December 2013 Newsletter

Universal Stack Exchange Top Bar

We have rolled out a new universal top bar for the entire Stack Exchange Network. Reputation and badge notifications update in real-time and show consolidated events from across the network. Additionally, moderators see some new functionality: moderator-relevant notifications are stored in a separate inbox that appears only on the site(s) you moderate. We may be expanding moderator functionality in the future to include additional information that is relevant to the moderator teams.

  Read more on the features of the top bar as a whole → A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange

Upcoming Meta Stack Exchange Splitting from Meta Stack Overflow

We are finally progressing towards our long hinted-at separation of a general network-wide meta site from Meta Stack Overflow. While nothing has been implemented yet, you can read up on how we plan to execute this change and how the site will be managed at Stack Overflow is getting a place of its own.

Question and Answer Block Visibility

Moderators can view on a user’s profile whether or not that user is blocked from posting questions and/or answers. A simple yes or no will indicate their current status. In the event that a blocked user has attempted to post, the last such timestamp will also be included. Note that only the answer block is enabled network-wide, to take care of spammers. The question block is only enabled on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Mathematics, and Programmers. On other sites, it will list the asking block as “disabled” appropriately.

Spam and Offensive Automunging

When a post is deleted by accumulating enough spam and/or offensive flags, the post’s contents will now be automatically hidden and replaced with the following text.

This answer was marked as spam or offensive and is therefore not shown – you can see the revision history for details

Note that moderators will not see this message and instead will continue to see the post in its latest state. As such, do not feel obligated to personally censor naughtiness that gets flagged, and be sure to use these flags yourself when handling these kinds of posts.