I try to learn and follow the rules of this site. The moderators are given very broad authority to edit responses, close questions, and move answers to comments. This is done sparingly and most of the time seems to be appropriate to me. However sometimes I disagree and say so openly in discussion. Is this frowned upon? If so why? I found that my latest criticism led to a moderator contacting me directly to admonish me for this. What is the community's opinion on this. I welcome comments from anyone ioncluding moderators.
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asked Jun 13, 2012 at 14:28
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2$\begingroup$ The message to you was a response to many events; although it may have been triggered by a comment thread in which you were involved, your criticism of a moderator's actions was not the reason for the contact. $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented Jun 13, 2012 at 14:36
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$\begingroup$ @whuber Thanks for that information. I don't think the message was necessary. $\endgroup$– Michael R. ChernickCommented Jun 13, 2012 at 14:54
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3 Answers
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Absolutely. How else can the moderators improve?
This question should remind us that criticism of ideas and actions is an essential part of our site, but criticism of people is not. It is important to keep the two separated. Everyone in our community is dedicated, knowledgeable, and well-meaning--I firmly believe that as an article of faith, which I find daily confirmed in all the posts on this site--but sometimes we disagree about things and sometimes our actions have unintended consequences. Let's take care not to offend each other in our efforts to resolve differences and make the site better.
This may also be a good place to clarify some assumptions in the question:
All community members of sufficiently high reputation, not just moderators, have authority to edit answers, close questions, and even delete answers.
Community members (again depending on reputation) can vote to undo the preceding actions.
Moderators acquire their authority by means of community elections; it is not something that is just arbitrarily given.
Discussion about how we all interact with the site belongs here on the meta pages. Discussion per se within the replies and even the comments on the main pages is pretty strongly discouraged by SE policy, except when it aims to clarify a particular question. (This is a policy honored more in the breach than in practice, I admit, but it's still an ideal to aim at.)
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1$\begingroup$ Thank you for your well-crafted answer. I think that sometimes the criticism belongs in the comments to the specific question because it deals with the specifics of that situation and may affect actions taken by the respondent regarding editing or deleting a post. it is true that with reputation comes autority and privileges. But there is a difference between community members and moderators. I do not think that the community members do much in the way of closing questions and moving answers to comments. This is done by the moderators and is viewed to be part of their job. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 13, 2012 at 14:53
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7$\begingroup$ That last point is important, Michael: I believe all the moderators here would appreciate more involvement from the community in voting to close or migrate questions and editing questions and answers. I, for one, would be much happier seeing the community take these actions, because it would show in most cases that such actions are neither arbitrary nor expressions of authority. (Many mods are uncomfortable with the immediate, overriding nature of their votes to take such actions, but there are good reasons for that and it won't change.) $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented Jun 13, 2012 at 14:59
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$\begingroup$ @whuber, is it true that community members can acquire the privilage to convert answers to comments? I don't remember reading about this in the description of privilages. $\endgroup$– MacroCommented Jun 13, 2012 at 15:38
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$\begingroup$ @Macro No, you caught me: I purposely left out that particular capability in the enumeration in the first bullet item. Moderators (and only mods) can do a lot with comments, including editing them, converting them into edits to the question, converting answers into comments, deleting comments, and viewing deleted comments. I haven't found a way to undelete comments, unfortunately... . $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented Jun 13, 2012 at 15:41
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2$\begingroup$ Community members w/ rep >3k can vote to close questions, & if 5 do so, it will be closed, even w/o action from mods. I have voted to close some questions, although I am typically reluctant to do so, eg
Rquestions that belong on SO (nb, w/o mods, they would just be closed, not migrated). In addition, I have flagged answers to be converted to comments, because I believed that they weren't really answers. I strongly suspect I am not the only one who has done so. My point is that, while I agree we can criticize mods, we should be cautious about assuming that they are just being arbitrary. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 18, 2012 at 18:14 -
1$\begingroup$ @gung: Is that last part true? For example, if everyone votes to close as off-topic and belonging on SO, it will be closed as off-topic rather than migrated based on consensus? Gathering the five votes to close is so rare on this site that I don't know if I can identify a definitive case either way. (Luckily the mods are very attentive and more times than not will migrate after just one or two close votes, I've [anecdotally] found.) $\endgroup$– cardinalCommented Jun 18, 2012 at 18:53
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$\begingroup$ @cardinal, I thought that was the way it worked--maybe I'm wrong. You're right that we never get to 5 votes here, so, who knows? $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 19, 2012 at 5:38
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1$\begingroup$ @gung: I honestly don't know the answer and thought you might have seen this behavior on this site or another one, or had uncovered a meta.SO thread to this effect. I'd be curious to know. I'd like to see this site continue to grow in active users making positive and high-quality contributions to the site, in part so that the community has a critical mass of users more able and willing to self-police the content. $\endgroup$– cardinalCommented Jun 19, 2012 at 10:44
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$\begingroup$ @whuber Is there a way to re-open the closed question because we as community members did not agree with the moderator’s reasoning? For example, I don’t have high reputation but I do believe the moderator was sparingly closing questions not so appropriately this one time. Is there a way for us to at least get more ideas to discuss the correctness of moderator’s action and if, for example, by voting that most of us did think moderator was incorrect, we can undo his action? Thanks.! $\endgroup$– stucashCommented May 8, 2022 at 5:46
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$\begingroup$ @Stucash I believe you can vote to reopen a closed question. However, the intention behind your inquiry is unclear: are you concerned about the status of a thread or about criticizing moderators? If you want to criticize moderators, would you mind explaining why? $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented May 8, 2022 at 12:47
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$\begingroup$ @whuber Thanks for reverting back; my concern is about criticizing moderators if I have to pick one; the issue for me here was that the points made by the moderator and the questions the moderator raised about my question being off-topic, were not valid from my perspective. I have shown the moderator why the points weren't valid and why the moderator didn't peruse my question. The moderator closed my question nevertheless. (1/2) $\endgroup$– stucashCommented May 8, 2022 at 15:28
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$\begingroup$ @stucash Have you seen stats.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions? $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented May 8, 2022 at 15:33
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$\begingroup$ (Sorry this gets a bit long-winded, 2/2) I didn't want to criticize the moderator per se (although the moderator did seem a bit unreasonable to me), I wanted to, probably share/involve the reasoning with other moderators/high reputation members such that I can see, if any, what I did not see, making my question off-topic, or simply otherwise. $\endgroup$– stucashCommented May 8, 2022 at 15:34
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1$\begingroup$ Thanks! @whuber I did not read that before; that's what I was looking for. $\endgroup$– stucashCommented May 8, 2022 at 15:36
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1$\begingroup$ @stucash I recommend not trying to use statistical language unless you are well versed in statistics. Explain your problem in your own terms, but emphasize that aspect that causes you to think statistical methods could be of help. In your case I believe you have a good sense that (1) standard methods of time series analysis require unbroken, regularly spaced series of observations; (2) because markets are closed on nights, weekends, and holidays, series of market prices are naturally interrupted; (3) perhaps this causes problems for the purpose of [fill in the blank]--why or why not? $\endgroup$– whuber ModCommented May 8, 2022 at 16:36
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As someone who has been involved with Cross Validated since day one, I have always found the moderators on Cross Validated to be highly competent, diligent, and reasonable. This is an impressive feat given the very open nature of Stack Exchange sites, and the many varied challenges that can arise.
Naturally questioning moderator action is welcome and encouraged. The site has many mechanisms to encourage discussion of site policies and decisions. The effective way to do this is in a respectful way. Moderators typically have a great deal of knowledge about how the Stack Exchange sites work and the many challenges involved. Thus, when a new user dislikes a decision made by a moderator, it is often worth considering why the decision was made and how that fits into the broader goals of the stack exchange network.
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Yes, you have the right to criticize our actions: I'm all ears for criticism and suggestions to improve my daily work on this site. Three moderators have been elected to ensure that this site remains live and esteemed, and we pay a particular attention to questions about site management, our FAQ, Q&A appropriateness, tagging or voting activity. Those questions belong here, on our Meta, because this is the best way to gather ideas or opinions from the whole community, in a collegial manner. We all want this site to be a nice place to ask questions and to provide our users and visitors with a strong and enduring knowledge base for "statisticians, data miners, and anyone else doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline."
Moderator messages are never sent without valid reasons, and they have to be taken with consideration, especially when they concern posting rules which apply to all registered users on Stack Exchange sites.
