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Recently, I have been observing that moderation by community is not happening adequately and hence the review queue becomes quite long. Sometimes I have seen close to 80 items in the review queue (most of them are for closure).

Under these circumstances, the burden on the moderators and the active users increases a lot which may sometimes lead to misjudgment.

We have a total of 12087 users, out of which only 57 have the privilege to cast a close/reopen vote. This is still not bad; if each of those 57 users actively participate, then under the usual circumstances there will be hardly more than two reviews per user.

I therefore appeal to our community members to actively participate in the review process. The quality of the site depends on you.

If there is some problem that I am unaware of, then please let me know.

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    $\begingroup$ Wow, really? 80 is indeed too much, but I only see 10 reviewable close items. $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 12:59
  • $\begingroup$ @M.A.R. yeah that was one extreme case. But 40-50 items are usually there on an average $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG Mod
    Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 13:15
  • $\begingroup$ Of those 57 users, can you tell how many are actively posting or at least visiting the site? $\endgroup$
    – canadianer
    Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 18:26
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    $\begingroup$ @canadianer AFAIK 3 or 4 of them are not very active. I can check the activity of others. But if majority of high/moderate rep users are inactive, then we have a problem and we need to look for some solution. $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG Mod
    Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 19:52
  • $\begingroup$ I think there should be a review button under every first post just like there is a close vote button, so that users can know that this post hasn't been reviewed. It could be one of the required solutions... $\endgroup$
    – another 'Homo sapien'
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 14:49

2 Answers 2

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Even if 57 have the privilege to vote, I suspect that quite a small fraction of these usually visit the site on a day-to-day basis. You can see that quite many have their last visit weeks or months back, and most of these visits are probably not related to moderation. This is probably the reason why temporary drops in activity by a couple of the most active users (along with an unusually large inflow of poor questions) can lead to long review queues. Unfortunately, it seems like we have lost active/serious users at almost the same rate as we are gaining new ones.

Actually, after a quick count, I see that 17 of the 57 users haven't visited the site after 15 feb this year (if I counted correctly). If you would look at activity only during the last week about 10-15 more would probably be lost. So it would seem that the group of active users that potentially could participate in day-to-day closing is about 25-30. The "real" number of probably lower, since I suspect that some users almost never look at the review queues. These are the users we need to target for more effective community moderation though.

In either case, I agree that the moderation is a problem. My activity at the site decreased during the autumn/winter 2016 (I still visited several times a week though), and I sensed some problems with the community moderation when I visited the site. Everybody that visits/uses the site clearly need to keep an extra eye at the review queue, and users that cannot vote can still flag stuff as a way to moderate the quality of the site.

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Apologies. I have not been pulling my weight here because I somehow missed my eligibility to do this.

Suggestion: I am aware when there is suggested question edit because this is flagged with a number at the top of the page. If the same were done for stuff needing moderation I would be alerted and chip in when I had some spare time.

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  • $\begingroup$ David, the review queue is exactly what @WYSIWYG is talking about. That is the basic means of site moderation. You can click on the review queue on the top right of your screen to see if there's anything listed. With 5k rep you should have access to all the queues. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 7:08
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    $\begingroup$ @AliceD — OK. I'll try to get into the habit of checking. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 17:49
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    $\begingroup$ that would be awesome, welcome to the board of reviewers :-) it would be great when more people start voting. Pretty much all questions that are put on hold are because of the same little group of elite question executioners 8-) $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 18:12
  • $\begingroup$ @AliceD — I'm probably one of the executioners, but I'd rather avoid the E-word. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Mar 4, 2017 at 18:18
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    $\begingroup$ @AliceD Just because people aren't voting to close doesn't mean they aren't reviewing ;) $\endgroup$
    – canadianer
    Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 9:14
  • $\begingroup$ @canadianer they can still review and vote to leave the question open ;) $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 8:25
  • $\begingroup$ @WYSIWYG But nobody sees that, which may give the impression that people aren't voting. Hence the comment. $\endgroup$
    – canadianer
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 8:30
  • $\begingroup$ @canadianer You can see votes to leave open in the review history: biology.stackexchange.com/review/close/history. So they are not "invisible". $\endgroup$
    – fileunderwater
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 10:00
  • $\begingroup$ @canadianer Voting to leave open is also considered a review and the post will be gone from the review queue if sufficient votes are in favour of keeping it open. What is worrisome is that the review queue itself gets very long. $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 10:10

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