Roles and actions: Moderators

Question

I recently saw that several of the high-rep users were getting suspended. Then it got to think me why are they getting suspended. By thinking in that direction, I see that when an issue occurs: the one who reports that issue and the one who caused the issue gets suspended. While discussing in the chat, two of the mods in TEXSE informed me that these moderations are performed in a case-by-case basis.

Having said that these are my concerns over the way the moderation is being done:

1. For all the years I have been in TEXSE, I was under the assumption that moderations are performed in democratic way. That is looking into an issue, and then determining who made the fault and then reprimanding them (by means of suspensions ofcourse). But recent issues made me think otherwise, that may be, moderations is not being fair anymore. Becausing suspending all the parties involving in the issues does not sound democratic to me. Because, in that case, we can in fact replace mods by bots. So, my question is this: TEXSE is more than a decade old, so don't we have prior knowledge to evaluate issues? (I am pretty sure there must be a data-bin where this information can be retrieved).

2. Moderators should abide by a set of rules while evaluating cases. Where they must explain the involved parties why they are being suspended (of course not to everyone else). If that is not the case, why do we even need mods? All we need is a bot. More importantly, why don't we -- over time let's say annually or every two-years -- replace mods and have a democratic mod election?

3. So by reading these posts Who are the diamond moderators, and what is their role?, Handling Calls to Remove a Moderator and https://stackoverflow.com/help/site-moderators, I literally came to the conclusion mods are basically invincible. They can do whatever they want and only the powers can take or at the least consider taking actions on them (though the rules says otherwise but made in such a way to refect the former). Because, if I have to report a mod, it will end-up getting reviewed by the another mod. Which in no way is going to have an implication. So are there any cases where a mod (who got reported for a biased actions) has been removed? This is one of my biggest concern because, if we see take a sport for instance cricket as an example, when we have a problem with the umpires, we have a governing body which is neutral. But here, if we get to report a mod, then it will still be evaulated by other mods, thereby, creating conflict-of-interest, I think.

4. Final question, how are the days in suspension box determined? I saw in the SE link that for the first-timers, the duration will be a day.

Disclaimer 1 I am only discussing about TEXSE, because I have no idea about how the mods in other site works.

Disclaimer 2 I am discussing this with a local-scope, of course mods are needed for other issues and they are doing a great job in that aspect (at least from what I saw so-far).

Answer 1

On 'why suspend more than one person', this is an unusual step. In most moderation situations, there is a reasonably clear trail to determine the transgressor. For example, a user who posts unpleasant comments will likely be flagged by several people, will post such comments in reply to multiple users, etc., and we can see where action is needed. Similarly, if a user is using sock-puppets, this is typically obvious from (mod only) data in the database.

However, where users have a dispute that is between two individuals, it may not be so easy to determine 'who started it'. The issue then becomes the 'fall out' from such a case, such as mutual negative comments, flags, etc. Where at all possible, the mods will try to untangle the source of such issue. But at the same time, the reaction of both parties is important. Where there the situation that reactions on both sides are problematic, a suspension may be needed for both (after of course simply asking that they 'cool it').

None of this lends itself to automation: the text of comments, timings, the scope of the issue, etc., are all important.

Answer 2

In general we don't discuss cases in public to protect privacy of all involved users. In the best case, it gets resolved and is over in a few days and can be forgotten.

I'm not sure if it's a favour to anyone to discuss in chat or on meta. Not everybody wants to see his topics in public, and on the other hand, you know, in a discussion you get more and stronger arguments over time.

But let me see the main concern in general, that it can happen, that several users are suspended because of a single issue such as a fight.

Maybe in a comparison. If you consider this knowledge site like a TeX library, or a TeX seminar, or a TeX bar & club (like in the chat). What would you do if, again in theory of seeing strong debates:

• several users have a noisy fight
• they are seriously asked to stop it here
• but it repeats over months, spread over various questions/answers
• both users flag other comments, of cause
• other non-involved users complain by flags

We can ask the fighting users to temporarily (!) leave the library/seminar/bar/TeX.SE as emergency stop, and to cool down, re-think.

What would you do instead? Options:

• repeat asking, that did not help the first time
• let it continue to take time to "investigate"
• try to find out whose reasons are more valid
• follow each users answer texts and comments to watch if another verbal stinger or any dispute appears again
• edit answers to remove off-topic complaints and remove comments (and get complaints of cause)

We do and try this and that. But it happens that we might chose the emergency action above, with a temporary suspension to stop the noise, to have a pause, to send a strong signal with one of the few ways we have.

TeX.SE is still a friendly site. In chat I heard about Physics.SE yesterday and I hear about others, non-friendly sites. I think we may be good to stop aggressive disputes early, in the best case by just a temporary action and without pointing fingers.

Answer 3

Dealing specifically with 'how long are suspensions for'. The model we are provided by StackOverflow is that a first serious issue should get a 7-day ban, and second serious issue a 30-day one, and after that we go to a year-long ban. However, before using any bans there is the step of simply making a polite request. On the other hand, out-and-out bad behaviour can go straight through to a long ban (the staff can impose a permanent ban, for cases such as socket-puppets).

Suspensions are a blunt tool, primarily about protecting the rest of the community rather than punishing a 'transgressor'. They are used only when necessary.

Answer 4

I believe that the moderators should

1. leave it up to the users involved to decide whether or not they want to be "protected" or want to go for transparency. The current state of affairs of not having transparency leads to a black box and practically unlimited power of the moderators.
2. not run different TeX Q & A sites. Or, at least, if they really want to do that, disentangle different sites.
3. should be appointed for a fixed term only, and then seek reelection.

Also, I do think that moderators should try to find out who is right in the case of a controversy. (Of course, it does not mean that one should suspend users who make inadvertently wrong statements. Users who make wrong statements on purpose are a different topic.) That is, different sites have expert moderators for a reason. Otherwise we could have random moderators, some physicists for the linguistic site, say. I do not think that it is inappropriate to point out if an answer is incorrect, I personally learn from such comments when they are correct.

Even though the statement on the physics site in Stefan's post is partly correct, it is true for a very different reason: users make incorrect statements over which users start to have heated discussions. The problem is that very often it cannot be decided who is correct. The LaTeX site is different in that, in most cases, the answers to questions contain codes that can be tested.

It might be also interesting to know how many moderators are currently active on a daily basis, and to which extent it is realistic to say that if there are issues with one moderator, the other moderators will take care of that.

I condemn, in the strongest terms, the actions of a user who insults others, steals their codes and claims others steal from them. This user is a danger for every honest user on this site. Not only because of the insults, but also because if moderators do not stop such users there will be on the long run no user from whom one can steal, i.e. no more original code. IMHO moderators should encourage users to write original code and to disclose the sources of their inspirations. I stress that I always tried to do that (after learning this behavior from Torbørn T., IMHO one of the greatest contributors to this site). I also condemn the action of a moderator who was, maybe inadvertently, supporting this user. Moreover, I find it inappropriate that moderators can run more than one TeX site, and that there is no working way to challenge moderator's decisions. And I believe that moderators should either be able to discriminate lies from true statements, or resign. It is not too difficult to figure out who copied from whom.

Ah, and please do not abuse the comments under this post for your own agenda. If you want to express your opinion, write a post, which others can also downvote. It is not the purpose of comments to pursue a personal agenda. I won't read those anyway. So if you disagree with these statements, feel free to downvote the post, and to write up your thoughts in your own answer.

Answer 5

This is a different perspective on the answers by the moderators. I am able to substantiate my statements by emails and links, if needed.

• The official reason for my suspension were "heated discussions" with a certain user. I am still not sure I understand what this means.
• However, before this user become active again my suspension was predicted by one of the moderators in an email that I got after leaving TeXWelt.de. (It is true that I deleted almost all my answers on that site. It is also true that my account did not get deleted before I did that even though I asked for that. Also I deleted my own posts, which is not against any rule I am aware of. In any case, what happened on TeXWelt.de should not be part of this discussion here.)
• There were actions by that moderator which were IMHO unbalanced. I asked this moderator to disentangle TeXWelt.de from TeX-SE. Within a few hours after I sent this email, the moderator downvoted three posts of mine: How to draw 3 components diagram?, Different xtick distance for different x ranges, Illustrating symmetric key distribution. While downvotes do not require an explanation, the timing is very suspicious IMHO.
• It is true that last year I got a request by the moderators to leave room for the other user. I am not sure if this is the "warning" that is mentioned by the moderators. I did not get another message, nor did I behave against the request to leave room.
• My suspension did not follow a comment or anything that may be viewed as something that goes against the user. It followed my public question on the chat how long I have to endure the behavior of the other users. I asked this on the chat because their insults did not get removed for days even though they were flagged.
• Also the statement "that a first serious issue should get a 7-day ban, and second serious issue a 30-day one" does not seem to reflect reality since this was (at least) the second suspension of the other user, who got suspended for 7 days only.

P.S. Moderators, if you feel that you need to suspend me for that post, or you want to delete it, go ahead, I will then just delete my account before I awarded all my points. However, the purpose of this post is not retaliation or anything of this sort. The reason for this post is that I got asked by several users why I am leaving, and this post is an attempt to explain it.