Timeline for Help us identify new roles for community members
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
26 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 10, 2022 at 15:21 | comment | added | Alexander Gruber | @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I don't know any mods that only do hard skill tasks. Conflict resolution is a responsibility of every site mod, as are meta posts, moderating from the comments section, writing mod messages, etc. The soft skills have to be there-- it's part of it. Arguably the main part. | |
| Dec 6, 2022 at 8:06 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @IñakiViggers The original proposer said it essentially boils down to hard skills vs. soft skills. On a site, a moderator is primarily doing cleanup work, such as handling flags, casting binding close/delete votes, and investigating voting fraud, for which the decisions to make are clearly codified, whereas in chat, doing things like resolving disputes between users or other tense/out of control situations requires more people/social skills to make snap judgments of what tools to use and when. | |
| Dec 4, 2022 at 19:05 | comment | added | Iñaki Viggers | I slightly lean against this proposal because, as Mast said, "Isn't this moving the problem instead of solving it?". But what "intrigued" me, so to speak, is your remark that site moderation and chat moderation require different sets of skills. Could you elaborate? I would think that a decent moderator of a site impliedly has the skills that chat moderation requires. | |
| Nov 30, 2022 at 21:51 | comment | added | Mast | If moderators are repeatedly misbehaving in chat, we should fix that by having the CMs look into that. Adding an extra layer does not fix CoC and moderator agreement violations. | |
| Nov 30, 2022 at 21:33 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | ...when the candidates are cross-examined by the community. Sometimes moderators win elections by default when not enough candidates nominate in a pro-tem election, and sometimes the community may fail to consider chat activity when cross-examining candidates in competitive elections. On the other hand, chat moderators would be more closely vetted for their chat activity, whether it's by SE when appointing mods or by the community when electing, so the chances that an individual chat moderator will be disruptive in chat are lower, which makes the case even stronger than the previous odds. | |
| Nov 30, 2022 at 21:30 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | Continuing, per this post from Shog9, some people seem to be able to participate constructively - even admirably - on the main Q&A site, but routinely fall into abusive patterns when participating in chat. From what I've seen, this has included certain site moderators in the past. There's no required vetting of chat activity when checking if a user is a good fit to be a site mod - the usual check that one may not have been suspended in the past year excludes chat suspensions - and the only ones that may take place is in competitive elections- | |
| Nov 30, 2022 at 21:26 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast Yes, the chances that a single moderator on chat, whether having their privileges by virtue of being a site mod or by being an explicit chat mod, will behave disruptively, are very low. However, the chances that any one moderator out of many will be so are higher, since that's 1 minus the chance that no moderator will be. The chances that none of ~500 site moderators will be disruptive are mathematically lower than the chances that none of ~20 chat moderators will be, and that's assuming that the chances are equal across both. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 2:35 | comment | added | goldPseudo | @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I reckon the majority of mods on chat already dislike dealing with off-site issues to avoid stepping on jurisdictional toes, especially when another moderator is already involved. If you add a layer of Chat Moderator on top of that, it seems likely most off-site mods won't even bother looking at any issues outside of their own site, which just reduces the number of potential eyes on any real-time situation. Unless the number of "chat moderators" is enough to offset that across the whole network, it really feels like this will end up backfiring. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:47 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast Technically speaking, it's Mithical's suggestion, which I happen to be wholly in favor of. The point of this answer was to bring it up again since it ties in with the idea of additional roles put forth in the question, and I wanted to bring forth arguments that the community is likely to be in favor of. I had written an elaboration on the disruptive mods issue, but deleted it since I figured it wasn't likely to be received well, but still wanted to point attention to it and its argument in their suggestion. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:40 | comment | added | Mast | It's your suggestion, not mine. Based on the reply to my comments it seemed to suggest you are still in favour of this. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:24 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast That's why I opted not to elaborate on that issue in this answer, leaving it as a single sentence at the end and only saying "other issues". If you like, I can remove it. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:21 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @goldPseudo This is not suggesting taking away chat mod privileges of site mods or reducing their actions they can take toward normal users. Rather, this proposal adds to the mod count on Chat.SE. This proposal is to allow for better moderation there since site mods aren't explicitly given the responsibility to moderate chat, and to allow for a way to moderate the moderators if they behave disruptively (see the linked post, there have been multiple instances of this happening). | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:21 | comment | added | Mast | I think the linked proposal uses an out-of-date approach for the hierarchy and I think this could kill an otherwise good idea. You say there's a risk of moderators being disruptive and waiting for staff is not a sufficient option. But what if the chat moderators are disruptive? Isn't this moving the problem instead of solving it? Especially since there will be less chat moderators than site moderators. Site moderators mostly keep each other in check lately, if need be. Hundreds of colleagues who can get angry at you. What will keep a chat moderator in check? | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:17 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast As stated in the linked proposal, there have been cases where moderators have behaved disruptively in chat, including one case which I saw firsthand and happened after that request was posted (in Charcoal HQ). Moderators can't be kicked or suspended, and can still chat even though the room is timed out, frozen, or deleted. It's good to have the ability to do these to moderators if they behave disruptively, to quickly curtail problematic situations, rather than having to wait until the next business day for a staff member to do an emergency removal on the main site. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:12 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast Second comment: Room owner privileges, by definition, only apply to the specific room, so room owners can't do anything if issues spill into different rooms unless they are also owners of those rooms. They also can't do anything toward moderators. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 1:10 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Mast First comment reply: I haven't thought about how they'll be placed into the position, whether it should be by staff appointment or by election, and if the latter, by whom. As all sites except SO and Meta.SE share the same chat server, all of these sites would have the same chat mods. Third, as stated in the linked proposal, chat moderators would not have access to private chat rooms of specific sites (which are only accessible by mods of the site, not other mods). Finally, as stated in the linked proposal, chat mods would be considered higher than site mods in rank, below staff. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 0:42 | comment | added | goldPseudo | Right now, site moderators are given the power to moderate all chat rooms because chat.SE is just too large, interconnected and real-time to be moderated by small handfuls of people on a per-site basis. We'd probably need a lot of "chat moderators" to have any significant effect. | |
| Nov 29, 2022 at 0:40 | comment | added | amWhy | @KevinB In many cases, Q/A mods are better equipped moderate chat, and at times they do: they know the context of disagreements, better know the users and histories. great damage, hurtful at times to well-meaning, but clueless moderators from elsewhere entirely unfamiliar with the norms, leeway granted, who may make ill-informed decisions. | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 23:24 | comment | added | Mast | Chat moderators outranking site moderators in chat but not on site could create some odd situations and conflict. Site chat rooms are part of their site, historically. I'm not sure your approach creates a net gain, it could upset a mostly stable situation on lots of sites. | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 23:16 | comment | added | Mast | Would giving more power to room owners alleviate most of the problems already? If so, which addition would have the most impact? | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 23:11 | comment | added | Mast | Interesting idea, I have some questions. This would be an appointed position, not elected? For life or with a time/term limit? Appointed by whom, CMs? Site moderators? Moderator council? Meta? Would sites be able to opt out of this system? How much PII/dashboard would a chat moderator require to do their duties? How are conflicts between site and chat mods to be handles (is there hierarchy)? | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 22:38 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @KevinB Yep, that's exactly what I'm suggesting here. I added a parenthetical note to make it clearer that being a site mod wouldn't be a requirement. | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 22:36 | comment | added | Kevin B | Put another way, i'm not suggesting mods shouldn't be able to moderate chat, rather, "chat mods" would be able to moderate chat, without being elected as a Q/A moderator and wouldn't have those Q/A moderator tools. | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 22:22 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 66 characters in body; added 16 characters in body
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| Nov 28, 2022 at 22:20 | comment | added | Kevin B | For the same reason Q/A mods aren't necessarily the best Chat mods, i'm not so sure this should be a combined role | |
| Nov 28, 2022 at 22:13 | history | answered | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |