> Makes it hard to be communicative when I am actually being preventing from responding. You asked to discuss this in public, so I obliged. Once that began, neither one of us could put the genie back in the bottle - going back and replying privately after I'd posted publicly didn't really accomplish much. I try to avoid handling problems with moderators in public; I don't think it accomplishes much. Folks usually tend to be more receptive to criticism when they're not playing to an audience. That's why the last time I talked to you it was in a private chat room; this time it was a bit more urgent that I get your attention ASAP, but once done we could've conducted it more or less the same way. That said... Perhaps it's for the best that this *was* public. As much as I believe your intentions were good, your efforts as a moderator were ultimately doomed: even with all of your energy, single-handedly moderating six years' worth of posts is an impossible task; if you weren't burning out already, you soon would have... Over the past few months, two moderators here on Server Fault have each individually handled more flags than all of the user-moderators combined. **There is no other site on Stack Exchange of comparable size where this is the case.** Moderation activity on Server Fault looks healthy at a glance, but remove your activities over the past few months and suddenly it becomes a ghost town: folks posting questions and answers, but mostly not editing, not close-voting, not reviewing. This is deeply unhealthy; [Stack Exchange is designed for community moderation][1]: > Remember, the folks with the diamonds next to their names aren't the *only* people moderating these sites - the entire system is designed to make the bulk of moderation something *anyone* can do, provided they've put the effort in to earn that [privilege][2]. **[You're there to handle stuff that can't or won't be handled by anyone else.][3]** Without that broad, community-based support - lots and lots of people doing a little bit to help out - *this simply does not work*. I've watched this play out again and again across the network; moderators playing Atlas - quietly shouldering the bulk of moderation - is a strategy that inevitably backfires, as the moderator tires of becoming the focal point for blame while the site's ability to moderate itself atrophies. The greatest tragedy here is the lost opportunity to bring together an increasingly fractured and apathetic community, to teach them how to work together to build the site they want to see. You had a vision that could have inspired a legion of followers, [working together to accomplish far more than any of you could have or did working alone][4]. But you kept it largely to yourself. After an exhausting weekend [reviewing the full record of your time as a moderator][5], I truly believe you did the best you could for the site. I just wish you had asked for help. [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156122/could-we-please-be-a-bit-nicer-to-moderators/156176#156176 [2]: http://serverfault.com/privileges [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/ [4]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251175/stack-overflow-is-not-yet-a-vast-wasteland-a-history-of-moderator-tooling [5]: https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/8054/abrupt-change-in-moderation-staff/8058#8058