3

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 Server Fault over the past 12 months:

Action Moderators Community¹
All comments on a post moved to chat 6 0
Answer flags handled 2,275 739
Answers flagged 123 2,894
Comment flags handled 584 1,407
Comments deleted⁷ 718 3,636
Comments flagged 0 1,991
Escalations to the Community Manager team 2 0
Posts bumped 0 14,827
Posts deleted⁶ 1,170 9,117
Posts locked 3 1,292
Posts undeleted 11 168
Posts unlocked 1 53
Question flags handled⁵ 691 5,293
Questions closed 201 1,591
Questions flagged⁵ 102 5,884
Questions migrated 28 254
Questions protected 0 210
Questions reopened 5 2
Questions unprotected 2 1
Revisions redacted 10 0
Tag highlight language set 3 0
Tag synonyms created 1 0
Tag synonyms proposed 1 0
Tags merged 1 0
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue 83 2,213
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue 0 1,420
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue 0 1,151
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue 41 877
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue 49 959
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue 21 76
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue 389 4,112
Users contacted 5 0
Users destroyed³ 226 0
Users suspended² 3 83

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Server Fault 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! ^_^

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .