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:
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).
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?
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.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).