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Let's talk about why the queue regularly reaches 200+ posts.
Right now, the queue regularly grows to huge numbers. Today, I cleaned out 100 posts that had been in the mod queue for as long as 4 days. Honestly, this is quite embarrassing to see. I frequently lurk on StackOverflow and comparatively, this place is in disarray.
Some of my thoughts on the issues and possible solutions: 1) There is absolutely no motivation to clean the mod queue besides "good-will". 2) The mod tools are horribly un-intuitive(multiple steps to move to Help Room, hard to find questions you've moderated, clunky interface, etc).
One big problem I see is that there is neither accountability nor recognition. Posts that have been moderated should have logs readable to other moderators of who, what, and when has been done to it. Additionally, I support karma being given out for helping moderate. People enjoy recognition of their services. Especially with the bad tools at hand, moderating is not enjoyable in the least bit. Give something in exchange, even if it's simply recognition with imaginary internet points.
I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on the matter.
Answer by Owen-Reynolds · May 24, 2017 at 03:40 AM
If you look at the first few pages of Default UA, you'll find plenty of simple debugging Q's answered by 2K+ rep users. Suppose you get the tools to see who Accepted "why don't these ifs play my sound?" You could yell at them, but they wouldn't understand why, and neither would the next 3 mods.
The moderator community has changed in the last two years. Mods who think this should be a technical forum are long gone. It's now a Unity-themed chat room - beyond disarray. And that's all new mods have ever seen. I used to take the time to write polite rejection notices, etc... since I knew every other mod was doing it, so it only seemed fair. Plus I knew other mods would back me up if someone complained. These days, most mods think the queue is just to reject spam.
I agree with your points. However, we have to start from somewhere. I don't think anyone is very happy with the current state of affairs here - new users complain on the Forums about long queue times and many people struggle to get answers. I think this is mostly due to garbage questions, but a lot of quality slips through because a lot of knowledge has been run off due to the disarray.
If this is the future of UA that many are accepting, then fair enough. I guess this site helps keep a lot of low quality questions off the Forums.
Looking through the old $$anonymous$$ETA's about these same problems from 3-6 years ago is a bit saddening. Very engaged moderation community back then. A lot of big users who haven't visited in years. Just sad to see a community bleed knowledge for years and years and nothing be done to stop it.
That 3rd para is very much what I'm thinking. That group is gone and that UA is gone. I$$anonymous$$HO, the solution is to acknowledge the mod queue hasn't served a useful function for years, and to get rid of it. We're not killing the old UA - just burying it.
Answer by Glurth · May 26, 2017 at 05:09 PM
It's all a matter of effort. Why would I, as a mod put, any effort into improving the quality of the site, if the owner of the site puts almost no effort into it? Tons and tons of suggestions have been provided by mods and users, that would help improve the quality of the site, almost none have been implemented. Here is a super simple example: "Mark a question as a duplicate" - per upvote on this "mark", get some karma, and subtract some karma from the mod who approved it.
Sure, we like to help people, which is why we answer questions; but nobody wants to do the work FOR somebody else (without compensation), including/particularly for the guys who ARE making potential money off our effort (Unity).
I agree with that 1st sentence, but it's also a chicken and egg problem. Why should Unity work to change/add features that no one asked for? Right now, now one even bothers to move Duplicates to the HelpRoom(*). The way the site is now, marking duplicates would anger the few users it happened to, and confuse most mods who don't understand why you'd mark them anyway.
A few months ago I noted that the HelpRoom wasn't mentioned in the FAQ. SC noticed and pasted a section in. Down below, the pre-help-room section about rejecting Q's is still wrong. But the thing is, clearly no one reads the FAQ. SC made the right call to only spend a few $$anonymous$$utes. If lots of new users complain on $$anonymous$$ETA about confusing rules then you make an effort.
(*) Not saying this is wrong, with the way Unity works now, but the OP recently answered this: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1358053/whats-faster-lerp-or-lerpunclamped-performance.html which is a effectively duplicate of this: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/953384/why-is-the-t-value-clamped-to-0-1-in-lerp-function.html
You are correct. I do not check for duplicates when going through the mod queue. I should, but that'd mean I could only get a fraction of what I do right now.
I can agree with this too, have been trying to get the mod queue down for the past 3 days but it feels like I'm the only one trying to make a difference in the moderation and it's just not worth the effort.
The kicker will be; when someone logs on and in 2 $$anonymous$$utes, just bulk-approves everything in the queue, without consequence; effectively making any effort you might have put into moderation of the questions, instantly wasted.
This is the main reason I don't even look at the mod queue nowadays. I don't want to be the bulk-approving-jerk, and I don't want to have my time wasted by him either.
Edit: And, as you've seen, there it goes, dammit. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1359140/is-a-guy-25-years-older-than-you-bad.html?childToView=1359569#comment-1359569
What guidelines do you use: From the FAQ? Previous experience with, for example, StackOverflow? Do you send Q's to the HelpRoom (do you find the guidelines clear for that?) How do you handle "$$anonymous$$e too," and piggyback (ex: how would that work for a 2D game) comments/Qs? Do you reject Qs (with a comment why)?
When I last used the $$anonymous$$od queue, it worked out I sent almost everything to the HelpRoom. For answers, I usually also sent that old Q to the HelpRoom (which is where it usually belonged. I quit after realizing I was the only person who thought that way. $$anonymous$$ods were just working at cross-purposes. For example, I often re-opened a debugging Q and sent it to the HelpRoom. I tried to leave a respectful comment for the closer: "we can keep the site clean and also help this user in the appropriate place" but ... I think other $$anonymous$$ods just found it annoying.
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