2023: a year in moderation

Question

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.

So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Web Applications over the past 12 months:

Action	Moderators	Community User¹	Community²
All comments on a post moved to chat	35	0	0
Answer flags handled	965	247	0
Answers flagged	173	333	692
Bounties canceled	1	0	0
Comment flags handled	1,863	51	4
Comments deleted⁸	4,092	49	461
Comments flagged	1,747	10	161
Comments undeleted	105	0	0
Escalations to the Community Manager team	12	0	0
Posts bumped	0	6,585	0
Posts deleted⁷	998	2,406	265
Posts locked	38	507	0
Posts undeleted	41	0	15
Posts unlocked	6	35	0
Question flags handled⁶	526	252	69
Questions closed	2,334	1	0
Questions flagged⁶	131	14	676
Questions merged	3	0	0
Questions migrated	153	0	0
Questions protected	1	126	1
Questions reopened	138	1	0
Questions unprotected	1	0	0
Revisions redacted	5	0	0
Tag highlight language set	0	0	0
Tag synonyms created	16	0	0
Tag synonyms proposed	13	0	0
Tags merged	13	0	0
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue	68	0	70
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue	114	0	573
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue	160	0	822
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue	161	0	419
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue	147	0	204
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue	89	0	51
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue	267	133	420
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue	0	0	0
User banned from review	4	0	0
User review-bans lifted early	0	0	0
User suspensions lifted early	4	0	0
Users contacted	23	0	0
Users deleted	0	0	0
Users destroyed⁴	121	0	0
Users suspended³	16	52	0

Footnotes

¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² This refers to the membership of Web Applications without diamonds next to their names.

³ 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.

⁴ 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.

⁵ 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.

⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.

⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Further reading:

• Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

• 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 everyone a happy 2024! ^_^

Answer 1

Data highlights:

Site Name	Asked	AskedAndClosed	PctAskedAndClosed	AllClosed	All closed as a percentage of Asked	DuplicatesClosed	DuplicatesReopened	OTClosed	OTReopened	UnclearClosed	UnclearReopened	TooBroadClosed	TooBroadReopened	OpinionBasedClosed	OpinionBasedReopened
Interpersonal Skills	245	184	75%	184	75%	1	0	125	2	44	2	3	0	11	0
Network Engineering	1783	1162	65%	1169	66%	59	2	933	7	149	18	8	1	20	0
English Language and Usage	5677	3618	64%	4345	77%	851	92	2414	226	549	41	93	16	438	56
Stack Overflow em Português	11615	7301	63%	8245	71%	181	9	6667	117	1191	26	117	3	89	2
Web Applications	2378	1242	52%	2335	98%	283	16	945	24	1045	86	48	8	14	2
Chemistry	4986	2474	50%	2508	50%	256	4	970	16	1074	32	150	9	58	0
Stack Overflow	1489399	266207	18%	287979	19%	80073	2640	111498	1633	53724	941	31277	373	11407	194
Music Fans	178	51	29%	268	151%	0		264		1		0		3

• Webapps is in the top 5 of all SE sites, when comparing the Percent of questions asked in 2023 that were closed in 2023. A record 51.23% of questions asked were closed in 2023. For comparison, this was just 19% in 2022.

• If we take all the closed questions(not just asked in 2023) as a percentage of questions asked in 2023, a record of 98% of questions were closed. Only Music Fans SE ranks higher by number of questions closed(151%). No other sites came close to WebApps

• The stats is even more worrying, if we consider no(ZERO) questions were closed by the community, but ALL 2335(except 1) questions were closed by moderators

• No questions were reopened by the community and 139(except 1) was reopened by moderators.

• It's also worthy to note most closings are done by a moderator, while the reopenings are usually done by an another

• Compared to 2022, Posts deleted by moderators nearly doubled, and users destroyed tripled.

• 16 users were suspended in 2023 against 0 in 2022. These show clear conflict between the moderators and the community.

---

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site

This is clearly not happening in Web Applications.

Moderators clearly did whatever they wanted or thought was right, even against all objections from community and even still continue to do so - closing, locking and deleting posts.

Related:

• Reduce the reputation threshold to be allowed to cast a reopen vote on a closed question

• Do the moderators plan to close most questions on this site?

Answer 2

The Web Apps SE community has practically no influence over which questions get closed or reopened

I noticed some quite alarming stats: Out of 2335 questions closed in 2023, only 1 (0.04%) was closed by the community. Out of 139 questions reopened, only 1 (0.7%) was reopened by the community. And out of 2K+ question closures, the community has only submitted 70 reviews in the close votes queue and 51 reviews in the reopen votes queue, resulting in only 1 question closed and 1 question reopened by them. (This is even more surprising considering that Web Apps SE requires only 3 votes to close or reopen a question, unlike most SE sites, which need 5.)

This implies that the community has practically no influence over which questions get closed or reopened, a problem that was already raised in the “Reduce the reputation threshold to be allowed to cast a reopen vote on a closed question” meta post. In 2023, all 2335 question closures were done by mods, except for one, before the close vote queue reviewers had a chance to weigh in.

This contradicts A Theory of Moderation (which is regarded as the canonical article on how SE moderators should moderate):

But what do community moderators do? The short answer is, as little as possible!

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.

[…] moderators occasionally need to intervene. Moderators are human exception handlers, there to deal with those (hopefully rare) exceptional conditions that should not normally happen, but when they do, they can bring your entire community to a screaming halt

On a positive note, the "Reduce the reputation threshold to be allowed to cast a reopen vote on a closed question" meta post was recently tagged as status-review by a community manager. If it gets implemented—setting “beta” reputation thresholds—then these numbers may improve and more of the community may get involved in deciding if questions are closed or reopened.