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While making a hard and fast rule for every kind of 'unpleasant flavor text' is impossible, I think for cases like the post in question it's rather simpler.
Terms like rape, assault and murder are never necessary to convey the mathematical content of a question. Further, these terms are going to be off-putting for a fair portion of the audience. For a ...
27
If you actually, truly and honestly believe that there was an abuse of moderator power, the appropriate thing to do would be to contact the SE staff using the contact us link found in the footer of every page of math.se and meta.math.se. Site moderators do not have access to messages sent to the SE team in this way. I believe you can also email them at team@...
27
What if someone makes a few unsavory comments, or edits, or enters an edit war on your question? Shouldn't you be able and notify the moderators? What if you decide that it might be better to migrate the question to a different site on the SE network, but there are useful comments or answers that are worth preserving?
Yes, you could potentially raise a flag ...
26
My bad. I completely misunderstood your flag.
You wrote:
User already posted an extension of this answer.
And given Martin's comment (link viewable to 10K+) which began
Please read more carefully. I have already remarked above that this map ...
I mistakenly assumed that the word "user" in your flag refers to Martin. And the "extension" referred to ...
20
As it stands, having merely rejected the edit and given a custom reason won't draw the moderator's attention. For that, the appropriate course of action would be to flag the post to which the edit was suggested for moderator attention, and explain the problem and ideally provide a link to the suggested edit (which you can find under the "activity" tab of ...
19
Short answer: here.
I now proceed to ignore your question and instead look at what I think is the motivation. If you want to moderate the site based on flags, I say go for it. If the mod team thinks you are flagging far too much, we'll let you know.
You ask about bad questions/answers and flags. In many cases, the correct behaviour for bad questions/...
18
Your question is too broad. Not only could there be enough answers to write a book on, such actually exists. (You essentially admit as much in your question.)
In clear-cut cases I fail to see the reason to wait for enough 3K users to happen by the question in order for it to be put on hold. This takes time. Even with the review queues, because posts don't ...
18
Is the suspension of the new account given as a first offense (i.e., a couple of days), or do the moderators continue from the previous account?
It depends on the type of offense. Say the user was suspended for being rude on his old account, and had a 7 day and then a 30 day suspension. Then a new account comes, and the user is again rude. This would ...
17
First, let me say I am opposed to moderators acting like a single entity. After all, we're all different people from different parts of the world, and we have different opinions on matters. I do not think it is unfortunate for the mod team to have different view points. For example, some of us prefer to be more active, other prefer to be more laid back and ...
17
Let me begin by saying that I didn't personally handle either of your flags. Were I to be handling them, I would have had the following thoughts:
What's wrong with the graded-ring/module tag?
Are you literally asking me whether those tags are fine to be applied to this question? I don't know! And shouldn't this question be addressed to the user who ...
16
I think the reason for the declined flag says it all:
flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires [moderator] attention.
The posts you link to really don't need a moderator; you would be better off raising a close flag (and leaving a comment if you had additional information). For one, such a flag will almost certainly get ...
16
Makoto Kato: You wanted community to respond to the question whether you were abused by the moderators. Look at the voting on your question: 6 votes say that you were, 24 votes say that you were not. That is the answer from the community (may be not final yet).
My friendly advice. Concentrate on the math. In meta you only aggravate people. If you can manage ...
16
If your question has an upvoted answer it cannot be self-deleted anymore. That's one reason why it can make sense to self-close rather than to self-delete.
Another reason is that some duplicates are worth preserving as duplicates and should not be deleted. For example if you used different terminology to describe the same thing, later searches might find ...
16
The organization of the moderators team is informal. There is no hierarchy and there are no assigned roles. Of course, a less experienced moderators might ask more experienced ones for advice at times. There is no separate reputation-system either; in principle, there is statistical data on our activity.
While this is not formalized, in practice there is a ...
14
I highly doubt that the comment was deleted just because someone disliked it (and brought it up with the SE staff). For myself, I did feel that the comment was borderline. It is relevant to the post to the extent that it expressed an opinion about the feature request, but such an opinion probably should be expanded to a full answer. Also, the fact that it ...
14
If the threads are useful the question-post usually will include a good nucleus that just never developed.
It thus usually should be possible to add some context in order to make the question-post acceptable.
I know that there is resistance to larger edits by users other than the post owner, but I think at least for questions that are old and of the type ...
13
Within what time period is the request handled?
It depends. The average is several hours, I think it was about 3 hours last time this was discussed. But there is quite some variance. Also recall all moderators are volunteers.
Will the moderators inform you by email about their decision?
Normally, not. However, the fate of your flags can be ...
13
Your question brings up a few points that I want to clarify, ranging from philosophical to rather technical. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible.
Suspensions are a tool available to moderators that allow them to resolve disruptions with the least amount of intervention possible. While the system recommends a length at which they might suspend a user, ...
13
I thank Makoto Kato for letting us know what moderator actions were taken. Note that the moderators themselves maintain a policy of not publicizing actions taken to discipline community members.
Some of us feel you (Makoto Kato) pursued a strategy in 2012 for gaining reputation by pleading unfair downvoting on Meta. The asymmetry of points for "balancing" ...
13
"The community" in this case means "five users including the OP". If five users disagree with a moderator, it does not mean the community as a whole disagree with the moderator. It means five users do. Moderators are expressly given the power to overrule other users for when they believe the process did not work as intended. This is the whole reason to elect ...
13
There is no clear-cut answer to this. Let me try to outline some principles.
There is no need to tolerate gratuitous reference to violence, crime and alike. More broadly there is no need to tolerate intentionally provocative wordings that are used for the sake of it.
That being said if something comes up naturally I think we should not overdo the editing. As ...
12
"I was certain from the very beginning that my vote is a waste of time, since one needs some knowledge and willingness to perceive why that question is a duplicate, ..."
I'm willing to grant that Readers are lucky to have knowledgeable and willing experts such as yourself on this topic to spot the connection that is hidden to most of us. But would it not ...
11
When an account is created with the sole purpose of trolling, spamming, etc, we generally destroy the account. This (as well as deletions of posts by spam flags) feeds information into a system which makes it more difficult for such people to continue posting their drivel on the site. There is evidence that upwards of 80% of all spam attempted to be posted ...
10
I do not think that it is reasonable to expect moderators to act as judges on mathematical correctness or mathematical relevance of some comments.
Even if they certainly could on some occasions it is unreasonable to expect them (or anybody) to be able to do so always; moreover it should also be too time-consuming. There is a large number of flags to be ...
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