Questions tagged [moderation]

Questions dealing with moderator actions, pages, abilities or decisions.

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2023: a year in moderation

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 ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
3 votes
0 answers
214 views

What happened to my MathOverflow account?

I posted this question from my account two days ago. Now suddenly, I saw I don't have an account any longer. I tried to log in and Overflow created a new account. Can someone please shed some light on ...
Dumbest person on earth's user avatar
37 votes
0 answers
1k views

Moderation strike update 6 and last : back to work

As you probably were aware, since early June moderators around the whole SE network have been striking, including at MathOverflow. We appreciate your patience through this time, and there has been a ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
33 votes
0 answers
588 views

Moderation strike update 5 : the results of negotiations

The negotiations over the strike have ended with agreement addressing all the issues raised by the striking moderators. The post on meta.StackExchange was vetted and agreed to by both sets of ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
33 votes
0 answers
638 views

Moderation strike update 4

This update is to point to two posts by the company on the platform-wide meta site, Meta Stack Exchange. The post (Historical) Policy on the use of GPT Generators is a copy of the private policy on ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
29 votes
0 answers
515 views

Moderation strike update 3

There was a lull in the negotiations, for various innocuous reasons that are not relevant. But on 20th July 2023, the following update was posted to Discord by negotiator Mithical, and reposted at the ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
40 votes
0 answers
1k views

Moderation strike update 2

There has been movement at the station. Reposting an update on how the negotiations are going from this answer on meta.StackExchange, which also gives details on other updates over the past fortnight. ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
88 votes
3 answers
2k views

Stack Exchange moderation strike

You may or may not have heard that there are some controversies around moderation on the network, specifically in relation to the moderation of GPT-produced posts, but more generally around lack of ...
Ben Webster's user avatar
  • 43.9k
8 votes
0 answers
336 views

2022: a year in moderation

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 ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
7 votes
1 answer
377 views

How to make it easier to moderate blatantly off-topic questions?

As many of you have noticed, there's a lot of new users asking basic mathematics questions. This is not the only site in the network with this kind of problem; on Meta Stack Exchange we get all kinds ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,743
5 votes
1 answer
310 views

Automatic comments by Community

There seem to be automatically generated comments by "Community". As an example, this question by a new user has Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
14 votes
0 answers
337 views

2021: a year in moderation

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 ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
2 votes
1 answer
156 views

Is it possible to find out why a comment was deleted?

I had a comment at How do you generate math figures for academic papers? asking whether the question was a duplicate. (Carlo Beenakker is responding to it in this comment.) Since the comment is no ...
LSpice's user avatar
  • 11.3k
14 votes
0 answers
602 views

To which extent can one modify another's question?

One highly off-topic question of real analysis was asked in the main site by a new user. One user sent, 1 hour later, a long answer going far beyond the the question, and then, 12 hours later, edited ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
2 votes
1 answer
428 views

Rationale for moderator deletion of a non-spammy, off-topic question

The Euler quote question "Why are people hanged if they talked" has been deleted by a moderator. I have the impression this is a new practice (correct me if I'm wrong), that deletions of off-...
Carlo Beenakker's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
836 views

Rationale for migration to MSE of a well-received question on MO

I was a bit surprised (annoyed?) by the migration of this question from MO to MSE. Yes, the question could have been asked on MSE, but it was asked on MO, received much attention there, with a high-...
Carlo Beenakker's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
1k views

Deletion of on-topic comment threads

This question is about suppression of threads of comments by moderators, moved to chat with the message "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat", ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
12 votes
0 answers
434 views

What do moderators do these days?

More than 7 years ago, Scott Morrison asked a great meta question: What do moderators do?, and recorded some useful answers. Some seem to be of general significance, but many of the answers were ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
7 votes
0 answers
308 views

2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
27 votes
3 answers
2k views

What are our procedures if a user complains about harassment or abuse?

Context for this question: I am writing an article on MathOverflow for the Notices of the AMS. One thing I try to address is the apparent gender skew of our website. One of the readers of my draft ...
David E Speyer's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
187 views

I want to answer a closed question

Please reopen this question: A problem of an infinite number of balls and an urn I have a nice answer. (Added (DR): now re-opened. Please note there are ten deleted nonsense answers, which I imagine ...
Anixx's user avatar
  • 9,306
2 votes
1 answer
307 views

Reporting a possible 2nd account belonging to a network-wide suspended user

This user is suspended for 71.63 more years: A user with the same name is not suspended: Perhaps the mods can investigate their IP addresses and act accordingly (both users are basically active on ...
Nike Dattani's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
375 views

Is there a way for moderators to contact MO users personally?

Question is as in the title: Is there a way for moderators to contact MO users personally?
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
-2 votes
1 answer
190 views

Should we delete or reopen these old posts?

The purpose of this question is to link to various old (say $\succeq 1$ year old) closed posts, mostly by no longer active users, most of which are reasonable candidates for deletion, and a few for ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
12 votes
0 answers
396 views

2019: a year in moderation

Since the start of the new year, I've been posting questions on various sites detailing how the various moderation actions taken on these sites break down between Moderators and ordinary members of ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 101
41 votes
4 answers
3k views

Catering to professional appearance a bit much?

[In case of hurry, please scroll down to the suggestions at the very end.] The deletion of the Math Jokes thread (mirrors: html or pdf), most likely provoked by the meta.MO debate about some specific ...
darij grinberg's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
396 views

I lost my three questions

About 3_4 days ago 3 questions of mine got down vote but they were not "closed" or "onhold". After these downvotes, each of them became -1 vote, totally. Now I can not find these question. Where are ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
122 views

What is the procedure to initiate merging of questions?

My previous question What to do with useful answers to questions closed as duplicates (or by some other reasons)? got an answer which satisfied me entirely: if a duplicate question has got a nice ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
699 views

2018: a year in moderation

Good morning, all! I'm a Community Manager here at Stack Exchange; some of you might remember me from classic answers such as a temporary change now approaching 6 years live and a list of possibly ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 101
24 votes
1 answer
1k views

"A year in moderation" post on MathOverflow?

You might have noticed than many Stack Exchange sites have some statistics about both community moderation and moderators' activity posted on meta under the title "2018: a year in moderation". Here is ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes
6 answers
1k views

What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?

Occasionally there some posts on the main site contain links where it is very natural to suspect that the link provides access to some material without having the necessary legal rights. Should the ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
374 views

Misspelling of Cauchy-Schwarz

As a comment of Dennis Serre, the correct spelling of Cauchy-Schwarz is Cauchy-Schwarz (not Cauchy-Schwartz): The spelling is Cauchy-Schwarz, from Hermann Schwarz. If you are interested in Fourier ...
Mahdi's user avatar
  • 1,991
0 votes
2 answers
500 views

Proper protocol for edit wars

In this question, I made an edit to change the formatting because I thought it was inappropriate (related meta discussion). The author swiftly reverted my edit to restore the original version, ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
469 views

Flagging Low Quality Questions

For questions of extremely low quality that are sure to get closed anyway, do the moderators still want flags? Or is that just cluttering up their mailboxes to no purpose?
Steven Landsburg's user avatar
16 votes
0 answers
610 views

Recurrent posting about «Matrix polynomials» and so on

MO is currently being the focus of what I guess to be a single particular individual R.T.Man sporting multiple unregistered users identity (like Eskand or H.night). S/he's asking multiple very similar ...
Loïc Teyssier's user avatar
8 votes
6 answers
1k views

How to discourage excessive self-edits?

My question is prompted by the reappearance of this post on the front page. A glance at the edit history shows that the OP has edited his own question thirteen times. This user has a history of ...
Nik Weaver's user avatar
-4 votes
1 answer
184 views

Mixed reviews - can I have a decision reversed?

The image says it all really - I flagged when the question was still open so how come the question was then put on hold but my flag rejected? https://mathoverflow.net/questions/229147/bourbakis-book-...
JMP's user avatar
  • 1,226
26 votes
6 answers
2k views

Anonymity Policy

In view of recent events, we've been reconsidering having some policy against anonymous users. We've always encouraged users to use real names though we have been tolerant of pseudonymous and ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
482 views

The strange case of a declined comment flag

I came across this question and noticed there were four comments stating the current number of deleted answers. However, as none of them were up-to-date, I decided to flag them as obsolete. But here'...
Smi's user avatar
  • 105
-5 votes
3 answers
652 views

VIndictive downvoting--what can be done about such childishness, errh, lack of professionalism?

Clearly, from my reputation record, there has been some vindictive downvoting in the last three days or so. MathOverfflow is a community of people, not saints, and things like this are expected to ...
Tom Copeland's user avatar
  • 9,937
8 votes
1 answer
283 views

What is to be done about replies left as edits?

This question attracted a comment that seems relevant and helpful. Unfortunately, the user who tried to leave this comment is new and has a reputation of 1. The user could not leave comments, so ...
Yoav Kallus's user avatar
  • 5,926
-8 votes
0 answers
655 views

An Introduction to Suspension Theory [closed]

Inspired by Konrad's last post I would like to start a discussion thread on some possible aspects of long time/permanent suspensions. "Konrad" is a pseudonymous name for a long time suspended user. ...
user avatar
20 votes
7 answers
2k views

What is needed to succeed in keeping up the level of the site and retaining the good contributors?

MathOverflow is a nice high-level communitiy with a good collegial academic atmosphere. I'd like to know about how this can be achieved; for example how does MathOverflow keep up the good qualitiy of ...
Dilaton's user avatar
  • 408
17 votes
4 answers
401 views

What do moderators do?

What do moderators do? Is it just a matter of dealing with posts flagged for moderator attention, or are there other things too?
Scott Morrison's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
632 views

Is "reciprocal voting" permitted?

I've noticed that when I ask a question on MathOverflow, or any StackExchange Site, and I either upvote or downvote an answer written by a high-reputation user, regardless of how old the question and ...
user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
580 views

Cleaning up comments

Traditionally, MathOverflow moderators only delete comments that are highly problematic. Even in that case, we copied the entire deleted comment thread to tea.mathoverflow.net. Since migrating to the ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
-13 votes
2 answers
414 views

Should the MathOverflow chat room have its own moderators?

The Math Stack Exchange chat room has had some heated arguments/suspensions in the past and I was wondering if there were any plans for the newly opened Math Overflow chat room to have its own ...
user 85795's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
126 views

Editing of the help center and about

Try to add some meat to the on topic page. Also, in the about page, you can edit the site target audience, the example question, and the bullet points that define what to ask about/what not to ask ...
Manishearth's user avatar