8
$\begingroup$

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here are 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. 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.

So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, 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 MathOverflow over the past 12 months:

Action Moderators Community¹
All comments on a post moved to chat 6 0
Answer flags handled 945 751
Answers flagged 45 1,652
Bounties canceled 3 0
Comment flags handled 735 199
Comments deleted⁷ 1,050 9,059
Comments flagged 2 932
Comments undeleted 7 0
Escalations to the Community Manager team 20 0
Posts bumped 0 1,754
Posts deleted⁶ 1,169 5,817
Posts locked 3 567
Posts undeleted 17 595
Posts unlocked 1 41
Question flags handled⁵ 864 2,857
Questions closed 132 2,450
Questions flagged⁵ 80 3,712
Questions merged 1 0
Questions migrated 12 119
Questions protected 1 31
Questions reopened 4 25
Tag synonyms created 2 0
Tag synonyms proposed 1 0
Tags merged 1 0
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue 1 4,374
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue 1 1,064
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue 1 3,888
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue 0 350
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue 2 822
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue 0 366
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue 10 2,328
Users contacted 35 0
Users deleted 49 0
Users destroyed³ 581 0
Users suspended² 25 85

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of MathOverflow without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² 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.

³ 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.

⁴ 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.

⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.

⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Further reading:

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^

$\endgroup$
1
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Thanks as always to the whole community for keeping the ship running! $\endgroup$
    – Tim Campion Mod
    Feb 3, 2023 at 19:10

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .