The SO Close Vote Review Chat Room is a group of like-minded people who want to make a difference in the CV queue, reviewing, and clean-up efforts.
This guideline has three sections:
- Quick Reference
- Background and in-depth guidance
- History: Our past to understand the present
- Do not ask for up or down votes on any posts. While Shog9 has allowed organized voting in chat rooms, we do not want to be seen as a voting mob. Our goal requires a certain level of support from the community at large, as such we don't want anything in the transcript that could be perceived as us treating people unfairly.
- [cv-pls] should not be a habit for users. (Don't make it an instinct to fast-track every eligible post to the front of the closure system. Exceptions are okay if the post is really bad or the users in that tag can't close the post in time.)
- Members are not expected to close vote any post you bring up. (Furthermore, do not pressure anyone into doing so. cv-pls means "close vote please", not "close vote or I'll stab you.")
- Avoid extended discussion about a cv-pls. (We don't have to agree about a close request. We're not a democracy. However, users that are posting cv-pls'es that are blatantly wrong will be told so. The final verdict is on the RO team.)
- Do not post feedback on success (or failure) of a cv-pls request. (I.e., no "boom"ing.)
- Work with the OP to get their post into shape; most content has some value.
- De-escalate in case of disagreement.
- Tag burnination requests and tag cleanup requests must be backed by an MSO post with significant community support.
- A post is to be actively handled by only one member of the room. (We don't need 4 members all leaving witty statements in the comments or in chat.)
- Keep oneboxed images to a minimum. (We wish to keep the room civil and mostly on topic, but that does not mean you can't have a little tasteful fun too. At any of the room owner's discretion, images may be moved to trash at anytime without warning, such decisions are final. Obviously, offensive and NSFW images are grounds for being kicked and moderator intervention.)
- Please refrain from using oneboxes/noisy formatting. (When posting a URL, use link syntax to make the link "natural")
- No GIFs in chat. They are more distracting than one-boxed messages.
- All members are accountable for their actions. (If/when such accountability is requested on meta.)
- All discussions are public. (The RO team has an offline/private lounge for sensitive subjects if necessary.)
- In absence of all room owners, the members lead by example.
- Keep it professional, keep a high standard.
- Moderate the post, not the user. (keep the discussion on the merits of the post, not on behavior of the user)
- Is a role model for the kind of participation expected.
- Makes the final call in any dispute, unless the RO team decide otherwise.
- Clears messages that are starred with a tag from the starboard
- Keeps the number of pinned items in the starboard to a minimum. It's ok to update and replace an existing if the information is still relevant.
- Keep the tags that the room is working on in the description of the chat room. This way we don't need to use pinned messages.
- Start the meeting.
- Schedule the events.
- Reels in conversation if it gets out of hand.
- Moves messages or conversations to SO Tavern or a trash bin if necessary.
- Moves handled cv-pls request to the CV Request Graveyard.
The moderation efforts of the room has broadened, but we still aim to reduce the close vote queue length. However, the room now acts pro-actively by issuing “[cv-pls]” (type: [tag:cv-pls]) requests, reopen voting, tag cleanup, burnination efforts, editing, coaching/commenting, delete voting, and feeding the roomba.
We love this community. Our goal is to get rid of the "crap" so the good content can be found with greater ease. As room owners we are sensitive for the needs of the community on Stack Overflow and encourage our members to help us create a guidance toolkit that enables all of us to fulfill those needs.
No matter what is asked from us, we moderate the post and educate the user, the be nice policy is our bible.
Make sure you are ok with exerting your power, but understand when it is necessary to do so to keep the peace.
We are open for any critic, feedback, and guidance received from the community as we are a part of it.
Room owners step in the moment we notice site users are targeted by any room member. This goes without warning.
To be an effective member of this room you'll need access to the review queues and you’ll need to have some experience on Stack Overflow. Ideally 3k reputation, but 1k will do. That assumes you know the core of the site and assumes you have enough experience in (self)moderation.
To stop us from turning into a chaotic voting ring, we have set up rules and guidelines for members to follow.
If a question is closed following a cv-pls that was posted in the room you can hop into the room for an explanation. Expect the following policy to be followed to avoid any unnecessary drama:
Whoever first answers (avoid crowding!):
- Inform the user about what happened.
- Explanation of a cv-pls.
- How people in the room acted.
- What it means to have a question closed.
- Explain that from now on, only the author of the cv-pls is going to discuss.
Author of the cv-pls:
- Inform the user about the reasons why this happened.
- Why the question is off-topic.
- If it can be improved and how.
- Relevant pointers (help center, meta posts, IDYB, etc.).
If the previous has not solved the issue, we will stop the discussion and redirect you to Meta to have our actions scrutinized by somewhat independent community members.
Not an Answer (NaA) and Very Low Quality (VLQ) flag requests are not allowed here*; a mod will see them anyway, and the amount of flags on a post has no bearing on the action they take.
* Requests to re-flag a post are allowed; only if the previous flag was invalidated due to an edit.
Spam and Offensive flag requests are allowed; if enough of these flags accumulate, the post will be automatically deleted.
Discussions about whether or not borderline answers warrant flags are allowed, as long as you are actually interested in a discussion and you aren't trying to coerce users into flagging.
Comment flags for rude/abusive comments are OK but DO NOT one-box the comment in our transcript as that might get chat flags which sort of defeats the goal in the first place.
You can request people to review a post to add Close Votes, but mind the bullet points under "General Expectations for Members".
When you become a Room Owner we believe you are that for life. Even when circumstances changes and Room Owners turn down their participation knob we still feel they are part of the team.
The active room owners are:
The inactive room owners are:
- durron597
- Tiny Giant
- Andrew Cheong - The original room owner and creator of the room.
- Dukeling
We really shouldn't need room owners, but because we do we need to establish some guidelines. Room owners are here to slow down the enthusiastic crowd and to make sure we focus on posts and their quality and not on users.
The CV chat room has quite a bit of power. In the extreme cases we can insta-close any question, and this gives us moderator-like powers with very little external oversight. We lead by example to prevent the room from becoming a mob.
There are no obligations. We can't force you to do anything, and we don't want to either. The first purpose of the chat room is to have company as you go through the queue. Having a group beside you as you take on the queue really helps morale. We are also here to help with questions about what to do. Not sure what to do with a post? Post a link and we will take a look at it.
We are also using a tactic for the queue’s filtering. By having all members concentrate on a single tag at a time we have a higher chance of completing the review tasks that we process. The bot, Closey, will inform members of the tags to work on at the start of the event (or on demand with bot commands).
We don't want to become a close vote posse. Every user should handle the review based on their own opinion/knowledge, choosing leave open, close, edit or skip when appropriate. Concentrating attention on a question in the context of whether or not to close a question, severely biases attention toward closing the question.1
The room owners run a script on a regular basis to clean up the room transcript. Any cv-pls message that links to a question which is: closed/deleted, or has no close votes after 3 days will be moved to the CV Request Graveyard. In that process, if one of the cv-pls you posted gets moved, you get invited to that room. We're sorry about that, but we will not talk there or meet you there. That room is only meant to be the list of handled cv-pls messages.
So don't be alarmed or feel left out if the invite to the graveyard room doesn't result in any response from us. It is a byproduct of our moving action and we can't prevent you being invited, sorry.
To make our live easier we have the support of four bots that you either can interact with or make you aware of posts that might need our attention.
Smokey (aka Smoke Detector)
The Smoke Detector is a headless chatbot that detects spam or offensive content, then posts links to it to chatrooms for review. It is created and maintained by the CharCoal team. In the SOCVR room we only get reports for Stack Overflow.
Smokey is for tracking spam, and offensive content. It is not for stalking regular users who happen to exhibit behaviors that you disagree with. If you see some behavior that you disagree with, please do not blacklist the user with smokey, instead use a custom moderator flag and explain what you think the problem is.
This room is about content, not users.
Closey (aka SOCVR-Chatbot)
The SOCVR-Chatbot is designed to track the actions of the members, provide statistics, and perform repetitive tasks that otherwise would have to be done manually.
Pham
Pham posts a link (including various pieces of information about the post) to questions/answers which are potentially deemed (very) low quality, the bot is not intended to detect spam/abusive posts.
Yam (aka GraveRobber)
Yam checks cv-pls'es which are moved to the graveyard to see if any of the posts warrant reopening.
All bots that post in the room have to be cleared by the Room Owner team. Without their prior approval bots will be kicked as soon as they appear.
First, check out the chat room's schedule of events. It's updated by the room owners and shows the weekly meet-ups. There are two time periods to choose from (you can choose both if you are able to) so that people in all time zones can join.
If you can't wait until a weekly event, or want to help out more often, we do a smaller review session each day. Hop into chat between 17:00 and 22:00 UTC and help us fight the queue (times change by day and member availability).
We are all humans and have different backgrounds but solid reputation in a wide-range of tags. If you feel we misjudged a gem, closed for the wrong reason or blindly followed advice from our peers feel free to ask for a reopen. Based on your feedback we'll learn, improve your question and help in getting it re-opened by casting re-open votes. This will improve our actions, so please provide feedback.
Members of chat have made some user scripts to help make your life easier (or just more enjoyable).
- Shortcut keys - A script that allows a user to use the number keys to click review buttons, speeding up review time.
- Pre-baked Comments to be used with Auto review Comments
- Bot Commands Auto-complete - Auto completes commands for the chat bot.
- Stack Exchange Editor Toolkit - Fixes most common grammatical and usage errors with a click
- Other user scripts
We have a chat bot that you can play around with and help keep track of our activities. You can find the code base here. The bot's name is Closey; hop in the room and type @Closey help.
The following is the Stack Exchange Data Exporter query we use for demeriting which tags to focus on: Tags that can be cleared of votes
You can see the day-to-day progress of the size of the close vote from this neat online graph. An explanation for the drops each day can be found on this MSO post.
Let's face it. The Close Vote Queue on Stack Overflow is huge. It's a dauntingly large number. At one point, it was over 100k. It's a much tamer amount now, but it can feel like your contributions don't amount to anything. Hence the start of the initiative to start a Close Vote room back in 2013.
The room originated as a meeting place once a week to handle your 40 allotted review tasks. The feeling to make a dent with a couple of fellow users worked as an incentive. The motivation to make a difference is still there.
We feel your pain. We want to help. Together, we can make a dent.
1: Paragraph adapted from Rene's original chat room FAQ. Mentioned here for attribution purposes.