Third time's the charm?
Posted on Sun 06 November 2016 in Side Activities
Updated on Sat 28 Nov 2015
Introduction¶
Last year, I ran for moderator (twice) on Stack Overflow and didn't make it through the primaries. I came close on that second run. Now, a year later, and a year more experienced, I'm going to try again. This post will document my progress through the election cycle.
Spoiler Alert: I didn't win. The rest of this post details my thoughts as the election occured though.
Nomination Phase¶
The election this year took a slightly different route than last time. In previous years, the election was announced at the same time as the call for nominations began. Users had a week to nominate themselves, then we answered a series of community provided questions during the primaries, then the final election.
This year, the election was announced a week in advance of nominations. During the week, a call was put out for Community questions. When a nomination was posted, the answers would be posted as well. This change was made due to how much the community needed to read during the primaries. The primaries were only a few days long and the Q&As were usually ten questions for each user. When a primary has 20-30 nominees, that is a lot of reading that was expected in a short period of time. By bringing this phase forward, now the community has the entire election cycle to read and interact with the nominees.
I provided one question that was used in the final selection of questions. I mentioned last time that I thought it was a great question, so I suggested it again:
Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?
My nomination¶
My platform isn't all the different than the last two times.
Hi Everyone, I'm Andy and I'd like to be a moderator for you and Stack Overflow. I've answered the questions posted by the community here. I encourage you to take a look.
Why should you vote for me?¶
- I've been a moderator on Community Building for over two years. I know the moderator tools and have worked with many of the current moderators. This interaction will continue as a new moderator here.
- I have a lot of helpful flags. A decent percentage of these are on comments, but not all. I'd like to help keep the site clean without adding to the current moderators' work load.
- I'm active in the review queues (currently holding 5th in Low Quality Post reviewers of all time), provide edits to posts, answers and enjoy the moderation aspect of Stack Exchange.
- I have a history on Meta.SO that shows I'm involved in the meta aspect of the site as well.
I enjoy the moderation aspect on Stack Overflow (and Stack Exchange in general). I have a history of good community moderation, am here all the time and believe I can help the current team.
During the first full day, I'm gotten positive responses to this post. My two favorite, so far, are:
Andy's work around comment flags has been very impressive. I'm definitely curious to see what his thoughts on the mod queue are and if we could incorporate some of his work permanently on the site. Better identification of flags is something that would be very nice to have permanently. - bluefeet Stack Overflow Community Manager
and
There are always some nominees for this position who are very active, some who have good judgment and cool heads, and some who innovate with their approach to community moderation. Andy is the rare candidate who very clearly checks all three boxes. As a user on SO for 3.5 years, a moderator pro tempore on Engineering SE for 1.7 years and an early participant in the Community Building SE beta, I strongly support this nomination. - Air Moderator on Engineering.SE
My candidate score this time is an impressive 39/40. This is up six from a year ago, and up ten from my first run. The one missing point is due to missing the Refiner badge. I believe the reason for this is because of my workflow. I, generally, don't edit and answer questions at the same time. If I'm answering, I'm not in "edit" mode. If I'm editting, I'm usually in "moderation" mode. It's something I'll work on. I'm 38 out of 50 questions there, so I'll get it soon enough.
Candidate questions¶
None of the questions were that surprising. With the added benefit of a week to prepare answers prior to nominating, I am very pleased with my answers. Two answers have generated a bit of discussion though.
- A 10k+ user regularly has their comments flagged as "rude or offensive" or "not constructive", to the tune of 4-5 flags a day. No comment by itself is particularly offensive, but their general tone causes them to be flagged by multiple users. You've contacted them privately about this, but they believe that they aren't doing anything wrong and that people are being too sensitive. The flags keep coming in on their comments. What, if anything, do you do next?
My response is:
No one has an exemption from the Be Nice policy. I think the first step is to understand why nothing has already been done about the user. 4-5 a day seems like the user has moved beyond the "nuisance" stage. I think a temporary ban is appropriate, with another explanation as to what is expected when interacting with others. While some users are more sensitive than others, a stream of this many flags across an extended period of time doesn't lead me to believe the problem is with the community users.
The point raised in the comments was that I was rushing into banning the user without commuicating first. I disagree with that, and explained that they've already been contacted privately and ignored those warnings. A ban is the next step in getting the user's attention. I was told this would be "humiliating" for a high rep user. Again, I disagree and believe it's not humiliating, but educating the user.
The second question that generated some discussion was:
- You impose a temporary ban (say 1 week) on a user for what you judged as reasonable and valid reasons (the user gets notified by email of your action and the reason). The user replies to your email acknowledging the transgression, says they won't do it again and asks for the ban to be lifted. The user sounds genuine. Do you remove the ban? Do you even reply at all? Explain your reasoning. The context of this question applies to longer bans too. If it helps get the juices flowing, consider the situation of a second offence for the same behaviour, which has a default ban period of 1 month.
My response:
I have two answers for this question, based on the user's history. If this is a first offense, up to this point the user hasn't been pushing limits and attempting to disrupt others, and the ban isn't related to voting fraud, then I'd be willing to remove the ban. Sometimes a ban is put in place to get the user's attention. Once the situation has been resolved, the ban is no longer appropriate and should be removed.
On the other hand, if the user has a history of crossing the line and looking for a reaction, or if the ban is related to vote fraud, I'd simply not reply and the user will return in a week. Stack Overflow has enough "voting irregularity" bans that I imagine the responses to such bans are all similar (and invalid). I see no reason to change that policy.
The push back I recieved on this was that I was letting a user off the hook by unbanning them. I argued that unbanning has been done in the past. Sometimes the ban is needed simply to get the user's attention and start the conversation and explain that why they are doing is wrong. If the user abuses the trust at that point and repeats the behavior, then the longer ban is completely justified. A bit of compassion isn't a bad thing.
Primary Phase¶
There are 12 nominees, so a primary will occur. Once again, the primary phase will reduce the number of candidates in the final phase to 10. With so few being eliminated this time around, it feels a little unneeded. The primary will last for a few days and during that time users can vote candidates up or down depending whether they believe the nominee should be a moderator. I'll return in a few days...
Primary Results¶
The Primary phase has ended and the final election has begun. I ended the primary in 5th place, securing a position in the final election. I have a sizable margin between my position and sixth place as well. One other stat that I'm rather proud of: I received the fewest number of down votes of any candidate.
On to the election!
Election Phase¶
The election lasts for several days and covers a weekend. We'll see how it turns out in a few days.
Election Results¶
Well, the election has concluded. I didn't secure on of the three positions for moderator. I finished in 5th place, with my elimination propelling second and third place to a victory. I was eliminated in the 10th round of the Meek STV process.
Good luck to the new moderators!
Post Election thoughts¶
This election started differently than the previous two I've run in. This election was announced a week in advance and solicited community input for questions for the candidates. I think this was a good change. The element of surprise in the previous two made it much more stressful. Additionally, by having the questions available at the start of the election - instead of at the start of the primary phase - I was able to better answer the questions. Previously, the questions would be available at the start of the primary phase. With the amount of reading needed to get through one candidate's answers, let alone all of them, I imagine that many people didn't read all of the responses.
The other nice thing about this lead time, is that I had time to get my answers read for when I posted my nomination. By posting the questions and answers at the same time, I was able to have my responses available the entire time. Score-wise, on the questionnaire, I did much better than my opponents. I think a big reason for this is that I have my responses posted as soon as my nomination was posted.
One question this time, though, seemed to split the candidates. I mentioned it previously, but it was regarding potentially removing a temporary ban.
- You impose a temporary ban (say 1 week) on a user for what you judged as reasonable and valid reasons (the user gets notified by email of your action and the reason). The user replies to your email acknowledging the transgression, says they won't do it again and asks for the ban to be lifted. The user sounds genuine. Do you remove the ban? Do you even reply at all? Explain your reasoning. The context of this question applies to longer bans too. If it helps get the juices flowing, consider the situation of a second offence for the same behaviour, which has a default ban period of 1 month.
I was one of two candidates that explicitly stated we'd consider removing the ban. A third user didn't state it explicitly, but did say they'd consider it. I was surprised by the harsh tone the others took, especially since there is a lot of previous discussions on Meta where the outcome is the moderators or community managers removing the ban. I was happy to see that the other candidate who said they'd consider removing the ban get elected though.
I still believe that removing the ban is a valid option. Especially because their next ban would be much longer if they broke my trust.
We'll see when the next election on Stack Overflow is, but with three new moderators and no resignations, I suspect it'll be a while. I'll consider running again then.