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I'm reviewing candidates for moderator. I would like to see their comments and other actions like up-votes, down-votes and closures (in addition to questions and answers). The comments, up-votes, down-votes and closures indicate (to me) how the candidate will perform (assuming past performance is an indicator of future expectations).

The comments, up-votes, down-votes and closures are tucked away under All Actions tab of a profile. I can view mine, but I cannot view others.

I'd like to request the entire profile for Moderator candidates be made available for inspection.

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The places to learn more about mod candidates are the Q&A here on Meta and the Election chat room where all the candidates answer questions thrown at them.

Please keep in mind that the site is primarily community moderated, so the individual voting pattern of mods isn't very important. Even their casting of close votes isn't as important nowadays, there are enough highrep users to close (or not close) a lot of questions without a mod joining in. Which is how it should be, actually.

More important is their ability to step in in situations where the community can't resolve an issue on its own and/or where emotions start to take over. Also, even mods don't work in isolation but as Part of a team which supports decision making by mods and sometimes also discusses individual mod behavior (in case things go severely wrong).

PS: Not even moderators can see up/down votes of other users when locking at a specific question/answer. We can see the "All Actions" tab for all users but honestly I had to verify this first because there just never was the need to look.

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  • Thanks. If we can't see up/down voting history, then we have no idea how they manage good on-topic questions and off-topic garbage. And we can't judge their judgement and discretion. And if they almost never down-vote, then that indicates to me they try to please too much and confrontation may be a problem. Its not like I'm asking for anything obscene. In the real world, we know political candidate voting history. That's pretty much all we have to go on. – user83961 Jul 4 '17 at 9:06
  • There are good reasons for not showing the voting history of anybody and there are good reasons for showing it. I'm sure that the discussion has come up on meta.stackexchange.com already at least once. – nohillside♦ Jul 4 '17 at 9:23
  • Yeah, I thought the topic would have been discussed before, but... moderator election "show profile" site:meta.stackexchange.com. I don't agree with any reasons for not showing it for someone seeking a Moderator position. Moderators should be judged for fitness of the role; and we should not have to depend on doubletalk in the chat rooms. Sunlight is still the best disinfectant. Access to history ensures transparency. – user83961 Jul 4 '17 at 10:06
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    Do you really want mods who downvote a lot? Or do you want to have mods who (if they see a low quality question) either coach the poster in improving the text or edit the text themself to remove the reason for downvoting? – nohillside♦ Jul 4 '17 at 10:54
  • @jww For your reference, you can see how much up- and downvotes users have cast. I will copy them here. Format upvotes on main / downvotes on main / upvotes on meta / downvotes on meta. grgarside: 7218 / 3015 / 359 / 60. Monomeeth: 2373 / 8 / 127 / 1. Glorfindel: 127 / 1366 / 9 / 3. Jackson1442: 131 / 30 / 13 / 1. – wythagoras Jul 5 '17 at 18:39
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Some of what you ask isn’t exposed to any end user whether you’re a new user or trusted user with 20k rep or an elected moderator.

However, most of that data is already available from the periodic data dumps and Stack Exchange data explorer interface.

Comments are trivial to look at:

Change the user and pick out any data you wish to review.

Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about single votes to close or even patterns as an end user. Those votes aren’t binding and are easily reviewed, challenged, undone - the system is designed to withstand malicious actors so people acting in good faith rarely cause issues.

I echo Patrix in that the moderation team is collaborative and is given detailed guidance and support by the community team - we end up being much more than the same user as before with a diamond tacked on our names.

Lastly, we rarely need to worry about pleasing or dis-pleasing and instead we just help when pattern are starting to form to reach out to a person and say “hey - I see a few of your questions were closed recently - can I help you work on them to edit or are the guidelines clear at this point” or “hey - I can see both sides of this. Rather than keep editing this post - let’s get a new post up to make the point for which you are making a good case.”

We really do moderate far more than discipline or act unilaterally and when we do act unilaterally - we have channels to get someone else to double check our work to make sure we weren’t missing something or not too hasty.

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