Timeline for Shouldn't moderators be following SE rules when responding to flags and closing questions?
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:32 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://ux.stackexchange.com/ with https://ux.stackexchange.com/
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| Jul 8, 2011 at 12:48 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - I am not abusing the platform. In fact, I am using it exactly as intended. Why don't you ask Jeff or anyone else from SE - they will tell you exactly what I have just said here - if people have questions about why a question is closed or kept open the place to discuss it is on meta. You don't like it, then stop being a moderator. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 8:26 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles, the meta is not for indulging the whims of specific users who abuse the platform. I'm more than willing to explain to each OP why their question was closed, but I won't encourage you to dig up old questions and drag me into pointless discussions about them, the emphasis being on pointless. I believe I've done my modly duty to you with the current answer and discussion. But I want you to be happy, and you want us to stick to SE rules, so I'll stick to the one that says "most importantly, don't feed the trolls". | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 19:18 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - if you aren't willing to answer why you think specific questions should be kept open or closed then you shouldn't be a moderator. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 18:57 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - That's exactly what meta is for. We should be discussing why a question should be closed or not. And what guided others before doesn't matter. The fact remains that those questions still should be closed. They are no less off-topic now than they were before. I'm asking for your input right now as to why you (a moderator) think those questions should remain open. If you don't have a good reason, then they should be closed. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 18:40 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles Sorry, but I'm not going to go there, for three main reasons: 1 - I could explain my own calls, but I won't presume to know what guided Rahul or Patrick in each case. 2 - the votes/flags balance has changed by now and we won't see the situation as the mod saw it at the time the decision was made. But most importantly, 3 - I don't see it ever ending, and I don't wish to develop this kind of debate for each of the 8 questions as well as for any others that will inevitably come up in the process. Sorry, but no. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 18:20 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - your reasoning makes sense. I don't agree with it, but it does make sense. Would you care to explain how you think the questions I added to my initial post are not off-topic and/or are real questions? For the off-topic questions, I think it's pretty obvious why they are off-topic. For the "not a real question" questions, it may not be as obvious, but either of us could easily find other questions closed as "not a real question" for the same reasons these should be closed. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 18:02 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles The logic I've described (community interest vs. flags) is also not an algorithm, it's a rule of thumb. Sometimes it helps us, and sometimes other things take precedence. Since you’re probably going to ask “what things” – I’ll tell you upfront that it depends on the case. If we had an algorithm that covers all cases, there would be no need for mods. We can’t reverse-engineer each decision a mod has ever made on a flag. Ultimately it’s a question of whether you trust the mod to do a good job or not. If you don’t, you should bring this up on MSO. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 18:01 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles, great, now you've hit the nail on the head. That is precisely the point. You admit that the two questions are very similar, yet one is considered extremely off-topic and the other is ok. Yet I don't accuse you of inconsistency, because there are the tiny nuances that make the difference. The same with the mods. We do our best to adhere to the guidelines, as we interpret them. But no two questions or answers are exactly the same (well, else we merge them), and a 100% consistency in decisions can only be expected if there's a 100% consistency on the cases. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 17:04 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles Ah, yes, I've been meaning to write that but forgot. I personally think it's a brilliant feature and I remember how happy I was when I first saw it. I could rephrase the phrasing on that button to "I disagree that this question is an obvious off-topic, so I'm not closing it, but I do see what drove the user to flag it as such, so I don't want to decrease his flag weight by dismissing it as noise. Also, if it gets flagged by others too, then I'll probably remove the question, but I'd like to deal with the flag now, rather than wait around". Does this explain the logic? | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 16:57 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - as for the "group of scholars" question, when my flag was marked invalid, it had 2 answers, zero upvotes and multiple people that said the question was off-topic in the comments. I'd appreciate it if you got your facts straight. And the "alternatives for Home" question is admittedly very similar, and I hadn't seen it until you pointed it out. However, I do think that the two questions have differences because of what is being looked for. "Home" is a common user interface element, "group of scholars" is not. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 16:50 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - it still matters how the moderators on this site use it. Can you explain why you think it is appropriate to agree that a question is off-topic and still take no action when a question is flagged that way? That's the point here. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 16:29 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles, concerning the "group of scholars" question, I'd appreciate it if you stuck to the facts. @Rahul wasn't "the only person" who thought that it belonged on UX - in fact, the question had 5 answers and 2 upvotes. Microcopy is an essential part of UX and I deal with similar questions daily. The "alternatives for Home" question is exactly the same, yet I don't see you or anyone else flagging it. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 16:20 | comment | added | Vitaly Mijiritsky Mod | @Charles, regarding the marking of flags as valid and requiring no further action - as I said, this is not the place for it. That is an SE-wide UI. We can discuss its UX logic on the UX site, or its general necessity on SE on Meta.SE, but it has nothing to do with Meta.UX. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 15:17 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - meta.ux.stackexchange.com/questions/411/… | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 15:11 | comment | added | Rahul Mod | @CharlesBoyung I think it would be worthwhile to have a separate question talking about those two questions you linked in your comments and a discussion on why certain votes were cast in certain ways. It's a better avenue than doing it in the comments here. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 15:03 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - What exactly do you want me to ask - these comments question the consistency of following rules (either set by SE or set by the moderators themselves), which is exactly what this meta question is about. I have no problem starting another question, but I'm not sure what you're asking for. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 14:54 | comment | added | Rahul Mod | @CharlesBoyung Instead of talking about this in these comments, could you ask a separate meta question to discuss the issues you have with my votes? That way we can track your feedback on those separately. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 13:20 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - and with that English question, the only person that seemed to think the question belongs on UX is you - there aren't a bunch of upvotes for the question, just a lot of comments that it belongs somewhere else. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 13:18 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - another one with 5 upvotes and the only vote to close was your own: ux.stackexchange.com/questions/5691/… Like I said, very inconsistent. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 13:18 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - and please, explain your reasoning on this question then: ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1111/… - It has 5 upvotes and yet you closed it with no one other than another moderator voting to close. To me it looks like the "community" felt the question was valuable yet you closed it. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 13:14 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Rahul - how does that have anything to do with you marking my flag as invalid on that question? | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 13:06 | comment | added | Rahul Mod | @CharlesBoyung That's why there's a "valid - the flags have merit but no further action is required" option for moderators. I use that one in case I tend to agree with the flag but don't think it has more weight than what has been established thusfar by the community, as I mentioned in my previous comment. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 12:39 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | @Vitaly - In at least the case of the question I just mentioned, personal feelings are just about the only reason I can see that the question wasn't closed. It was flagged and several people commented that it belongs on English.SE. @Rahul was the only person I saw that said he thinks it belongs on UX. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 12:37 | comment | added | Charles Boyung |
This may be more for @Rahul - And while we're talking about the flag dismissal dialog, exactly how is my saying that "Good word for a group of intellectuals or a group of smart learners" was off topic and belongs on English.SE "unhelpful or noise". That is a completely accurate flag, even if you think the question should stay on the site. If you were following what was said here, then there's no way that you could have marked that flag as invalid.
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| Jul 7, 2011 at 12:34 | comment | added | Charles Boyung | It makes absolutely no sense that you can mark a flag as valid and have it require no further action. If it is valid that the post is off-topic, then that post should be closed as off-topic. Exactly how can you logically say anything else? | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 9:53 | history | edited | Vitaly MijiritskyMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 7, 2011 at 9:12 | comment | added | Rahul Mod | Pretty much this. Especially the decision-making that goes on in my head around single flags. I always try to balance things out between the number of people showing appreciation and the people signalling that the question isn't appropriate. Just flagging something doesn't necessarily mean your flag will be treated with more weight than the 10 upvotes the question has already gotten. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 6:18 | history | answered | Vitaly MijiritskyMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |