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What I find off-putting about StackOverflow is their crowd-sourced moderation system (which I got access to at some point due to karma threshold). It’s based on
by jotaen 4y ago
What I find off-putting about StackOverflow is their crowd-sourced moderation system (which I got access to at some point due to karma threshold). It’s based on pre-categorised moderation queues with flagged submissions that you can (have to) go through, and it’s designed in a way that you mostly choose from a set of pre-fabricated standard responses to “resolve” the issue. The eventual moderation decision is “democratic”, so when 2 or 3 moderators happen to come to the same result independently, then that’s what it is.
To me, that “moderation process” mostly felt like a robotic assembly line which isn’t designed to genuinely help people, but it’s primarily optimised for throughput. The frustration expressed by end-users is a direct consequence of this design that’s not really surprising.
What’s most bizarre is that the system intersperses phony test submissions every once in a while, just to verify whether you as moderator are “doing it right” (or, are still alive, for that matter).
- boltzmann-brain 4y agoUnderrated reply. Do you have screenshots of what that looks like?
- jotaen 4y agoSure: - All moderation queues: https://files.jotaen.net/!nmezmQKFdH https://files.jotaen.net/!nmezmQKFdH - View for reviewing something: https://files.jotaen.net/!KwekXrbj36 https://files.jotaen.net/!KwekXrbj36 - Popover when selecting “Share Feedback”: https://files.jotaen.net/!FgRNhhfAT8 https://files.jotaen.net/!FgRNhhfAT8 - Resulting comment after selecting one of the canned responses: https://files.jotaen.net/!JUtTBMxApL https://files.jotaen.net/!JUtTBMxApL Last time I used this system was multiple years ago. As I just took the screenshots, it appears some things have changed compared to how I remember it from the past. Specifically: (take with a grain of salt, though!) - the option whether to share feedback “as yourself”, I think that used to be the default back then, and the “Community Bot” seems new. - the “custom comment” option didn’t used to be available in all queue categories. By the way, there was no onboarding to this moderation system whatsoever, so when I reached the required karma threshold (2000 or so?), I just got access to it à la “there you go, please help yourself”. Also, there is no way to communicate with other moderators on an issue, but everyone is just doing their own thing in isolation until there appears to be some “statistical consensus”.