular now and then. That highly influences what people will vote. And I very strongly believe our mods should be shielded from that kind of sentiments in the community.
When you say to a mod: "at the next election your position is at stake" they will make different decisions. Those decisions are not necessarily the best for the community but then become also influenced if it is in their own interest. Our mods are humans. They don't need to have to worry about their position, ever.
And when they do need to worry they are told so by SE staff, not by an voting mob.
@rene: I understand that you are in favor of permanent appointments, but you are just adding more "cons" to the idea of rotating mods, which is ok. What I find not ok is that you are ignoring the fact that there are some pros. I'm ok that you think the cons outweigh the pros, but you refuse to acknowledge the existence of pros all together
@Taryn do you have a full text index on one of your internal SEDE instances? Any estimate on the size and build time of that index? I ask because of this (and also because my own test failed: data.stackexchange.com/meta.stackexchange/query/874024)
@Magisch I guess it may be perceived as such when people assume you know they use he or she for themselves... I wouldn't worry about it much though. In general, I go for they/them and if people ask, I'll sure edit.
@Catija: Your answer to my question seems a bit passive-aggressive or just outright aggressive to me. I already answered the question accepted it, why is everyone downvoting my answer and giving EVEN MORE downvotes to the question? Why did you not upvote the question if it was worth you spending that much time writing an answer to it? Don't give me some sarcastic answer about "losing keys". It has got to the point of emotional abuse.
@rene: since you admitted to closing the question without any direct evidence, and admitted later that it was a mistake (though the comments got deleted), can you do something to help me? I feel like a kid in the schoolyard getting beat up by 20 bullies at once with no one no my side.
@JohnDvorak: Yes absolutely I am finding META to be extremely unwelcoming. I am afraid to write an answer to a question that was made about sexism because I know I'm going to get another 20 downvotes just for being on the side of the person that asked the question (who feels she was the victim of sexism)
I feel like we come up with a lot of terms for things that are mundane and common, to try to make them seem less mundane and common, only to find that our euphemisms have become mundane as they've become common and thus we begin the search again.
@user1271772 ..bit it's up to me to feel that you are dissing the victims of real bullying, cyber or physical, who have, and are suffering real distress, sometimes to the point of committing suicide.
I want something to be done about that question, it's just getting more and more downvotes, have you seen the episode of black mirror where everyone has a social rating and one day the main character loses her entire social reputation in one day because everyone downvoted her?
The feeling of uncomfortableness associated with putting yourself out there never truly goes away. You can only roll with the punches and refuse to take it personally
@Shog9 I mean that if I post, I know people will critically analyze my posts. They'll criticise. I'll be called out on errors or deviations. Disagreed with. Uncomfortable stuff
@user1271772 If it gives you any peace of mind downvotes on meta.so mean absolutely nothing
You don't lose rep, you won't risk a post ban, there's nothing for you to lose
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