2021: a year in moderation

Question

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.

So as we say goodbye to 2021, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Mathematics over the past 12 months:

Action	Moderators	Community¹
Users suspended²	415	126
Users destroyed³	108	0
Users deleted	421	0
Users contacted	734	0
User suspensions lifted early	9	0
User banned from review	12	0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue	57	50,727
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue	21	25,284
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue	67	68,637
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue	11	9,813
Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue	2	24,189
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue	19	41,154
Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue	0	8,028
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue	1,165	109,757
Tags merged	16	0
Tag synonyms proposed	9	2
Tag synonyms created	16	1
Revisions redacted	34	0
Questions unprotected	1	25
Questions reopened	46	1,076
Questions protected	2	226
Questions migrated	31	53
Questions merged	30	0
Questions flagged⁵	54	29,420
Questions closed	3,090	42,286
Question flags handled⁵	3,321	25,637
Posts unlocked	9	56
Posts undeleted	219	10,095
Posts locked	94	367
Posts deleted⁶	1,417	111,125
Posts bumped	0	8,204
Escalations to the Community Manager team	68	0
Comments undeleted	188	0
Comments flagged	95	10,366
Comments deleted⁷	21,377	102,471
Comment flags handled	7,770	2,699
Bounties canceled	29	0
Answers flagged	132	15,713
Answer flags handled	3,681	12,163
All comments on a post moved to chat	421	0

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Mathematics without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.

³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.

⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.

⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).

⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Further reading:

• Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2020: a year in moderation

• You can also check out this report on other sites

• Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^

Answer 1

This is the difference from 2020 to 2021, computed as percentage increase, $$\frac{\textsf{newstat}-\textsf{oldstat}}{\textsf{oldstat}}\%.$$

Action	Moderators	Community
Users suspended	41 %	22 %
Users destroyed	-47 %	----
Users deleted	4 %	----
Users contacted	74 %	----
User suspensions lifted early	80 %	----
User banned from review	-67 %	----
Suggested Edit	0 %	-29 %
Reopen Vote queue	75 %	-13 %
Low Quality Posts queue	294 %	-10 %
Late Answer queue	83 %	-5 %
First questions queue	----	----
First Post queue	138 %	-38 %
First answers queue	----	----
Close Votes queue	-20 %	-16 %
Tags merged	33 %	----
Tag synonyms proposed	50 %	-60 %
Tag synonyms created	167 %	0 %
Revisions redacted	1600 %	----
Questions unprotected	-----	213 %
Questions reopened	-36 %	26 %
Questions protected	-50 %	28 %
Questions migrated	29 %	-26 %
Questions merged	-51 %	----
Questions flagged	35 %	33 %
Questions closed	10 %	1 %
Question flags handled	-4 %	38 %
Posts unlocked	-53 %	-59 %
Posts undeleted	-20 %	-22 %
Posts locked	-47 %	-20 %
Posts deleted	-8 %	-2 %
Posts bumped	0 %	-4 %
Escalations to the Community Manager team	21 %	----
Comments undeleted	74 %	----
Comments flagged	53 %	-6 %
Comments deleted	28 %	-9 %
Comment flags handled	-10 %	9 %
Bounties canceled	123 %	---
Answers flagged	-16 %	19 %
Answer flags handled	11 %	21 %
All comments on a post moved to chat	212 %	---