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It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...

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 Chinese Language over the past 12 months:

                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  0          7
Users destroyed³                                  1          0
Users contacted                                   1          0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue            97         51
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue                3          1
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue        243         78
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue              130         34
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue               624        103
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue              164         50
Tag synonyms proposed                             1          0
Questions unprotected                             0          1
Questions reopened                                3          0
Questions protected                               1          4
Questions migrated                                2          0
Questions flagged⁵                               10        207
Questions closed                                 80          3
Question flags handled⁵                         100        117
Posts unlocked                                    0         12
Posts undeleted                                  11         13
Posts locked                                     10         38
Posts deleted⁶                                   66        194
Posts bumped                                      0        200
Comments undeleted                                1          0
Comments flagged                                  0        351
Comments deleted⁷                               191        565
Comment flags handled                           141        210
Answers flagged                                  10        301
Answer flags handled                            291         20
All comments on a post moved to chat              1          0

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Chinese Language 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:

Wishing you all a happy new year...

1 Answer 1

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I'll compare these numbers with 2018: a year in moderation, and to the language-based SE sites which have comparable size to Chinese.SE: German.SE, French.SE, Spanish.SE, and Russian.SE (as per the November snapshot).

Observations:

  • We have far fewer total Community¹ reviews (317) than German.SE (5363), French.SE (1959), and Spanish.SE (2488), and Russian.SE (783). [I omit the full details.]

  • Far fewer posts are deleted than German.SE, French.SE, Spanish.SE, and Russian.SE.

  • Practically no questions in 2019 were closed without a diamond moderator involved.

  • We delete fewer posts than our counterparts (on par with Russian.SE, which is about half the size).

  • We delete far fewer comments than our counterparts, and fewer than last year.

  • There was a significant drop in edit reviews since last year.

Numbers...

                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue           113        274 [2018]
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue            97         51 [2019] <----

I have no explanation for this significant drop in edit reviews.

Questions closed                                 87         16 [2018]
Questions closed                                 80          3 [2019] <----

Questions closed                                 46        419 [German 2019]
Questions closed                                113         72 [French 2019]
Questions closed                                 51        100 [Spanish 2019]
Questions closed                                133          3 [Russian 2019]

I'm not sure what to make of this, but I don't think it's good if diamond moderators are required to close questions. Perhaps we have diamond moderators who are also active participants.

Posts deleted⁵                                  122        162 [2018]
Posts deleted⁶                                   66        194 [2019] <----

Posts deleted⁶                                  168        647 [German 2019]
Posts deleted⁶                                  188        351 [French 2019]
Posts deleted⁶                                  216        242 [Spanish 2019]
Posts deleted⁶                                   84        156 [Russian 2019]

We're not deleting as much as our counterparts. Probably a lot of the Community post deletions are automatic question deletions, but we tend to answer everything which prevents automatic question. We also seem very hesitant to downvote.

Comments deleted⁶                               229        625 [2018]
Comments deleted⁷                               191        565 [2019] <----

Comments deleted⁷                             1,301      1,678 [German 2019]
Comments deleted⁷                             1,252      2,427 [French 2019]
Comments deleted⁷                               603      2,105 [Spanish 2019]
Comments deleted⁷                               687        594 [Russian 2019]

Wow. We're massively different than other sites. I guess we're not chatterboxes.

Addendum: Quoting from 2019: a year in closing on meta.SE:

                Site                   Asked   AskedAndClosed PctAskedAndClosed AllClosed DuplicatesClosed DuplicatesReopened OTClosed OTReopened UnclearClosed UnclearReopened TooBroadClosed TooBroadReopened OpinionBasedClosed OpinionBasedReopened
------------------------------------ --------- -------------- ----------------- --------- ---------------- ------------------ -------- ---------- ------------- --------------- -------------- ---------------- ------------------ --------------------

German Language                          1,968            454           23.07 %       465               89                  4      261         28            64              13             35                1                 16                    2
French Language                          1,731            183           10.57 %       185               70                  2       62          4            19               4             22                1                 12                    1
Chinese Language <----                   1,238             79            6.38 %        83               17                  1       59          0             7               2              0                0                  0                    0
Spanish Language                         1,109            146           13.17 %       151               66                  2       60          6            15               0              7                0                  3                    0
Russian Language                           607            133           21.91 %       136               13                  1       89          8            22               7             11                2                  1                    0

Searching for created:2019 closed:true, we get 39 hits (some questions would be deleted and would not be found). Below I list the diamond-hammer closure distance (at which position the diamond hammer was used to close the question):

  1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (23%)

  2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 (49%; cumulative 72%)

  3. 1, 2, 3, 4 (10%; cumulative 82%)

  4. 1, 2, 3, 4 (10%; cumulative 92%)

  5. 1 (3%; cumulative 95%)

  6. N/A: 1, 2 (5%; cumulative 100%)

That's far worse than I thought. This seems to be because (a) we don't have that many questions that require closing [after adding the new data "2019: a year in closing"], and (b) we have diamond moderators who are also active participants.

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