August 2013 Newsletter

Moderator Timeline View

Moderators now have access to a ‘timeline’ view on posts which lists activities that have happened to the post in chronological order. The timeline includes edits (suggested and otherwise), deletions, migrations, comments posted, flags, close votes, entries into the review queue, and answers posted (when looking at a question).This new view is designed to help unravel the events of a post: who was involved in the action, when it happened, and the hows and whys of the action’s resolution. You can access this timeline on any post as follows.

    On any post → ‘mod’ » ‘actions’ » ‘timeline’

On any post which has had flags or deleted comments, you’ll also be able to find a link to the timeline on the left side margin.

About Me History Tracking

We added an edit history to the ‘about me’ section of user profiles. Although rare, there are occasions when a moderator must intervene to edit a user’s profile (for instance, to remove extremely abusive language). We do not track the day-to-day changes from users, but when a moderator is forced to make a change to a user profile, it is useful to know what actions were taken. These entries can be found in the user’s history, and link to the associated revision history.

    From a user’s profile page → ‘mod’ » ‘info’ » ‘history’

Deletion and Destruction Reasons

Deletion and destruction now have reasons stored for record-keeping. When deleting a user, a moderator is required to select a pre-established reason (such as the deletion being requested by the user), as well as fill in details regarding specifics that led to a case. Destruction similarly requires the moderator to select a reason, though the free-form field is optional in this case.

In hand with this, moderators are now capable of viewing deleted user entries when viewing the profile of a deleted user. These logs will include background on the deletion event as well as all of the details provided by the deleting moderator as described in the earlier paragraph. Delete logs are only available for users deleted starting a few months ago – earlier entries will appropriately note the lack of a log entry.