A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
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
While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together. And what could be more festive than a big pile of numbers? So here is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Server Fault over the past 12 months:
Action Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended² 6 37
Users destroyed³ 222 0
Users deleted 2 0
Users contacted 30 0
User banned from review 0 7
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue 1,102 6,248
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue 227 1,212
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue 375 1,786
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue 381 3,572
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue 1,249 15,444
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue 2,090 3,501
Tags merged 3 0
Tag synonyms proposed 5 0
Tag synonyms created 6 0
Revisions redacted 10 0
Questions reopened 161 4
Questions protected 37 106
Questions migrated 336 40
Questions merged 1 0
Questions flagged⁵ 62 2,220
Questions closed 5,074 294
Question flags handled⁵ 1,253 1,029
Posts unlocked 1 38
Posts undeleted 54 265
Posts locked 25 710
Posts deleted⁶ 2,634 14,140
Posts bumped 0 17,224
Comments undeleted 26 0
Comments flagged 2 8,345
Comments deleted⁷ 1,853 11,036
Comment flags handled 684 7,663
Bounties canceled 4 0
Answers flagged 148 4,077
Answer flags handled 3,786 439
All comments on a post moved to chat 2 0
###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).
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).
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? I posted a similar report here last year...
Wishing you all a happy new year...