Vogel612
A question is flagged: Please delete this question - my boss has seen it and says it contains confidential code - he's freaking out and wants me to remove it, but I can't delete it. The question was asked 3 days before, it has 2 answers, one is accepted. How do you respond?
First things first: Just outright deleting the question is a non-option.
The problem with this question is the problem we regularly deal with when questions are asked. It's most probably not possible to edit the question into something that does satisfy the boss, while keeping the answers viable. Unfortunately the only option is to ask the flagger to take it upon themselves... Their boss will need to file a DMCA Takedown notice in accordance with the FAQ and TOS. The DMCA notice then will have to be dealt with on the side of StackExchange.
What do you think about the new possibilities of migration coming with graduation? Graduation means we will get the ability to migrate questions away by community vote. It also means we may end up on the migration path of other sites. These user-migrations can be notoriously bad (see the old programmer's dilemma). I personally fear they will be. This means an additional moderation duty and quite possibly drama with other sites on the network... How would you address problems coming up with large-scale low-quality user migrations?
The root cause of this is uninformed decisions made by users of larger other sites. Primarily it's accordingly important to educate these users. @Duga already is a great help with this and the regulars in The 2nd Monitor (and more and more SO users) do a great job with that.
The next part of the problem is the difference in what's expected for questions on other sites and here. This discrepancy is normal, and something that makes the whole SE Network idea work so well. It is important to give guidance (and a helping hand) to the OP of a migrated question, so their experience of the network isn't negatively affected. After all we want "repeat customers" :)
An option would be to leave user-based migrations disabled for now, but we could use the extra traffic they bring. Then again pointing a firehose at someone doesn't really help that much against thirst.
It boils down to a judgement call weighing additional content (and possibly users) against the implied quality problems.
As a moderator on Code Review you will also become a moderator on all of chat.stackexchange.com - which has rooms for most sites (all except Stack Overflow and Meta.StackExchange). A heated discussion is flagged in "The Suspension" chat room which is associated with BridgeBuilding.stackexchange.com - there is swearing and name calling. What do you do?
The first thing I'd try is get a hold of one of the site moderators, if available. They are bound to have a better overview of the whole situation than me, and if I act rashly, the consequences for the other site may be dire.
On the other hand if I don't act at all the consequences are on the same or greater scale. So the next step would be stepping in and trying to defuse the situation. Calling the participants to objectivity may help.
If it doesn't the tool of choice would be a short timed chat-suspension. This prevents more immediate damage and gives some time for a site mod to show up and allows me to better assess the situation.
Appropriate follow-up actions may be longer chat-suspensions for the involved persons. In consultation with the site mods, the penalty-box (on-site suspension) may be another option.
A user has an issue with an action you, as moderator, took; calling you out on meta, a chat room, comments, or otherwise. How do you handle this?
The first duty of a moderator is to make decisions on behalf of the community. The second is to explain them clearly and rationally. Point being: Any action I take has their reasons. I'll lay those reasons out clearly (as far as possible).
As soon as the situation shows signs of spinning out of control, I'd pull myself out of the situation. My fellow moderators in most cases will have a better overview of the situation, and can deal with this more rationally. Taking a short break and leaving the field to someone calm is the best option.
How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
Valuable answers on the one side, there's a few things that just aren't okay on the network. It's important to judge the post and not the user. As such I would "pull them aside" and lead a private conversation, explaining why some things are not okay the way they are.
It's important to make clear that the user is a valued contributor. It's also important to mainain the rules. In the end the rules must prevail, else a community is bound to die down. Quality contributions are no excuse for permanent toxicity.
In summary: Work with the user to "correct" (that's such a strong word) the behavior observed. Upon repeated violations without any signs of improvement, the correct action to take is a suspension.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
The wrong way to go about it is calling it out publicly or reversing the decision. That's bound to lead to problems within the moderator team. This means the way to handle this is first and foremost: conversation.
I'd contact the mod in the moderator room. Maybe I've overlooked something, maybe it was a mistake.
From there on it's ... an open plain.
"Moderators don't vote. They decide." Making binding decisions instead of voting will be a paradigm shift for nearly all of the nominees. How do you plan on making this adjustment?
This shift is the one thing that scares me the most about being a moderator. This adjustment is something that I have to learn, and fast. For the start I'll decide for clear-cut cases, to get a feeling for this, then I'll move on to thinking more and more about the fuzzy areas of decision.
I know I've got a great community in the second monitor. These people see things that I might have missed. I can learn much from them, so I'd try to consult them when I'm unsure.
As one of the Revivalists, I have seen some users come through chat that are active and excited about Code Review, and they do well for months at a time, but then they drop off the face of the planet Code Review, sometimes they come back and some haven't come back yet. Are you in it for the long haul? Are you going to stick with us for the long haul? Are you ready to spend hours on Code Review, just for the love of the site? Are you Addicted to Code Review? How can you show us that you are serious about Code Review
I've been around since I started coming here. In the almost 500 Days since I joined I can count only 7 days where I didn't visit the site. I think this shows how serious I am about this site.
I think I may be more addicted to codereview than to caffeine, and boy that's a statment :D
Code Review has approximately at 15-to-1 upvote-to-downvote ratio, nearly double Stack Overflow's approximate 8-to-1 ratio. As a moderator, you'll be regularly viewing the worst of the worst posts made to Code Review. Do you consider up and down voting of a moderation tool at all? Do you think you downvote enough questions? Do you think you upvote enough questions?
I don't consider downvotes to be a moderation tool. Downvotes are a tool of Quality-Control. It's important to keep these two separate. Moderation is taking out the garbage. Downvoting (and quality-control) is a matter of polishing diamonds.
The "worst of the worst" will be posts that need deletion. Downvoting on top of that seems "overkill". The high upvote to downvote ratio is a testament of the quality that codereview actually has. If that changes, and that ratio is just showing that the community doesn't downvote "wrong" or low-quality answers, time's ripe for a call to action on meta.
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
Sure the tools coming with 10k are nice... But they are just a very limited subset of the overview a moderator has. Instead of having to ask a mod to investigate a suspicious user I find, I can do that myself.
Instead of having to ask a mod to smoke out suspicious voting activity, I can do that myself. Instead of having to rally votes in the 2nd monitor for a clear case, I can do that myself. A moderator has an expanded toolkit, and I think I can make use of that toolkit :)
