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 1,032
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).
Further reading:
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? I posted a similar report here last year: 2018: a year in moderation...
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
Wishing you all a happy new year...