It looks like SE has fired two of the most experienced CMs just now. What does this mean for the community, and for the plans SE has for the future of the network?   SE identified the following challenge:     Difficulty scaling support for moderators from our Community Management team   The proposed solution was a moderator advisory board, but how is that supposed to work if SE is gutting the CM team at the same time? Does SE even care about solving this issue, or has supporting the mods been deemed as a cost center that can be streamlined?  Do these actions by SE represent a shift in strategy? Is SE giving up on community management, and concentrating on selling Teams and SE Enterprise?
120680
Less than a month ago, there was some settling of the . It's obvious that there was not a lot of approval from the community on the course of action chosen by SE, or .  Today, we are seeing a new wave of SE actions targeted on work with the community: firing / letting go / agreeing to separate (the actual term is unknown and can remain unknown forever) two very knowledgeable and very trusted community managers:  and :    about suddenly being in need of new job  indicating he is no longer with the company   and  – meta posts from the community   The following change in SE staff happened shortly after this event:    left his position as a Community Manager (but explicitly said that "I made this decision in December and it's not correlated with the recent CM team changes". Jon wants to apply for the moderator diamond back and continue participating). His  indicates that his decision to leave was connected to the incident with firing Monica.   The following moderators resigned shortly after this event:   resigned:  resigned:  (explicitly stating that firing CMs was the final straw) resigned:  (explicitly stating that firing CMs was the final straw) resigned:  (explicitly stating that firing CMs and the lack of resolution with Monica were the final straws) resigned and deleting accounts:  resigned:  resigned:  and  (irreconcilable view on the role of the community and SE policies) resigned:  resigned:  (Shog and Robert were the last nail and final straw) resigned:  resigned:  (explicitly stating that firing CMs and the  were the final straws) resigned:  resigned:  resigned:  (explicitly connecting the resignation with firing CMs and the preceding  events) resigned:  (explicitly connecting the resignation with firing CMs and the preceding events) resigned:  (explicitly connecting the resignation with firing CMs and the preceding events)   The following moderators suspended their activity shortly after this event:   suspended activity:  and  (explicitly links the suspension with firing CMs and preceding sad events, has since )   Timeline:  2020-01-13: Firing (for the lack of better term) of community managers Shog9 and Robert Cartaino. Shorty   2020-01-15: George Stocker starts a  to thank Shog9 for cultivating Stack Overflow  2020-01-16: Official policy on   . Rendered inactive on 2020-02-10.  2020-02-10:  on handling  posts. While the previously introduced 24-hour policy (see item above) is rendered inactive, the new policy covers a much wider range of cases when and why the post can be un or deemed unable to be   2020-02-20: Teresa Dietrich, the new Head of Product and Community, has posted a  (and response, of sorts) to the community.  At the bare minimum, as a result:    does not have any active moderators (Shog9 and Robert were moderating it)  does not have any active moderators (Robert was moderating it)  does not have any active moderators (one mod last seen Oct 2019)  has only one active moderator left  has only one active moderator left  has only one active moderator left  has only one moderator left  has only one moderator left     I wonder:   if there is any plan on the SE's side to actually be involved in the building of the community who is now responsible for community building and interaction of community/moderators with developers and upper management if the remaining CM team will be re-staffed since it is already heavily understaffed in my opinion if there is an intent from the company to at least thank the CMs that served Stack Exchange many-many years, even if it is a dry lawyer-written "thank you"   I am devastated. Both as an SE user and as an SE moderator.
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I know Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are the owners or creators because I came by the site from reading their blogs.  Who else works for Stack Overflow in here?  Does Jon Skeet? There's also a fair number of 100k+ users now.  The answers from them are quite informative. It seems that to get that many points in such a short amount of time (the site's only been online for 2-3 years?), you would need to be spending quite a lot of time, regularly on here, so either they   Have a ton of spare time either at work or outside of work Are unemployed (seems unlikely given their breadth of knowledge) Work for Stack Overflow and their job is partially to post answers.   These guys seem too knowledgeable so reason 1 or reason 2 seem unlikely, so I suspect reason 3.
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Been a few blogs on , and I get the point. However, would a staging SE help solve some of these issues like community overlap. I understand , but how can someone not yet a part of a community know to do so. Some of the point of SO is that you often don't know what to ask exactly, and we help clear that up. So, I wonder, rather than &quot;playing hot potato&quot; would it be useful to have a site that's simply for temporarily holding questions and such.  It would be the alternative to migrating to another site where you dump all responsibility on that site. This area, all communities are responsible for. It would be a good place to ask a question if you don't know where to ask. The blog I linked talks about phrasing to a specific audience. For someone that doesn't know, the audience is better at selecting which questions are directed at them. As SE grows, the amount of communities will mean more overlap. Right now it may be reasonable to expect people to be able to predict the best community, but will it always be that way?  Some restrictions:  It would be accessible by all communities. The question could be edited, but not answered. The question could be exposed to more easily tracked/understood/etc. automated janitorial work.  Just a helpful thought.
93919
Is there a constructive way to put pressure on Stack Exchange (the company) without putting any pressure on the community in general and the moderators in particular?  Goals   Give Monica her diamond(s) back, with a public apology if the accusations were not founded. Address the underlying issues that led to this blowing up:   Significant policy changes without review; Not assuming good intent when people ask questions; Dictating to—rather than working with—moderators and the community; Attacking or going silent when challenged; Insufficiently asking the community they claim to want to protect for their input on how to do so.    Desired properties  The methods to achieve these goals should:   Be constructive. No trolling, no personal attacks, no targeting of minorities. Be sufficiently effective to change some of the company's KPIs to red () Not require any additional work from the moderators. There's an extreme amount of pressure already, but it's been mostly directed towards the community. Be reversible as soon as improvements are noticed. The goal isn't to permanently damage the company but to force the company to realign with the community. Stack&nbsp;Exchange is still doing a lot of things right.   Past actions  Those actions didn't seem to impress corporate very much:    (While it has a huge impact on the community and the content, there hasn't been any sign that the higher ups seem to care at all). .     What else could work?   Offer a platform for SE employees to anonymously share information relevant to the current problems. Some of the employees clearly feel a strong link to the community, but they are apparently forced to either stay silent or repeat corporate buzzwords. Stop using Stack Exchange paid products at work (e.g. ) Advise everyone to enable Ad-Blockers on Stack Exchange. Change our . Reach out to a prominent Twitter user and let them publicly complain about one of the many recent problems.   Any suggestion is welcome.
22007
, and I can nominate myself again, despite having won the first round of election.    I understand this isn't going to be easy to fix, given that SE only knows about community mods, employees and developer roles, and pro-tempore mods need to be able to nominate themselves.
55491
It's been more than a month since I have started using . It has these users with user names in the format of "user-random number". I have observed them in some of the stack activities, most of the time asking questions.   Does the moderators create them for their own purpose. If yes what purpose do they serve?   I mean a user is free to have any user name. But it's just a hunch that such users are actually moderators. I may be wrong; just need some clarification.
83583
This is related to .  Bill the Lizard informed us that mods know who flagged a post, but does this include them?  If a mod gets flagged, do they get to see who flagged them?  Not that any of these wonderful mods would ever think of doing anything untoward, but you never know.  Bill might suddenly lose his mind one day and, if I have to flag him, madness plus "modness" could equal mayhem.
113297
MSE is burning, there is fire everywhere. I'm terrified every time I write a question over here and I make myself ready for a fight every time I write an answer.   I don't dare to look at comments or answers anymore and, if I see a rude/abusive comment, I'm dreadful to report it in chat because I don't want to be shout out for it.  This is all wrong.  People should be able to ask a question on MSE without fearing to be scolded for it. They should be able to suggest new, unusual, ideas to be screamed at because people disagree with the premise of their question.  People should be able to answer a question and be done with it. They shouldn't have to fear endless criticism and fight and comments war.  Because, if people are afraid to ask good faith questions, if they are afraid to suggest anything, if they are afraid to answer questions, then they will stop doing it.  And I, strongly believe that every voice is valuable. That driving away people that are afraid of conflicts, people with low self-esteem, people with anxiety issues, that driving away all those people and even more is a terrible thing.   I want people to feel safe here, and I think you want that too.  I don't feel safe here.  So, what can we do, as a community, to help make this place a safer one?    Note that I'm not talking about Monica or Robert. I'm talking about regular users who see all those conflicts and hatred and are driven away by it.  Note that I'm also not talking about what SE Inc. or mods can do. The responsibility of all this isn't and shouldn't be on their own shoulders.  We, as a community, are the ones screaming and making this place unfriendly. We are the ones that are at each other throat. We are the ones that are fighting in comments, about comments, around comments.   Not SE Inc, not the mods, us, the community.    So, what can we do, as a community, to help make this place friendlier and safer again?  What can we do to make sure that, even if the mods aren't available, even if there are no diamonds around to erase all the bad things that are said, what can we do to make sure (as much as we can) that this place keep being safe and friendly?     Edit: To people wondering if it's a duplicate of , it's not. Flagging the way we are currently doing is definitively not enough to solve the current situation. We need other, better, outside of the box, solutions.
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For the last couple years, at the beginning of every new year, Stack Exchange has posted annual moderation statistics on all meta sites in the network. These posts include a full table on how many of which moderation actions were taken by the community and site moderators across all categories of moderation (e.g. review tasks reviewed, posts curated, users suspended/deleted, etc.) on the main site. This , but since 2018, has included all sites in the network. As examples, here are last year's statistics for my top five sites:  Meta Stack Exchange:  Travel:  Stack Overflow:  Super User:  Interpersonal Skills:   These were posted by Shog9 in previous years, but as he's no longer an SE employee, will another employee take the responsibility of posting these moderation stats tables on all SE sites? Also, slightly related: will the annual  posts continue to be made here on this site? Those are tables showing statistics on closed questions on all network sites, posted here on this site.
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So I had a dispute with the moderators at a specific SE site. As a result, I got suspended there. As per SE guidelines, I pressed the "Contact us" button and wrote to the higher powers to appeal.  That was 5-6 weeks ago. There was zero feedback, neither positive, nor negative, not even "it's in progress, please wait".  So what is this "contact us" thing supposed to do? Is it a placebo to make me feel better while being routed to dev/null?  What is the normal time it takes to process a "contact us" message?  Notes:   As far as I remember, I did not contact the team before. I'm a longtime user of multiple SE sites and never had any problems except for that one site. I'm pretty sure my form was submitted. I didn't make screenshots or anything, because I did not think I would need them in a post like this. I didn't expect a super-fast reply either, so I wasn't wondering after a week or two.
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Check out ; my name appears twice. I voted to close before made moderator pro tempore, and again afterwards, and my name appears in the list twice because of that. It's a very minor bug which admittedly will happen pretty rarely, but it should at least be on the bug report list.
18545
I was just reading , i.e., stop moderation and similar type duties, for some period of time to get the attention of the SE staff. It was only on the site for a few minutes, and I was just about finished reading it, when it was deleted. I assume the OP didn't delete it, so I suspect it was likely done by a moderator. I realize having somebody ask other people to take such actions would not be appreciated by SE, but I don't believe such censorship is warranted. As far as I know (but I'm not an expert), it didn't break any rules here.  I have seen from various recent posts and answers there's a lot of confusion, frustration and anger here, with people going to reduce or stop various moderation type activities regardless of whether or not any posts explicitly asking people to take such actions are removed. Actually, I would not be surprised if this post will also be removed just for me asking about it.
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It seems clear at this point that MSE is not a useful mechanism for pointing out problems on SE sites and getting resolution for them.  It is useful in some ways. If SE staff ask questions about future actions being undertaken, there is a non-zero chance that they will pay attention to some of those responses and take them into account. While the new site layout still did happen despite lots of people not liking it very much, the powers that be were responsive to specific issues about certain aspects of it. So clearly, if SE staff ask for feedback, there is a non-zero chance that the feedback may matter.  Also, posting bug reports on MSE does sometimes lead to those bugs getting solved, in many cases.  But when it comes to non-bug issues with Stack Exchange as a network, it has become abundantly clear that asking a question on MSE will accomplish nothing. There are many lines of evidence for this.  One of them being that :     Often (and more often recently) I've heard colleagues dismiss meta feedback.   Another line of evidence is a more recent event. There have been dozens of MSE posts about the "Hot Network Questions" list, many of them speaking quite negatively on its effects. These range from issues about how it causes a flood of users due to detecting controversial questions rather than good ones, to having to see a list of question titles that seem... less than professional. Things have occasionally been done, but these have been pretty minor. Regex filters for certain keywords and the like.  However, a few Twitter posts managed to find their ways into the eyes of a SE developer. This user managed to get approval to exclude IPS from the HNQ list, then implement that exclusion, and push it out into the live network.  Within one hour!  Equally rapidly, a post appeared on MSE, .  Now that is what I call an effective communication channel. In a scant few hours, SE company policy on the HNQ shifted visibly and dramatically, from an apparent course of "meh, whatever" to "OMG, we gotta fix/ditch this!"  My overall question is this: what communication channels can we use to get similar response times to user problems? Obviously, all the Meta posts about HNQ's problems had little effect, compared to a few tweets.  So, do SE users need to become more active on Twitter? Who should we be tweeting our issues to in order to get them heard? How should such tweets be composed?  Do SE users need to be making blog posts, and if so, where? What would be the most effective means of catching the attention of SE staff, such that our concerns will be taken seriously?  Note: This question is not about lambasting SE for not listening on Meta. That's a ship that has already sailed. So feel free to take comments on this subject elsewhere. I'm genuinely asking about what the best way to successfully communicate important issues to SE, such that they will actually respond to them.
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I think I just witnessed a moderator decline a flag raised on his own comment. (I'm hesitant to discuss specifics unless I have to, as I don't mean to put anyone in a negative light.)  Since there are at least 2 other moderators per site, I'm not sure this should be allowed—I feel that either   only uninvolved moderator(s) should be able to view and handle flags on co-moderators' posts, or moderators should be able to view all flags, but a flagged moderator should not be allowed to decline a flag against him- or herself.   I have no personal issue with this moderator. I just felt in this case that there was truth in both sides (the moderator's as well as the flagging user's), and sought a win-win solution, i.e. by improving the disputed answer. Coming back an hour later to see that the moderator unilaterally declined the user's flag—that didn't seem fair to the user...  I am making some assumptions based on the "Last Seen" stat in the moderator tools, so if I'm simply mistaken on what happened, I apologize in advance.
110855
The "Reputation &amp; Moderation" page on any site (/help/site-moderators) still refers to the company behind Stack Exchange as Stack Exchange and not Stack Overflow.     Moderators act as a liaison between the community and Stack Exchange the company.   Seeing as how the name change was recent, I'm not surprised this hasn't been caught yet, and I'm sure there are other instances of this around somewhere.
95899
I'm participating in the  and wanted to refer to the on- and off-topic questions on the  proposal.  However, I couldn't find a link to it anywhere in the SE site.  If I'm not missing the obvious, could we have one?
28846
Currently, SE employees are given diamonds wherever they need them. I agree with  on this to some degree, employees shouldn't be treated any different.  But... on meta, employees are different. They have the power to dole out official responses, and thus we should be able to differentiate between an employee and a normal user. Currently, only some employees have a diamond on MSO (see , ). This makes it confusing, especially when you see official-sounding posts like .  Now, giving diamonds to all employees on meta may not be the best solution to this. I don't think all employees want their precious inboxes spammed with all the suspensions that are doled out on meta, and other mod stuff. They won't really need the diamond powers either (though it wouldn't hurt).  So, I propose this:  Similar to how moderators have "Moderator" clearly on their profile    display "employee" on an employee's profile, along with the diamond if they have one. At least on meta.    It would imho be even better to display it on their usercards in some form, but that has already been shot down.  It would be even even better if non-MSO mods had greyed out diamonds, similar to , but that's just me wanting more shiny stuff ;-)