here on meta has brought to my attention something I never realized before - non-employee moderators have access to some tools that can disclose an user EMail address.  Since I was quite surprised by this discovery (yes, I know, it has probably been referenced before but I didn't know, sorry) I had the idea to look at the Privacy Policy to see what other data can non-employee access.  I wasn't able to find any definitive info, only this relevant passage:     We collect information such as your username, password, email address, IP address (collected at each site visit). This information is also used to identify individual users to the public Network and to award activities and attribute them to you. Your username and additional content you provide including your profile picture, question and answer content, and your reputation are visible publicly. Other limited information is visible to moderators, who have elevated access privileges, and may access content including your posts. For more information about moderators and their role in the Stack Overflow Network, please visit: /help/site-moderators.   Sadly, this doesn't seem to further elaborate what other "limited information" is visible to moderators.  I am therefore asking for support here: is there a page that list which users PII non-employee are granted access to? Or can anyone give me some info in that regard?
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When editing my user profile (name, date of birth, etc.), how can I tell which information can be seen by other users (publicly visible) and what is only used by the system (and how it's used)?
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I  just got these 10 e-mails 5 hours ago from do-not-reply@stackexchange.com:      Recently, you asked a question on [X] Stack Exchange, but you haven't verified your email address yet.      Click on the following link to verify your email and set a password so that you can log in.      Here, [X] refers to all of the following:    GameDevelopment.SE SharePoint.SE Unix.SE  Skeptics.SE Japaneese.SE HomeImprovement.SE SciFi.SE PersonalFinanceMoney.SE  DatabaseAdmins.SE  TeX.SE    I haven't posted on any of these except for TeX.SE, but that was not recently, and through my real account.   =   I asked about this , and was told that someone seems to be impersonating me by using my email. Is it possible for staff to stop this?   Also, I'm pretty surprised there is no measure to stop people from using emails to existing SE accounts (see for example, on wordpress.com, if you use an e-mail which has an existing account on wp.com, you are asked to log in.).    EDIT:  I just got 2 more emails an hour ago for SharePoint.SE, and for AmateurRadio.SE.
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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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Due to some "recent issues", I think the following is necessary:  Users need a way to contact moderators through the StackOverflow website.  This is especially important for suspensions, where there is no way to appeal or discuss the suspension from within SO itself.  Basically, there would be some kind of a box on the user's page that allows them to mention something to the moderators and some way to read the replies. (Or they could just go to the user's email.)
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I'm using Devel's generate content feature to generate Blog/Forum entries for a site I'm working on and funny enough, I get to have a blog post by an anonymous user or forum topic by an anonymous user.  How can I stop Devel from doing this? I've only given Authenticated Users/ Administrators the permission to create a blog post or forum topic but still it generate for anonymous user. How can correct this?
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I often see users who appear as user12345 or something similar. I personally dislike this for a few reasons:    I'd prefer to know who I'm dealing with I think the quality of questioning is generally better from users who have an identity Somehow it seems like cheating... disrespectful in some intangible way.. here we all are helping each other for free, and what? You can't even be bothered to show your face?   I've read the question   and there the conclusion seems to be that we don't mind whether the identity is real or adopted.   Fair enough. My problem is with people who can't even be bothered to have an identity at all. (I understand that in some cultures, it might be seen as problematic to make community contributions on your boss's time, even if there's a net gain. Lots of the user12345 folks seem to be asking for work-related answers: even full-blown solutions.)  Coming back to my first point about wanting to know who I'm dealing with; I actually can't tell the numbered users apart. Those numbers just don't stick in the brain, so it becomes like trying to interact with the Borg. Even if people have reasons to conceal their 'passport' identity, why can't they at least be encouraged to put some minimal imagination into making up a fake?   Stack overflow has successfully gamified all sorts of things, so isn't there a way to lean on people (ever so gently) to put a little bit of effort into dumping the auto-generated name. Nag them every 5 logins? Whatever.
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I'm working on a site in which I'd like anon users to be able to create nodes of a certain type, but I only want them to be able to see/edit some of the fields on that content type.   I can't go into details just yet, but the goal of the site is to crowd-source the collection of information and then have a few administrators who will approve and groom the data. That's why I want anon users to be able to create nodes and only access a few fields. Then admins will be able to supplement that data by adding values into the other fields and then publish that node.  How do I restrict access to fields basing on the roles the users have?
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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 ;-)
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There are times when moderators come across things that only Stack Exchange employees can deal with. These include things like deleting sensitive information permanently from posts disassociating users from posts that require direct database access.  (The previous use case is now possible for moderators to do directly the moderator redaction tool)  Currently the workflow is:   See the post (either in normal site usage or via a flag) Go to chat Ping one of the community team (if they are around) Explain the problem   A far better workflow for the moderator would be to simply able to flag the post so it then appeared in an "employee only" queue somewhere. This could either be a page on the main Stack Exchange site or (better still) their inbox.  (OK I admit I hadn't fully thought this last bit out.)  This could either be a moderator "flag to devs" link on the post or a new option on the existing flag dialog (probably the better solution).  Now that moderators can't merge we have a fairly common situation where this would be very useful. A new users posts an answer (or question on sites that don't require registration) then loses their cookies and ends up creating another unregistered account (or two). Eventually the might even create a registered account. It used to be easy to merge the unregistered accounts into the registered ones, but now we either have to badger the OP to use the "merge accounts" form or ping the team somehow.  Having the "flag for team" option would be very useful in this scenario.
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We know that if a community is hidden, one can not see the "Network Profile" link except moderators. But I've found that one can still find "Network Profile" link from accounts link on activity tab.  For example, (Though I don't like hiding communities)  I've just hidden a community - Information Security. Now if you go through  on Internet Security, you won't be able to see the "Network Profile" link:        But the "Accounts" link from the  tab will give you my network profile link!    So, in such cases, not showing the "Network Profile" link to normal users is pointless given that the accounts tab contains a link to the Network Profile.  Hence, I suggest removing the network profile link from "Accounts" on the "Activity" tab as it is already available for the profile owner through the "view more" option underneath Accounts.
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For site suspensions, initially, no reason was displayed, but following the arguments at , a brief reason for the suspension (e.g. "for rule violations", "for voting irregularities", "to cool down", etc.) is displayed.  But for network-wide suspensions, it just says     This account is temporarily suspended network-wide.   ...without providing any brief reason for the suspension.  Why wasn't that request implemented for network-wide suspensions?  As far as I'm aware, network-wide suspensions are actually a series of site-wide suspensions applied by an automated script run by the SE team, with "network-wide" placed in the spot for the reason (which explains why it's possible for local moderators to  on the site they moderate). But is there a technical reason why the script can't add in a selection of text for the reason field, to show something like:     This account is temporarily suspended network-wide for rule violations.   ...instead of just one set of text?
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I just visited my own profile on stackexchange.com and noticed that the  is missing all activity from , while it seems to be a complete aggregation of the rest of my activity:  You can see comments, badges, etc. from many other sites, and no activity from The Workplace.  All of the following  is missing:  I clicked through all 5 pages, and couldn't see any Workplace activity. The same seems to be true of other users, such as moderator  (). Is this intentional for some reason, or a bug?
30712
I have always wondered, do SO/SE employees/admins have an ability to see who downvoted them? For example, I can see my own downvoted questions on .  Does this interface look like it does to me, or to everyone else, when logged in as an admin? And if it's not built-in to the interface, do those who are developers ever look it up in the DB?  If not, why are you lying? (that's a joke.)  I ask this because I think anonymous downvotes save us from taking the downvote personally.  Even at our best, sometimes it's human nature if we know the source of criticism, and I don't want anyone to take a downvote that I make personally.  And no, I'm not making any assumptions or guesses as to why one might do this, beyond that desire  to know why they were downvoted.  Simply wondering if it exists.
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Is it possible, as a non logged user, to see report and dashboard in community when it is open to non logged user? And  for analytic dashboards?
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Moderators are special, privileged users who should serve as an example to the rest of us.  Therefore, it is natural to want to query behaviors and statistics about these model users, Like I did, for example, when researching . Unfortunately, there is no way to determine moderators in the SEDE data set!  We are left with hand-coding the current mods like in .  This is hardly a good solution and does not port if we want to quickly switch the query from, say, SO to Super User. Please provide a Moderators table, listing the ID's of that site's moderators. (Or, alternatively, add a flag-column to the Users table, but this would be less efficient.) As nhinkle notes, .  Please add it to SEDE, as well.    For reference, the identities of the mods is by no means secret -- being posted on each site's . It's just very clunky to get this list inside a query.  Currently, you can kludge a list of moderators by navigating to an About page and executing this javascript: $(&quot;#mainbar-full div.content-page div a[href*='/users/']&quot;).map ( function () {     return parseInt (this.href.replace (/.+\/users\/(\d+)\/.+$/, &quot;$1&quot;), 10); } ).get ();  Alternatively, parse the return from .
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Some Stack Exchange sites allow to ask an anonymous question by specifying a one-time user name and an email which is "required, but never shown". However the Gravatar attached to the email is shown anyway. Anonymous users do not want their picture to appear - someone can find their identity via google image search or someone that knows them.  Example: open incognito window and :
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Say I want to join and discuss sensitive topics on e.g  and still stay completely anonymous. Wouldn't this be impossible if anyone could see my other accounts on other SE sites. Where I might tell more about my self, where I work and so on?  Is it possible to hide your other accounts on your Stack Exchange account page? Should it be possible or even the default option?  I understand the idea of having your accounts on SO and Meta connected. But what is the main reason of having every one of your SE accounts connected?