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As per: Moderator powers are unchecked. Closing 7/10 programmers-related questions.

I agree whole heartedly. There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place. They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all. These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.

SE is a community run and driven architecture. We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator. Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created. During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.

How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?

It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators. There's always a bad apple in every bunch. I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office.

Since Mr. CRT wishes names to be named: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-near-minimum-wages/89262 <- review the edits made to that post. Perfect example of moderator trolling.

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  • 2
    A couple of moderators? There are four main Programmers.SE moderators - all elected by the community.
    – Josh K Mod
    Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 23:54
  • 1
    Half of them then. That's sad.
    – Edward Strange
    Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 23:59
  • @Josh, I don't understand your question. Correct. At least two of the four are incompetent and are hurting the community. The "voting" for moderators is improper as the results seem to show. EVen if we forget about the people complaining about the bad moderators: If so many questions are being deleted, then the moderators are not getting the point of where the community believes this SE should go.
    – AWF4vk
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 1:18
  • 8
    Too bad only MSO has the "noise or pointless" close reason.
    – Aaronaught
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 1:41
  • Actually, come to think of it, I reverted a moderator edit from a third Programmers.SE moderator that changed a legitimate question about whether one could expect any amount of competence for a rather low wage into, "How do I get people to work for peanuts?" So that means that at least 3/4 of the moderators on that site are abusing their status.
    – Edward Strange
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 2:34
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    @Crazy The edit you reverted was actually from an SE employee, if I recall. It was also made in good faith in an attempt to improve the question. Though you might disagree with the resulting phrasing, it wasn't status abuse in any way.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 2:44
  • 3
    PROTIP: sway readers to your cause by providing punchy examples of the behavior you seek to crusade against. Or as my granny used to say, "Link or it didn't happen".
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 6:10
  • @aaron we got rid of that and standardized on "not constructive" network-wide
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 11:03
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    @Crazy: Your question needs to at least list specific moderators and actions they have taken. Otherwise it's a sensationalist rant. I think Dori's and Mark's answer cover my other thoughts very well.
    – Josh K Mod
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 13:30
  • 1
    Even if stackexchange doesn't implement a way to vote moderators out of office, there really should be some checks and balances. There are two moderators on programmers.se who seem very bored. They have an unnatural and excessive tendency to close questions.
    – Jim G.
    Commented Oct 1, 2011 at 22:15
  • meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/…
    – Jim G.
    Commented Dec 11, 2011 at 4:18
  • It seems to be the fate of any successful and large community to gradually absorb elements of intolerance. This becomes more apparent when the tolerant ones don't speak up. Look at the number of downvotes on this perfectly legitimate question.
    – user1539
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 8:09

1 Answer 1

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Programmers.SE has four community-elected moderators: each of whom is peer-reviewed by the other three. Additionally, the Stack Exchange team has oversight over moderator actions and provides consultation, insight, and guidance for the elected moderators. Finally, all current moderators on Programmers.SE routinely and voluntarily submit their actions for peer review by the moderators of all the sites on the network, and act based on their guidance as well.

Currently, there is no mechanism for voting a moderator out: moderators are elected by the community, serve at the pleasure of Stack Exchange, Inc, and generally serve for terms of at least one year. If you feel a moderator (or any community member) is abusing the community, you can email [email protected] and the team will look into it and determine the best course of action.

Beyond that, raising issues on the meta-discussion site (hopefully in a constructive manner) is how community guidelines get formed: it exposes an issue to the greater community and allows everyone to provide their insights and opinions about how a specific event or a class of events should be moderated.

Virtually all of the guidelines by which moderators act have been created this way. If you feel that something should be moderated in a certain way, I would encourage you to check out the other questions here and/or create a question yourself to open a dialogue with the rest of the community about the issue.

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