A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation
While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together. And what could be more festive than a big pile of numbers? So here is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Meta Stack Exchange over the past 12 months:
Action Moderators Community¹
----------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended² 145 177
Users destroyed³ 1,043 0
Users deleted 9 0
Users contacted 217 0
User suspensions lifted early 5 0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue 115 3,619
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue 17 2,921
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue 46 2,441
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue 52 9,708
Tags merged 13 0
Tag synonyms proposed 9 2
Tag synonyms created 9 5
Tag highlight language set 1 0
Revisions redacted 21 0
Questions unprotected 59 80
Questions reopened 76 262
Questions protected 2 227
Questions migrated 83 0
Questions flagged⁵ 238 18,722
Questions closed 2,236 4,327
Question flags handled⁵ 3,452 15,495
Posts unlocked 13 37
Posts undeleted 71 270
Posts locked 46 1,766
Posts deleted⁶ 3,302 6,761
Posts bumped 0 117
Escalations to the Community Manager team 4 0
Comments undeleted 254 0
Comments flagged 209 10,026
Comments deleted⁷ 17,479 10,353
Comment flags handled 7,207 3,022
Bounties canceled 7 0
Answers flagged 179 4,846
Answer flags handled 2,616 2,397
All comments on a post moved to chat 29 0
Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Meta Stack Exchange without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:
- You can also check out this report on other sites
- Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
Wishing you all a happy new year...
