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As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.

So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Role-playing Games over the past 12 months:

Action Moderators Community¹
All comments on a post moved to chat 87 0
Answer flags handled 436 390
Answers flagged 18 807
Bounties canceled 3 0
Comment flags handled 2,585 694
Comments deleted⁷ 7,239 3,199
Comments flagged 39 3,241
Comments undeleted 83 0
Escalations to the Community Manager team 1 0
Posts bumped 0 44
Posts deleted⁶ 185 855
Posts locked 8 74
Posts undeleted 10 81
Posts unlocked 1 2
Question flags handled⁵ 250 558
Questions closed 124 527
Questions flagged⁵ 25 899
Questions migrated 5 0
Questions protected 16 28
Questions reopened 25 176
Questions unprotected 0 4
Tag synonyms created 148 3
Tag synonyms proposed 146 10
Tags merged 23 0
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue 34 1,888
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue 14 666
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue 9 401
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue 9 292
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue 9 657
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue 17 854
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue 115 1,038
Users contacted 1 0
Users deleted 1 0
Users destroyed³ 47 0
Users suspended² 1 24

Footnotes

¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Role-playing Games without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.

³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.

⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.

⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.

⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Further reading:

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^

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  • \$\begingroup\$ is there a way to see the number of discrete visitors and/or active accounts on this site? On the surface, the declining post numbers seems a little concerning, but it could be possible that, given a lot of questions already have an answer here, we might be seeing the site become more of a reference. \$\endgroup\$
    – ESCE
    Jan 28 at 0:34

1 Answer 1

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2021 vs. 2022 Comparison for RPG.se

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Meta posts:

2017 stats

2018 stats

2019 stats

2020 Stats

2021 Stats

SEDE Queries:

Total number of questions, answers per year

Comments per year

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  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Fascinating; significantly fewer questions and answers, but either better questions or gentler moderation. And the percentage of non-5e questions has gone up: 2020 had 33.7%, 2021 had 35.2%, and 2022 had 38.4%. So @AncientSwordRage it looks like your balanced efforts paid off ;) \$\endgroup\$
    – ESCE
    Jan 28 at 0:29
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @ESCE The mods have closed more questions, in absolute numbers, than in 2021. The community, on the other hand, have (just about) halved the number of questions they close. Either better questions or a gentler community. ;) \$\endgroup\$
    – From
    Jan 28 at 9:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ Looks like our community moderation efforts declined even more severely than our user base. Well, we will find out if One will bring activity back to bring us more in line with the general stackexchange format decline. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 28 at 15:38
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @Akixkisu It there an overall decline of the use of StackExchange, too? \$\endgroup\$ Jan 30 at 9:59
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ @GroodytheHobgoblin it is complicated, but yes there was, and as far as I can tell the network is somewhat recovering from that decline, but some sites such as ours are affected more. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 30 at 12:33

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