draft

(The “We’re not dead anymore” edition)

New Moderator Ability to Redact Revisions

We’ve reworked the entire revision redaction system, into something not only less destructive than the old system of revision destruction, but also into something which moderators can perform. Now, rather than simply destroying revisions which contain the old data, the existing revision is directly modified. This is, as always, to be used when there is sensitive information to be removed, for example when an author inadvertently posts passwords or license keys.

To redact a revision, first head to the revision history of the post in question, and locate the latest revision that contains the sensitive information. (For posts that haven’t yet been edited, the revision history may be obtained by navigating to the URL /posts/[id]/revisions, where [id] is the ID of the post being redacted). In the far right of revision actions is redact, select that to bring up an edit window. Remove or replace the content as necessary for the situation, and provide an appropriate edit summary explaining the redaction. A moderator who submits a redaction must then have their redaction approved by another moderator or an employee. Redactions are reviewed via the moderator flag queue, and use a flag labelled “revision redaction approval” which can be filtered like any other flag type. Once the redaction is approved, the revision is modified and a “redacted by” annotation will appear on it to moderators on both the revision history and in the timeline view. When filling in the “Redaction Summary” field, describe the reason for the redaction; this will be visible to other moderators and eventually to trusted users.

In the event that multiple revisions contain the sensitive data, each revision containing this data must be individually redacted, from most recent to earliest. However, the system will attempt to aid you in this: performing a redaction on an earlier revision will attempt to smart-apply the changes made to the later revision, offering the options to accept the automatic changes, perform additional redactions, or discard and perform manual redactions. Please review the the provided diffs on the page in order to confirm that the redaction is sane; in most cases you can rapidly redact all remaining revisions with this automatic assistance (each submitted redaction will still require approval from another moderator before being applied to the revision).

New Moderator Ability to Modify Edit Summaries

Moderators can now modify the revision comments of individual revisions, in order to address abusive or offensive content which people stash in there. When viewing a post’s revision history, there’s a new option edit comment, which will bring an inline editor for the current edit summary. The edits from this action are applied instantly, and are treated as if the original revision used this edit summary.

New Option “contact community team” Added to Mod Menu on Users

For convenience, we’ve now added a direct channel for contacting the community team when you encounter a problem your moderator team is ill-equipped to handle. There’s a new option on the mod menu for the user page, called “contact community team”. Fill this out and it’ll generate a ticket in our support system, automatically including your profile as a moderator and the profile of the user you’re contacting us about, along with the custom message you provide containing the details of the problem. Once received, our Community Ops team will handle it, or will contact you (the moderator) via the email in your profile if any follow-up is necessary. This will allow you to deal with situations like user merges, underage users, and network spammers without needing to leave the page you are performing your investigations from.

  Read more → Can we have a moderator only “flag for community team/developer attention” link on posts?

Revision Redaction Implemented to Replace Revision Destruction

We introduced a new tool for the Community Team which allows us to directly modify a specific revision in a post history in order to remove elements such as private credentials. This replaces the previous system where we simply destroyed the revisions that contained such information. Redacted revisions will be marked in red text (visible to moderators only) as “redacted by [Team member]” in the revision history of the post. We will be using this tool going forward whenever you contact us to remove sensitive information from a post’s history – something you can now do using the “contact” option described above!

Closing Statistics Now Available for Moderators and 10k Users

Statistics on closing on your site can now be found as part of the 10k tools. You can find these either by heading to /tools/question-close-stats. Alternatively, you can find them from “question close stats” found in the links section at the bottom of the Close view in the 10k tools.

It’s important to keep an eye on how off-topic is being used on a site. If good questions are being closed incorrectly, the predefined reasons may be too vague; if too many bad questions are being left open or closed with “other” (custom comments left by the close-voter), then you may have picked the wrong reasons. If you see something amiss, don’t hesitate to bring it up for discussion on your meta.

More information on the specific statistics can be found at New 10K tool: question close statistics.