Can we make it easier for those willing and qualified to help, to help?

Question

At present, the most recent activity on main is a question that has this as one of its answer:

It Is not appearing in any of the Review queues that I can see and I can’t downvote it (out of my ration for the day). I dare not flag it because the last time I flagged (here, and consequently possibly anywhere on SE):

declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

It is not up to any one user to shoulder full responsibility for all ‘housekeeping’ activities, but it seems preventing some (with the appropriate rep) from being able to help is unconstructive.

Can anything be done of a constructive nature?

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At the time I posted the above not only could I not vote (capped) and dared not flag but I couldn’t review (the occupied queues required votes), couldn’t suggest (capped) and dare not edit (“front page flooding”). So it seems I was blocked from all housekeeping chores (^†) - and that seems a waste when so much housekeeping is still required (IMO).

^† Effectively there is a cap for delete also.

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I did not mention retagging specifically (since that too bumps) but I can't do much there when, if there is a system, it is not one I understand. "Tinkering around the edges" is all I dare.

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Excluding moderators, there are nine (9) users with Delete votes. Six of these show hardly any site activity of any kind for months. There are well over 500 Qs tagged webapp-rec (our twelfth most popular tag). They are all off topic here (but not necessarily at Software Recommendations where there is a chance of keeping information up to date with rapid changes - we can't, when a Q is Closed). Yet users may have as few as five Delete votes each, each day and it takes a minimum of three votes for deletion. So if three users (the relatively active ones with the privilege) were casting all their Delete votes every day (I doubt they are) it would take more than three months, possibly nearer six, just to remove that one tag, had some votes not already been cast. But in three/six months there would no doubt be numerous additions with that tag - and, with so little voting here, I doubt many more users in that time able to cast Delete votes.

Answer 1

I think it's quite clear that the aforementioned post qualifies spam. I flagged it as such. So did five other users, and so the post was automatically deleted (I don't think any diamond moderators were involved).

I dare not flag it because the last time ...

A declined flag does not mean that you must never flag anything again.

Answer 2

Just because some flags were declined doesn't mean you never flag, ever. The flag could have been declined for various reasons and previous flag judgement has no bearing whatsoever on future flags(unless there is a long trail of such frivolous flags which I haven't seen here till now)

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At the time I posted the above not only could I not vote (capped)

Okay, that's a limitation that you have run into because you have hit your vote quota, not others.

and dared not flag but I couldn’t review (the occupied queues required votes)

I still don't understand why you wouldn't spam flag an obvious spam

dare not edit (“front page flooding”).

So back off for an hour and edit it it later. Anyway this isn't a post that needs to be edited.

So it seems I was blocked from all housekeeping chores (†)

As I've mentioned, you're not blocked, neither are others

and that seems a waste when so much housekeeping is still required (IMO).

And others will look into it.

Answer 3

My Q here was and remains (for the moment) Can we make it easier for those willing and qualified to help, to help?. I gave an example for illustration and subsequently added an attempt at clarification in more general terms. IMO there is a lot of housekeeping still required and it seems to be the nature of this SE site that there is even less help with such chores than on other SE sites.

The statistics here are unreliable, see:

Search operators not working correctly

Locked Q shows as {on hold}

Quantum state Questions

Confusion over a “ghost”

That itself is one of the housekeeping issues.

However the statistics may be some guide to reality. Another housekeeping issue is something like 378 tags with no Usage guide (out of 1060, for comparison at TSE 71 out of 2083) and 627 with no tag wiki (all “main site only”).

Also regarding tags there seem to be a number of as yet unresolved issues regarding many that may be inappropriate for reasons of overlap, name changes etc, see for example:

Overlapping export/data liberation tags

Is the “date” tag useful?

Merging tags [gmail] and [google-apps-email]

And, it seems, many tags are in use that perhaps should not be (‘meta tags’) depending on the community’s opinion, as conventionally expressed with votes. There are 473 hits from a search "thanks" is:q closed:0 that would indicate very many Qs have not (yet) been edited to remove cruft.

There are 148 hits from a search closed:1 score:10 indicating that many of those who do vote have no idea how they are supposed to. (Yes, you may vote how you wish but doing so arbitrarily or inconsistently is not helpful.) I accept there may be some cases where a Closed Q shows research effort; it is useful and clear but I simply don’t believe many of the 1,656 Qs that users have voted to Close deserve their positive score as “exceptional”. More voting in general should offset the influence of outliers and give a more accurate expression of what is intended. Too little exercise of voting privileges has been recognised, see:

Is there a lack of voting on Web Apps?

Why aren't people voting? How can we get people to get more engaged?

Let's vote! A project to bring some recognition to neglected content

HOWEVER, it seems either I have not done adequate research, I have been unclear, or my Q is not useful. I believe I have been more thorough in my research that the level generally found acceptable (and so far I am not aware that anybody has suggested otherwise), have been clear (and so far I am not aware that anybody has suggested otherwise) or the community considers this Q “not useful”.

So be it, I will accept this A to close the matter. I won’t choose either of the other As to do so as IMO neither comes anywhere near ^† answering: Can we make it easier for those willing and qualified to help, to help?

^† Sathya's in vaguely the same ballpark after the edit.