
A day in the life of a stackoverflow moderator... - p8952
http://stackoverflow.com/posts/16630713/revisions
======
iLoch
I had a moderator change the wording of my writing because they didn't like
the way I was doing it, it looked a lot like what was going on here. They
revised it such that it partially lost the meaning of what I was saying, but
also just didn't come across the way I had intended to write it - so I changed
it back. Then they changed it back. Then I changed it back again. Then they
changed it back. Finally I changed the post back to my own wording, and I
guess the moderator said "fuck it" because the changes stopped.

The mods seem a little power hungry. If you're a SO mod, I'm sure you've got
better things to do than correct tiny grammatical quirks that make people who
they are - try focusing on the bigger issues.

Edit: Ahh, mine wasn't quite this dramatic - I didn't notice how many
revisions there were. This is hilarious and sad.

~~~
klodolph
I doubt it was a moderator that edited your post. Moderators are unlikely to
engage in edit wars because it would be easier for them to lock the post.

Your post may have been edited by just another user. Look for a diamond ♦ in
the username. The diamond indicates that the user is a moderator. However, any
user with 2,000 rep or more can edit posts. There are a lot of 2k rep users on
Stack Overflow! Some of them are teenagers (look at the profiles).

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ThomW
What kind of jerk has his question answered by the Stackoverflow community,
then insist it be pulled so others don't benefit?

~~~
pothibo
Revision #8 is insane... I don't understand what goes through his head

~~~
gnagatomo
He tries again at #19. What a shame...

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kunai
Let's just hope this doesn't get renamed to "Revisions" by some misanthropic,
overzealous HN invisimod.

~~~
kbar13
kunai your posts aren't showing up

jk

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denzil_correa
If you want to read answers from the Stackoverflow moderators(or Diamond users
as they are called) you might want to check the discussion on
meta.stackoverflow.

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166623/what-is-a-
day...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166623/what-is-a-day-in-the-
life-of-a-stack-overflow-moderator-like)

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MrZongle2
This must be the part of the day where the moderators aren't closing _useful_
questions due to subjectivity.

I really wish they could just have a "subjective" flag and let users filter
out those posts as they see fit. Some of the closed-subjective material is
quite useful, as it contains the _hows_ and _whys_ behind developers choosing
a framework or widget or technical solution over another.

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itafroma
I think this was supposed to show the crap Stack Overflow power users have to
deal with, but I think it more clearly shows some of the worst qualities of
the Stack Overflow moderation system.

With a large caveat that moderators have the ability to scrub context from a
problem question (e.g., comments) and user (e.g., deleting their past
submissions), this is what appears to the outside world:

* A new user asks what they think is a dumb question.

* They get an answer. Still thinking it was a dumb question and not knowing how Stack Overflow works, attempts to blank out the question and request deletion.

* A user with 22k rep (i.e., a power user) goes in and rolls back the question.

* The asker rolls back the rollback.

At this point, the appropriate thing to do is flag the question for a
moderator (important addendum: _and move on_ ). That doesn't happen. Instead:

* The power user—who really should know better—gets into a petty rollback war with the asker, and the question gets reverted 15 times in 5 minutes before _another_ power user steps in and reverts it.

* The roll back wars stop, but an hour later a diamond moderator steps in and locks the question anyway. (Correction: I originally said it was unlocked 45 minutes later, but child comments correctly point out it was unlocked automatically a week later).

* The asker, who by all appearances has asked a single question, gets banned for 15 years.[1]

* The question, while not the best question ever, is decent enough and gets interesting answers but somehow gets a -35 score (edit: now down to -41 in the 20 minutes since I posted this comment), making it one of the worst questions on the site.[2] The comments[3] speculate that it was due to the edit war. So much for voting on a question instead of the person.

It's stuff like this that drives people up the wall when it comes to Stack
Overflow and Stack Exchange, and it happens way too easily (I know I slipped
into it a few times during my time as a Stack Exchange power user).

[1]:
[http://stackoverflow.com/users/2398036/user2398036](http://stackoverflow.com/users/2398036/user2398036)

[2]: The questions page, when sorted by votes, only goes to -27 on page
410,195:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions?page=410195&sort=votes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?page=410195&sort=votes)

[3]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16630713/is-it-true-in-
py...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16630713/is-it-true-in-python-that-
you-can-import-specific-functions-from-a-module-
unlike#comment29684251_16630713)

~~~
gorrillamcd
15 years?! I didn't know moderators could set arbitrary dates for a "temporary
suspension". A month would be reasonable for a first offense I would think.

~~~
peeters
It was an automatically created "session" user
([http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/44557/why-should-
i-r...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/44557/why-should-i-register-
my-account)), an anonymous user given an ad hoc account which they can later
convert into a normal account. I don't know that issuing this ban in itself
blocks that person from signing up for another account tomorrow. Places like
Wikipedia get more sophisticated to prevent so-called "sock puppetry", I'm not
sure if SO does the same automatically when an account is banned.

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calgaryeng
Life of a stackoverflow moderator - closed as off topic :)

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plus-
The diff algorithm is a bit weird

~~~
gecko
It's trying to do word-by-word diffing, since English isn't code, but, unlike
Word and other tools that attempt to do that, it doesn't have e.g. cursor
movement history to make the editing sane. Thus, that's what you get.

This is a similar problem to what you have on other diff programs, by the way.
Any sane diff tool will give you an equivalent diff to any other one, and
it'll give you an equivalent _minimal_ diff as well, but the _human
friendliness_ of the diff varies widely on the algorithms selected. The best
tools I've seen use some source awareness to give you a diff that can pick up
that e.g. you removed an "if" guard and then unintendented its child block.
The worst do a greedy linear scan to make their patches. Most tools I use
(especially ones based on a recursive algorithm) are in the middle.

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gorrillamcd
I like this user. He seems fun to mess with. :)

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bronsoja
I like how the latest revision is a cleanup edit that introduces another typo.

~~~
gcb1
its probably an attempt at a "reddit roll"

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kevando
Amazing post. I feel like CS courses should have requirements that make them
take up some of this duty.

~~~
aiiane
Please no. That would be worse than the existing situation; many of the
problem cases on SO _are_ CS students.

~~~
Dirlewanger
If anything we need high schools to actually teach how to write effectively
and concisely, not fill out a 5 paragraph template for 4 years. Too many kids
go into college and coast on writing bullshit and fluff.

