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What is the SO Close Vote Reviewers Chat Room?

The SO Close Vote Reviewers Chat Room is a group of like-minded people who want to make a difference in the CV queue, reviewing, and clean-up efforts.

Table Of Contents

Quick Reference

General expectations for members:

Stay nice and professional in chat:

  1. Keep it professional, keep a high standard.
  2. All discussions are public. Anything you say can and will be used against you on meta. The RO team has an offline/private lounge for sensitive subjects if necessary.
  3. In absence of all room owners, the members lead by example.
  4. De-escalate in case of disagreement.
  5. When chat flags are raised
    • Take them seriously.
    • Consider whether or not the flagged conversation should continue.
    • Be Nice, and be sensitive to others’ feelings.

Keep the transcript clean:

  1. Keep oneboxed images to a minimum. We wish to keep the room civil and mostly on topic, but that does not mean you can’t have a little tasteful fun too. At any of the room owner’s discretion, images may be moved to trash at anytime without warning, such decisions are final. Obviously, offensive and NSFW images are grounds for being kicked and moderator intervention.
  2. Please refrain from using oneboxes/noisy formatting. When posting a URL, use link syntax to make the link flow with the text, like look at [this post](http://www.example.com/).
  3. No GIFs or other animated images in chat. They are more distracting than one-boxed messages.

Know what the room moderates:

  1. We moderate the content of posts on Stack Overflow for closure. This means that we DO NOT moderate:
    • User accounts (even if they are posting spam)
    • Other chat rooms
    • Meta Stack Overflow
    • Other Stack Exchange sites

Be responsible with moderation requests:

  1. Do not ask for up or down votes on any posts. While Shog9 has allowed organized voting in chat rooms, we do not want to be seen as a voting mob. Our goal requires a certain level of support from the community at large, as such we don’t want anything in the transcript that could be perceived as us treating people unfairly.
  2. [cv-pls] should not be a habit for users. Don’t make it an instinct to fast-track every eligible post to the front of the closure system; cv-pls is for posts that:
    • are really bad (low quality magnets)
    • are a bad example used to justify other crap
    • have recent activity on the question (Edits, VLQ/NAA answer)
    • don’t have enough users in that tag to close the post in time
  3. Members are not expected to close vote any post you bring up. Furthermore, do not pressure anyone into doing so. cv-pls means “close vote please”, not “close vote or I’ll stab you.”
  4. Avoid extended discussion about a cv-pls. We don’t have to agree about a close request. We’re not a democracy. However, users that are posting cv-pls’es that are blatantly wrong will be told so. The final verdict is on the RO team.
  5. Do not post feedback on success (or failure) of a cv-pls request. (I.e., no “boom”ing.)
  6. Do not request action on a post that you have asked or answered.

Don’t moderate users:

  1. Moderate the post, not the user. Keep the discussion on the merits of the post, not on behavior of the user.
  2. Do not post multiple successive moderation requests for posts of the same user. It will be considered as targetting a user which is explicitly forbidden.

Stay nice and professional when on a post:

  1. Work with the OP to get their post into shape. Most content has some value. Save it before you try to destroy it.
  2. A post is to be actively handled by only one member of the room. We don’t need 4 members all leaving witty statements in the comments or in chat.
  3. If you leave a comment (or custom close reason) be prepared to interact with the OP. In all cases be nice and helpful.

Understand our relationship with Meta:

  1. All members are accountable for their actions if/when such accountability is requested on meta.
  2. Don’t jump on the bandwagon, specially on meta. The room is scrutinized on meta, not the other way around.
  3. Tag burnination requests and tag cleanup requests must be backed by an MSO post that follows the tag burning process.

Expectations for room owners:

  1. Is a role model for the kind of participation expected.
  2. Makes the final call in any dispute, unless the RO team decide otherwise.
  3. Keeps the number of pinned items in the starboard to a minimum. It’s ok to update and replace an existing if the information is still relevant.
  4. Plans, organizes, and runs periodic room meeting. Also collects and summarizes discussions for public posting.
  5. Schedules and starts “Close Vote Queue” events.
  6. Reels in conversation if it gets out of hand.
  7. Moves messages or conversations to trash if necessary.
  8. Moves handled moderation requests to the CV Request Graveyard.

Common questions

What is the SO Close Vote Reviewers Chat Room?

The moderation efforts of the room has broadened, but we still aim to reduce the close vote queue length. However, the room now acts pro-actively by issuing “[cv-pls]” (type: [tag:cv-pls]) requests, reopen voting, tag cleanup, burnination efforts, editing, coaching/commenting, delete voting, undelete voting, and feeding the roomba.

What sort of behavior is expected?

We love this community. Our goal is to get rid of the “crap” so the good content can be found with greater ease. As room owners we are sensitive for the needs of the community on Stack Overflow and encourage our members to help us create a guidance toolkit that enables all of us to fulfill those needs.

No matter what is asked from us, we moderate the post and educate the user, the be nice policy is our bible.

Do not advertise or make a reference the room out of the blue. If it is relevant to the conversation at hand, fine, but on Stack Overflow, don’t say anything unless someone directly asks. On MSO, you can give some details about the room if it could be relevant/useful in a discussion.

Make sure you are ok with exerting your power, but understand when it is necessary to do so to keep the peace.

We are open for any critic, feedback, and guidance received from the community as we are a part of it.

Room owners step in the moment we notice site users are targeted by any room member. This goes without warning.

What are the chat room rules?

To be an effective member of this room you’ll need access to the review queues and you’ll need to have some experience on Stack Overflow. Ideally 3k reputation, but 1k will do. That assumes you know the core of the site and assumes you have enough experience in (self)moderation.

To stop us from turning into a chaotic voting ring, we have set up rules and guidelines for members to follow.

How and why do I need to format my cv-pls (and other requests)?

The cv-pls is a commonly used format across different chatrooms on Stack Overflow. You create a proper cv-pls as follows:

[tag:cv-pls] close reason http://stackoverflow/q/12345

The first bit creates a tag layout, the close reason is there so the other members know what you think the correct reason is and finally the complete url so the members can click on it. If you find the typing, copying, and remembering a bit too much you can use the cv-pls userscript.

The format is a bit strict because the room owners run an archiver script to move closed question out of the transcript so they can be monitored for changes by Yam, the GraveRobber bot.

If you are using “duplicate” as a reason, it would be a good idea to include the primary tag of the post with the request.

[tag:cv-pls] [tag:asdf] duplicate http://stackoverflow/q/12345

Because closing as a duplicate requires more domain specific knowledge, informing other chat members of the primary tag helps them quickly figure out if they would be effective in reviewing the request.

Other -pls requests follow the same format

[tag:reopen-pls] post has enough info now http://stackoverflow/q/12345
[tag:del-pls] has no value to stay on site http://stackoverflow/q/12345

What is Smoke Detector and how can I participate?

The Smoke Detector (aka Smokey, or SD) is a chat-bot operated by the Charcoal team and its purpose is to find spam, abusive and low-quality posts. In the SOCVR room only Stack Overflow posts are reported. You can find detailed info about Smokey and how you can interact with it here.

To request SD privileges from the SOCVR room ping any of the room owners. They will check your account for the following criteria:

We don’t want to feed wrong information into Smokey or flag reported posts incorrectly. Spam flags have a lot of impact on user accounts.

You closed my question!

If a question is closed following a cv-pls that was posted in the room you can hop into the room for an explanation. Expect the following policy to be followed to avoid any unnecessary drama:

Whoever first answers (avoid crowding!):

  1. Inform the user about what happened.
  2. Explanation of a cv-pls.
  3. How people in the room acted.
  4. What it means to have a question closed.
  5. Explain that from now on, only the author of the cv-pls is going to discuss.

Author of the cv-pls:

  1. Inform the user about the reasons why this happened.
  2. Why the question is off-topic.
  3. If it can be improved and how.
  4. Relevant pointers (help center, meta posts, IDYB, etc.).

If the previous has not solved the issue, we will stop the discussion and redirect you to Meta to have our actions scrutinized by somewhat independent community members.

Can I request people to vote or flag on posts I find?

First of all, let us reiterate that you can request people to look at posts you bring up, but they are IN NO WAY REQUIRED to vote or flag as you suggest. Bringing posts to chat is just a way to increase exposure to a post, not to create a mindless voting mob.

Close Vote Requests are the most common request you’ll find. Please follow the format a few sections above. Too make sure people don’t abuse the system, we ask that you keep cv-pls’ing to a minimum until you have 3k rep for yourself.

Reopen Votes Request are perfectly welcome. If you see something that you think should be reopened, we’re more than happy to look at it. Note: most of the time reopen voting requires domain specific knowledge, so there could be no one in the room that truly understand the subject matter enough to make a judgement call.

Delete Vote Requests are for when you find a post that needs to be absolutly removed from the site. Please use this only when absolutly nessessary. We also ask that you have the power to delete vote before you request votes from others.

Very Low Quality (VLQ) or Not an Answer (NAA) flag requests are not allowed here. Multiple of these flags on a single post does not process it faster, so bringing it to the room only creates noise.

There is one exception to this rule: Requests to re-flag a post are allowed; only if the previous flag was invalidated due to an edit.

Spam and Offensive flag requests are allowed; if enough of these flags accumulate, the post will be automatically deleted. Please be careful with these requests (by the time you say “spam”, it’s an accusation). If you are not 100% sure, please consult with the room and wait for at least 2 people to confirm your suspicions.

Discussions about whether or not borderline answers warrant flags are allowed, as long as you are actually interested in a discussion and you aren’t trying to coerce users into flagging.

Comment flags for rude/abusive comments are OK but DO NOT one-box the comment in our transcript as that might get chat flags which sort of defeats the goal in the first place.

What about Docs?

We will only moderate Docs for rude, abusive, spam and plagiarism. There won’t be any moderation of low-quality, off-topic or otherwise incorrect examples.

Who are the room owners?

When you become a Room Owner we believe you are that for life. Even when circumstances changes and Room Owners turn down their participation knob we still feel they are part of the team.

The active room owners are:

The inactive room owners are:

Why do we need room owners?

We really shouldn’t need room owners, but because we do we need to establish some guidelines. Room owners are here to slow down the enthusiastic crowd and to make sure we focus on posts and their quality and not on users.

The CV chat room has quite a bit of power. In the extreme cases we can insta-close any question, and this gives us moderator-like powers with very little external oversight. We lead by example to prevent the room from becoming a mob.

How does the room work?

There are no obligations. We can’t force you to do anything, and we don’t want to either. The first purpose of the chat room is to have company as you go through the queue. Having a group beside you as you take on the queue really helps morale. We are also here to help with questions about what to do. Not sure what to do with a post? Post a link and we will take a look at it.

We are also using a tactic for the queue’s filtering. By having all members concentrate on a single tag at a time we have a higher chance of completing the review tasks that we process. The bot, Closey, will inform members of the tags to work on at the start of the event (or on demand with bot commands).

We don’t want to become a close vote posse. Every user should handle the review based on their own opinion/knowledge, choosing leave open, close, edit or skip when appropriate. Concentrating attention on a question in the context of whether or not to close a question, severely biases attention toward closing the question. 1

Why do you invite me to the CV Request Graveyard room?

The room owners run a script on a regular basis to clean up the room transcript. Any cv-pls message that links to a question which is: closed/deleted, or has no close votes after 3 days will be moved to the CV Request Graveyard. In that process, if one of the cv-pls you posted gets moved, you get invited to that room. We’re sorry about that, but we will not talk there or meet you there. That room is only meant to be the list of handled cv-pls messages.

So don’t be alarmed or feel left out if the invite to the graveyard room doesn’t result in any response from us. It is a byproduct of our moving action and we can’t prevent you being invited, sorry.

What are all those bots doing there?

To make our live easier we have the support of five bots that you either can interact with or make you aware of posts that might need our attention.

Smokey (aka Smoke Detector)
The Smoke Detector is a headless chatbot that detects spam or offensive content, then posts links to it to chatrooms for review. It is created and maintained by the Charcoal team. In the SOCVR room we only get reports for Stack Overflow.

Smokey is for tracking spam, and offensive content. It is not for stalking regular users who happen to exhibit behaviors that you disagree with. If you see some behavior that you disagree with, please do not blacklist the user with Smokey, instead use a custom moderator flag and explain what you think the problem is.

This room is about content, not users.

Closey (aka SOCVR-Chatbot)
The SOCVR-Chatbot is designed to track the actions of the members, provide statistics, and perform repetitive tasks that otherwise would have to be done manually.

Yam (aka GraveRobber)
Yam checks [cv-pls]es which are moved to the graveyard to see if any of the posts warrant reopening.

Zephyr
Zephyr is a headless chatbot that monitors our room for vote requests (cv-pls, spam, flag-pls, del-pls, etc.) from other users and then posts them in the LQPHQ.

Queen
Is a bot for reporting duplicates to Gold Hammers so these get closed effectively. Her hive is in the SOCVFinder. She also reports very offensive comments for quick deletion.

All bots that post in the room have to be cleared by the Room Owner team. Without their prior approval bots will be kicked as soon as they appear.

How can I join in?

First, check out the chat room’s schedule of events. It’s updated by the room owners and shows the weekly meet-ups. There are two time periods to choose from (you can choose both if you are able to) so that people in all time zones can join.

If you can’t wait until a weekly event, or want to help out more often, we do a smaller review session each day. Hop into chat between 17:00 and 22:00 UTC and help us fight the queue (times change by day and member availability).

What if I think you made a mistake?

We are all humans and have different backgrounds, but also solid reputations in a wide range of tags. If you feel we misjudged a gem, closed for the wrong reason, or blindly followed advice from our peers, feel free to ask for an explanation or to reopen. Based on your feedback, we’ll learn, improve your question and help in getting it re-opened by casting re-open votes. This will improve our actions, so please provide feedback.

Can I invite users here?

It’s encouraged to invite users to the chat room to discuss issues involving moderation activities that are coordinated or under discussion there.

Invitation etiquette

Any resources to help?

Members of chat have made some user scripts to help make your life easier (or just more enjoyable).

We have a chat bot that you can play around with and help keep track of our activities. You can find the code base here. The bot’s name is Closey; hop in the room and type @Closey help.

The following is the Stack Exchange Data Exporter query we use for determining which tags to focus on: Tags that can be cleared of votes.

You can see the day-to-day progress of the size of the close vote from this neat online graph. An explanation for the drops each day can be found on this MSO post.

1: Paragraph adapted from Rene’s original chat room FAQ. Mentioned here for attribution purposes.