Change the moderators of Hinduism SE Site

Question

I am using this Hinduism SE Site for almost 1 year now. And from my experience of 1-year, I found that this site (which I know is still in beta) really needs set of ACTIVE Moderators.

Out of 4 Designated moderators, I experienced that, only Keshav Srinivasan is really active as far as site participation.

Here is the LAST SEEN Status of 2 of the moderator (except Keshav and Mr.Alien) as of this writing.

1. cheenbabes : Last seen Jun 4 '15 at 15:29
2. senshin : Last seen May 26 '15 at 12:26

As we can see, 2 moderators visited the site almost half-year back. I am not alone who thinks the same way about the moderation, as this question also mentions the need of more ACTIVE Moderators.

I feel that to grow this Site, we need more ACTIVE Moderators to promote/drive growth of the site, along with, of course, more active participation from community itself (its not about moderators but community).

Hence, I suggest we should consider an option of changing the existing moderators who DO NOT ACTIVELY participate.

Why not give a chance to some other really ACTIVE members from community such as moonstar2001 , iammilind, Sai (who also fits in moderator criterion)?

Of course, these are my observation as a User of this site, and I know there are many other ACTIVE and well deserving candidates in our community for Moderator role who will add more value to this site.

Let the community decide if we want to stay with those non-active moderators or give a chance to more deserving and ACTIVE Members a chance.

UPDATE-1: I found this comment from Keshav Srinivasn on another meta post.

moderators are usually not removed except for exceedingly long absences; here's what someone on the SE team told me when I became a moderator:"if you disappear for months at a time we'll email you and if you disappear for a looong time - 6 months, usually - we'll de-mod you.

LINK

According to this statement , those 2 should have been REMOVED.

UPDATE-2: As per the latest input from Keshav, the change to be applicable "by the end of the week"

UPDATE-3 : Ankit Sharma is our new Moderator. Check the announcement here.

All the best to Ankit in his new role on Hinduism.SE!!

Answer 1

I agree that Cheenbabes and Senshin are not doing any moderation on this site these days.

As per my observation, the only problem I can see is:

• Not many active users to answer the questions.

Since, this is a Religion related site, many people/users taking it personally because they aren't able to bring this site out of Beta. and they are looking out for problematic things. Hence, they started with Moderation. But to make it clear, I don't think there is anything wrong going on with the Moderation. The moderation is completely under control by Keshav and Mr.Alien.

We should look out for the main problem which is "Not many active users".

BTW, if needed for a mod, I am ready to hop in. and also I have some users in my mind who I think can do good moderation but they must not be aggresive as they are visible currently.

Answer 2

Let's talk about moderation on Hinduism.SE.

I have seen several questions from day one till date. Insulting moderators and asking for their replacement with efficient ones. I honestly don't mind as this is an issue. If moderators are not active for beta sites, its a bad thing for the community.

But let me point out that moderators are not the only people who need to look after the site, active users have equal responsibilities. As the other user answered - iammilind that having inactive moderators is Shame so I shared his activity log where the activities log back to November and October.

So why people expect moderators to step up every single time? We have many high reputation users now who has a lot of privilege to carry clean up activities on the site like editing questions, editing answers, closing and reopening questions, deleting and undeleting answers.

Moderators job here is to make sure nothing goes wrong. Handle posts, look after users who are not misusing reputation system and so on. Why StackExchange grants you permission for the above listed activities if moderator is the only person who has to work every time?

Let me tell you that moderators are not paid by StackExchange, they are just another user with special privileges. They have a day job like other users have, they have their personal commitments just like you have so I don't see what's wrong here.

The funny part is, the user who is questioning has an activity of revising post once in January, November and July compared to mine where am having 384 number of just revision activities, so I think we should be checking out activity logs first before blaming other users here. Instead of helping out each other we start a blame game on meta every time, nothing but typical fellow Indians.

P.S Even am Indian so nothing to rage on the sentence above. Still if you think that moderators should be replaced, than please post your replies in the comments section of this answer and I will step down if most of them wants me to.

Answer 3

I stumbled upon this question. Yes, I had the same feeling about the first 2 inactive moderators "cheenbabes" and "senshin". It's a real SHAME when the site has to deal with such moderators, who don't look at it for months! There should be a rule that if a moderator doesn't perform duty for more than X days, then automatically should be dropped and replaced with all due respect.

Regarding 3 names suggested, here are my personal views:

1. moonstar2001: It will be good to have her as a moderator being a woman and good in English. But then she has to have more open view about "Hinduism" to avoid being in dispute with other community members. For example, from this question, it's evident that, she has certain criteria of questions, which may be disliked by others.

2. Sai: A good fit for moderation being quite experienced and old member of this community. Hope that, it will not reduce the amount of his answers & answer-like comments which I find interesting. May be he has to forego his current "soft stance", as our typical impression of a moderator is like, "Parashuram with Axe". :-)

3. iammilind: Good to see my name and not sure if I should say more about myself! I can utilize somewhat decorated SO experience of (limited) moderation, if given a chance. For my own reasons, I have stopped contributing to this website in Q&A as a user, which further gives an extra plus point of being a neutral moderator.

There can be other good moderators as well.

Sometimes I used to wonder, why don't we name this site as "Sanatan Dharma"? Word "Sanatan" doesn't get limited to just country borders. It constitutes multiple ways of thinking and discussing. "Hinduism" is indeed a better word, only if we want to be in the well of Indian subcontinent.

If we want to allow this site to grow (instead of people moving to Quora, which is quite disorganized but open), then with whichever new moderators, we should allow broader thinking. Let's not limit ourselves to dry scriptures. The people who created these scriptures, didn't refer any scriptures back then. They just allowed their mind to flow through and make mistakes. It's probable that, what we read today is merely a distorted form of what they actually thought.

Answer 4

I am not a regular user to Hinduism site but comes after sometime and visit questions and sometimes ask too. I don't know about moderator's activity but I saw this question and felt that there is some problem with the site data. See the question at this link. It says It is closed by Cheenbabes on Jan 22 (2016) and here in this question it shows that Cheenbabes has not been seen from Jun 4'15. I think there can be similar problem with other mods as well. I think its will be better to confirm first before deciding.