Targets:

• Respond to 70% of Meta posts from across the network, which have had the status-review tag during this period. Our target response rate increased from 60% last quarter.

• Because we have caught up with the majority of posts lingering in status-review, we've removed our second goal to respond to old posts and consolidated it into the first bullet point.

• New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test, recently opening the second beta round of Staging Ground. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
• Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve. We'll be communicating new experiments and updates to the initiative in this Meta post.
• Moderator tooling bugs: Moderators, continue to send along any any bugs/quick fixes that we can address in moderator tooling, especially bugs related to the recent plagiarism release. We'll be communicating more about upcoming initiatives that are in the works, so for this, focus on small bugs rather than big overhauls. Feel free to ask about them here on MSE or on the Stack Moderators Team.

A note on targets: This quarter we adjusted our reporting goals in order to simplify them, and merged the reporting stats into a single one, as opposed to the hitherto breakdown of "current period" and "previous periods." Additionally, we miscalculated what would be a realistic goal to set, when we failed to account for the backlog of issues escalated in previous quarters, and how much these would weigh on our response rates. For that reason, we're rolling that change back, and reporting as we have until now. As per the usual reporting:

• We got to ~52% of posts escalated over this reporting period (-5% change from previous period); see below for details];
• We got to ~8% of posts escalated over previous reporting periods (-8% change from previous period); see below for details].

Targets:

• Respond to 70% of Meta posts from across the network, which have had the status-review tag during this period. Our target response rate increased from 60% last quarter. [not met, only got to ~25% of total posts]
• Because we have caught up with the vast majority of posts lingering in status-review, we've removed our second goal to respond to old posts and consolidated it into the first bullet point. [this decision has been reverted; see note above for details]

• New user onboarding: We're continuing efforts on the Staging Ground limited test, recently opening the second beta round of Staging Ground. See those posts for more details and for specific topics on which we would like feedback.
• Content Discovery: We're looking to provide more opportunities for new users to discover content related to the problems they are trying to solve. We'll be communicating new experiments and updates to the initiative in this Meta post.
• Moderator tooling bugs: Moderators, continue to send along any any bugs/quick fixes that we can address in moderator tooling, especially bugs related to the recent plagiarism release. We'll be communicating more about upcoming initiatives that are in the works, so for this, focus on small bugs rather than big overhauls. Feel free to ask about them here on MSE or on the Stack Moderators Team.

Stats for the period:

Overall numbers:

A total of 317 questions had status-review on them at some point during this period, and made their way into the process:

• 124 (~39%) got the tag added during this period; of these 64 (~52%) got a staff response (54 [~44%] within 2 weeks of the tag getting added), and 50 (~40%) got status-review removed.
• 193¹ (~61%) already had the tag on them; of these 16 (~8%) got a staff response, and 16 (~8%) got status-review removed.

New this period:

A total of 124 questions across all Meta sites got status-review added to them. The tag was added by a staff member on 57 (~46%) of these, and the other 67 (~54%) had the tag added by a moderator.

This means there was a smaller amount of posts escalated when compared to the previous period (-4 posts; ~-3%).

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

• 69 (~56%) from MSE.
• 37 (~30%) from MSO.
• 18 (~15%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

• 86 bug
• 18 feature-request
• 14 discussion
• 10 support

A total of 64 questions (~52%) got some sort of response from staff after the tag was added, and 54 (~44% of total; ~84% of responded) got a response within 2 weeks of status-review getting added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~6d 21h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~62d 23h; median of ~6.5h). Of these:

• 11 questions (~17% of responded; ~9% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~12d 8h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~62d 23h; median of ~4d 9h). 8 (~13% of responded; ~6% of total) of these questions got an answer within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
• 35 questions (~55% of responded; ~28% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~19.5h (min. of ~1min; max. of ~10d 8h; median of ~3h). 35 (~55% of responded; ~28% of total) of these questions got a comment within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.
• 18 questions (~28% of responded; ~15% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~15d 10h (min. of ~1h; max. of ~49d 4h; median of ~4d 3h). 11 (~17% of responded; ~9% of total) of these questions got an edit within 2 weeks of the tag getting added to them.

Most responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 50 (~40%) questions got status-review removed. 49 of these got removed by staff, and the other 1 by a moderator. Of these:

• 37 questions (~74% of untagged; ~30% of total) got status-completed added to them.
• 1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-bydesign added to it.
• 1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-declined added to it.
• 1 question (~2% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-norepro added to it.
• 3 questions (~6% of untagged; ~2% of total) got status-planned added to them.
• 7 questions (~14% of untagged; ~6% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

No questions that had been tagged status-review during this reporting period were deleted over the reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 64 posts that got a response from staff, 34 had status-review added by staff, and the other 30 by mods:

• 57 tagged by staff, 34 responded, 23 unresponded
• 67 tagged by mods, 30 responded, 37 unresponded

From previous periods:

A total of 193¹ questions across all Meta sites still had status-review on them at some point during this period. The tag had been added by a staff member on 70 (~36%) of these, and the other 123 (~64%) had the tag previously added by a moderator.

The majority of questions came from MSE, followed by MSO, and the various Metas from all over the network:

• 101 (~52%) from MSE.
• 63 (~33%) from MSO.
• 29 (~15%) from other child Metas.

Most of the questions escalated were bug reports or feature requests, but there were posts of all types escalated to staff (note that tags are not mutually exclusive):

• 128 bug
• 51 feature-request
• 14 discussion
• 15 support

A total of 16 of these questions (~8%) got some sort of response from staff during this period, and after the tag was added. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and any sort of response was ~68d 19h (min. of ~5d 18h; max. of ~175d 5h; median of ~55d 10h). Of these:

• 3 questions (~19% of responded; ~2% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an answer. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that answer getting posted was ~75d 8h (min. of ~14d 19h; max. of ~136d 17h; median of ~74d 12h).
• 4 questions (~25% of responded; ~2% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of a comment. The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that comment getting posted was ~25d 19h (min. of ~5d 18h; max. of ~63d 19h; median of ~16d 19h).
• 9 questions (~56% of responded; ~5% of total) had their first response from staff in the form of an edit (to remove the status-review tag and/or add another status tag, for the most part). The average time elapsed between the tag getting added and that edit getting submitted was ~85d 18h (min. of ~26d 17h; max. of ~175d 5h; median of ~68d 5h).

All responses ended up resulting in a corresponding tag edit, and 16 (~8%) questions got status-review removed. 14 of these got removed by staff, and the remaining 2 by a moderator. Of these:

• 11 questions (~69% of untagged; ~6% of total) got status-completed added to them.
• 2 questions (~13% of untagged; ~1% of total) got status-deferred added to them.
• 3 questions (~19% of untagged; ~2% of total) didn’t get a new status tag added.

1 question that had been tagged status-review during previous reporting periods was deleted over this reporting period.

It’s also worth noting that of the 16 posts that got a response from staff, 7 had status-review added by staff, and the other 9 by mods:

• 70 tagged by staff, 7 responded, 63 unresponded
• 123 tagged by mods, 9 responded, 114 unresponded

Footnotes:

¹ This number doesn't always match the sum of unresponded posts reported in previous periods. I considered 'unresponded' to mean posts that have had no response from staff. Those posts can, however, have had their status-review tag removed by a mod, and thus have been accounted for on that corresponding stat in the previous quarter. Furthermore, staff members leaving or joining the company can produce very slight discrepancies in this number.