I actually wanted five moderators

Question

We had a moderator election in June 2019. Before the election, it was announced that the total moderator count would be five. We have usually had four moderators, and with one resignation prior to the 2019 elections, we had three. The earlier count was established as four in this meta in April 2017: Do we want three moderators, or four?

(before the 2017 election the count was two, three having been elected with one resignation)

I was personally happy to hear we were moving to five moderators. Our site's traffic has grown, we have had some rotation in active user base, snap resignations and forces majeures happen, and with luck we would've gotten good candidates from a variety of timezones to have less blind spots in moderation. There wasn't any debate this time: this meta post in May 2019 featured two opinions in favor of five, none in favor of any other outcome: What is the reason we are moving to having 5 diamond moderators?

Came the election results. In the same post where the winners of the community moderators were announced, another mod announced their retirement, leaving us at four moderators immediately: 2019 Community Moderator Election Results

I respect mxy's right to keep the news of their upcoming resignation among moderators and/or site staff, who I presume knew of the resignation in advance. But I am disappointed in the way this was handled in the community election process. There was no discussion on the moderator team size like there was in 2017 --- it seems to me that four was already decided upon, and five was chosen only to address the coming resignation.

Notably, when the three moderators at the time opined in favor of five, advocating for a larger team because other moderators may leave with little notice, I believe at least some of them (as well as the site's Community Manager) knew the site would be served by four, not five moderators, instantly or soon after the election. I believe there are no hidden agendas beyond respecting mxy's right to keep their upcoming resignation private for the time, and certainly no malice. But I feel it is not up to the usual standards of honest communication between the community and the administration to do something like this.

I am aware calling a snap election to get a fifth community moderator posthaste wouldn't probably be the right answer, but I think we should aim for five or possibly more moderators in the future, for better coverage and for more redundancy. But whether four, five, six, sixty mods, it should be based on open and honest discussion within the community focusing on the team size we actually want --- in my case, five and possibly more.

Answer 1

We've read your concerns and we've been discussing how to respond internally. TL;DR:

• Yeah, the situation was messy, but it was messier than that. We're sorry you weren't fully informed; we didn't see a way to fully inform the community about what was going on. I'll explain below.
• We don't have plans to expand to a fifth moderator slot currently. The workload isn't there for it.

The specifics of our plans at the time

I don't want y'all having to speculate about what was going on, so let me fill in on some stuff. We couldn't make this public at the time and I've checked with Mxyzplk for permission to make it public now.

When we left this answer about moving to five diamond moderators, we were in fact expecting to have five diamond moderators for a sustained period. Mxyzplk had plans to resign and put his diamond away, but they weren't actually going to be immediate. He was planning to resign some time much later, such as after the new moderators were trained and confident in their positions as moderators (which takes a long time). Mxyzplk would announce he was resigning whenever he felt ready, and that was entirely up to him to handle how he chose.

That his diamond was put away immediately after the election was the result of a miscommunication with staff about timing. I don't feel it's my place to talk about this part so I won't.

Given we had no concrete plans to announce regarding his sometime-resignation, we had opted instead to just assume in our response that we would have five moderators for quite some time. We had also indicated there was room for someone to resign. That was about as much as we felt was appropriate given how we thought it would go.

Regarding team size

Now, on mod team size. SSD describes that managing the moderator team size is the prerogative of the moderator team itself. That's accurate, and honestly it would not function well otherwise. We adjust the team size based on whether the current workload fits the capacity of the current moderator team. Too much work means we need more mods; too little work leads to too many chefs in the kitchen. The community doesn't know our internal workload so it isn't in a position to be able to judge what size the moderator team needs to be. (It's definitely in a position to judge and raise issue if there's problems, and we'll address them, such as by calling elections if our problems are caused by too much workload.)

Moderator elections aren't about size, they're about the mods that get added to fill the slots the moderator team has asked for. Moderator team sizes can be in flux—we don't negotiate a size then aim to continuously meet that size, we just request more moderators when we know we'll need more moderators to manage the workload. People resign from time to time, and elections get called, and not always together or with equivalent numbers coming and going.

I understand the reasons you've laid out. We're also aware of the many snap resignations occurring around the network. However, the mod team considers the current size to be a good size, and we don't intend to adjust it to five right now.

Answer 2

I’m not a mod anymore but I can speak to the 2017 election and discussion and the lead-up to the latest election.

Stack Exchange generally consults with and defers to the moderator team about how many moderators there should be. It’s more about what the team feels the need for than anything else. The process is pretty much that a CM drops by the mod chat and asks how many election spots it should have and then sets it up. It’s pragmatic and not really much of a discussion. Mods poke a CM about an election, a CM shows up and asks how many and sets expectations about SE’s ability to schedule it in, then goes off and does it. Resignation timing—for actual removal of the diamond and any announcement—is discussed if necessary.

The 2017 discussion was more about the team having some uncertainty with breaking with the original number 3. Asking the community for help making our decision gave us more to think about. Even after that discussion we were leaning to staying at 3, until at the last minute a couple of us thought that having more would make it easier for mods to take breaks. So at the last minute, we asked for two spots in the election.

So the 2017 discussion was less a community mandate and more helping is think through our answer to SE.

Maybe it should be more a community discussion and decision, but SE doesn’t expect it to be, and CMs treat it very much as up to the mods.

I don’t know how the current mod team feels about the number. I can say that expecting a discussion to be a regular part of mod elections would be unusual. It could be made part of the community culture here, but if the mods don’t want their number to be the subject of referenda, I don’t think SE will impose more moderator slots than the team wants.

SE and the CMs generally trust that moderators know best whether they need more or fewer mods. Having been a mod, I know that it gives a kind of perspective on the site that is unavailable otherwise.

I guess the bottom line, aside from providing some background, is this: if the community wants more mods, it would have to get the mod team to want more mods, not just establish that the community wants more, since the team is who SE leave it up to.