Is reopening of one's own closed question a misuse of moderator privileges?

Question

Two hours after a recent question was closed by five users (four high-rep), the OP (also a moderator) voted to reopen his own question, which is, of course, an instantaneous and binding vote. This situation came up previously with the same mod. It seems a mod should realize that his re-open vote is binding and overrides the usual reopening process.

Questions are closed for a number of reasons, including general reference. If the OP/mod frequently voted to reopen closed questions, this could be understood as merely another such vote, however as a user, he rarely voted to reopen, making this much less likely (from available information his reopen votes were in all probability only for his own closed questions). That two binding votes were cast on his own questions makes me uncomfortable that the moderator in question might be using his position to inappropriately bypass the community's decisions to close his questions.

I request that the mods undertake to address this issue. What, if anything, should be done? Does a mod respect the community and let it reopen closed questions on their own merit? Mods surely should use their own judgement to reopen a question which may have been unfairly or mistakenly closed. What I don't know is if this is accepted behavior on the part of a mod pertaining to his own questions. In that case it could reasonably be asked why regular users can't reopen their own closed questions with one vote.

Edited to add: I'm not out for anybody's blood here. My experiences with the mod team have been very beneficial overall. I think it does a great job. It's not a transparent process, however; whether it should be is part of the implications of this question.

Edit #2: FumbleFingers wants to pretend there is but one data point here making this question close-worthy. I have a revision history for both times. I can provide them if necessary to prove its existence.

_{(If people are wondering why I don't just ignore this, I refer them to this explanation. Basically I think things go more smoothly in situations where the "rules" are known to all - or at least the majority - and adhered to by all - or at least the majority - with the spirit of the law superseding the letter of the law. I don't see this at work here in this situation. I'm certainly not privy to how mods are supposed to behave regarding their own closed questions. Which is the reason for my post.)}

Answer 1

Using mod privilege to re-open one's own closed question is a conflict of interest. We have a natural tendency to believe our questions are on-topic, otherwise we wouldn't have posted them. Normally, moderators do not act on flags pertaining to their own posts and do not engage in privileged activity involving their own posts (with the exception of editing). If they feel action is required, they ask another mod or mods to review the situation. In fact, most of the activity that would be considered in a gray area is handled after two or more mods discuss it first, whether it involves another moderator's content or not.

In certain cases, the community may decide to honor a venerated user by choosing him for moderatorship, regardless of his lack of familiarity with chat, Meta, or the review tools that are provided high-rep users. In these cases, moderator privilege is viewed as a gift bestowed to a beloved, long-standing member of the community, a token of thanks for his contributions here. And in these cases, where his exercise of privilege is extremely limited in scope—and communication is hampered by technical savvy, timezone differences, and culture—we are inclined to overlook the occasional conflict of interest.

That is not to say that we are pleased by it, nor that we are not keeping an eye on it. Please feel free to continue letting us in on your observations.

Answer 2

I’ d like to answer to this question as the principal, or the accused who voted “Reopen” to his own question. I have no intention to excuse. Let’s me simply recount what’s happened.

I found my question asking the meaning of “meth, methhead, and do meth” was closed for reason of being off-topic, and I think there was one Reopen vote, but not very sure. I thought meth is a commonsense to native English speakers, but not to ESL speakers, so the question is worth for staying on board for non-native English speakers, and pushed “reopen” button to add one Reopen vote just as a user, not a moderator. The question reopened instantly. Because it reopened instantly, the memory of the same experience that I argued with the OP once before flashed back. I thought this could be taken as the abuse of moderator privilege by other users.

So I pushed “Cancel (or it could be Close) button" offhand. It was rejected by the warning to the effect “You cannot cancel your vote.” I think the message was followed by something like “because it will affect the validity of existing votes." I gave up to make corrective actions. I thought somebody will bring up the case in chat or meta, and I will explain then what I did, and what happened.

This happened twice. I admit it’s “unseemly” bungle. I learnt, and am fully aware of that the moderator’s single vote is worth 5 votes of users at the previous event. But I have no intention to reopen my own post by abusing moderator’s privilege. I’ve posted more than 800 questions and answers. I have no need to rescue only one or two questions by abusing moderator’s advantage. Moreover, I don’t want to stick around the moderator’s title, if you call me a willful power abuser.

I raised hand for candidacy for ELU moderator this year, because I desired to prove to non-native English speaking peers that even a non-native speaker who had never lived or studied in English speaking countries can be an ELU moderator, and is able to have a say in an international English language study circle as one of its members, and it’s not for self-display, or wielding power, if it exists any.

It was a mistake. I tried to recover it by canceling my reopen vote. I couldn’t do it mechanically, or electronically. That’s the fact.

Regarding inclination of my posts to mostly questions, it’s simply because I think as a non-native English speaker, I’m less learned and qualified to answer most of subtle nuance of English language questions than native, genuine English speakers are, and it's more suitable for me to stay on the asker’s side and to contribute to the site by doing so.

Answer 3

A moderator re-opening their own question, closed by the community, is clearly a conflict of interest. Moderators are supposed to know the rules and closing reasons, so they typically wouldn't post things that are closeable, so this particular conflict does not seem like a common case.

That said, moderators can still have posts that were wrongfully closed, and are trusted to act accordingly. The StackExchange position is that moderators act, they do not vote. I feel that they should be allowed to vote, especially for circumstances like this one, but that isn't the problem at hand.

In my opinion one question was closed properly (disclaimer: I voted to close it). The question's answer was easily found as the top Google result for the query and Google also provides an easy definition to answer the question. Not only that, but there was an upvoted answer also providing this dictionary definition, so there is no reason for this General Reference question to remain open.

On the basis that the question was, in my opinion, closed correctly, the moderator's action in reopening it does not seem appropriate. In the big picture it doesn't seem like a big deal, but I feel this scenario should not become any more common than it has.

Answer 4

I think this is a rather unique situation, and some extenuating factors that ought to be considered.

I'm under the impression that moderators typically answer far more questions than they ask. (To confirm my hunch, I just visited several other SE communities and gathered data from the profiles of their moderators. I analyzed 15 moderators at random: the average number of questions answered by each moderator was about 420, while the average number of questions asked by these moderators was 25. Only 4 of the 14 moderators had a questions-to-answers ratio of more than 10%, the highest being 42%, from a moderator who had asked 104 questions and answered 247.)

So, the mod is a bit of an anomaly, in that they have asked a large number of questions, and answered only 23, pretty much an inversion of the typical moderator. Most moderators wouldn't find themselves in this situation, because most moderators don't ask nearly as many questions.

With that in mind, I would answer your question in the negative: I don't think this constitutes an "abuse of powers." If this moderator reopened almost every one of his own questions that got closed, that might be another issue. If this moderator never opened any other user's question that might have been similarly unfairly closed, that might be another issue. But I'm only aware of one data point, and I don't regard that as an abuse of power.

If the mod feels like one of his questions was closed too hastily because of "group think," it's within their rights to reopen the question. So long as they would do the same for other users in the same situation, I have no problem with that.

Answer 5

Ideally, a moderator should ask another moderator to re-open one's closed posts. That way, there will be no question of conflict of interest.

If the request is meritorious, then the second moderator will usually have enough respect for the first one to reopen it. If you can find no moderator willing to re-open the closed post, maybe the request is not so meritorious.

Answer 6

(This is my closevote justification, which is too long for a comment)

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I'm closevoting as Off Topic. The OP here has repeatedly said she doesn't want to "personalise" this issue, but the reality is we only have a single example of potentially questionable behaviour here on ELU. This makes it very difficult to discuss points of principle without referring to that example.

Assuming we all accept that the purpose of this question is not to demand an "apology" from one particular mod (which imho would be extremely unseemly, to say the least), there's no good reason to reference any specific example, or limit the discussion to ELU in particular.

Therefore I propose that this question be closed. A new one (equivalent in all ways except it wouldn't identify any specific incidents or individuals) should be posted on Stack Exchange meta, where all SE users can contribute to a debate on whether there should be software changes preventing mods reopening their own questions (or a statement of site-wide "best practice").

Answer 7

I feel that some basic information needed for arriving at a conclusion regarding the moderator’s action is lacking:

1) Is there actually a rule that prohibits moderators from reopening their own questions?

2) If yes, is it a blanket ban, or is there some leeway for different situations?

3) If there is no such rule, should one be instituted?

4) If there is a rule, and a moderator breaks it, what consequence should follow?

Though I can see that on the face of it, the moderator’s action opens him to the perception of a conflict of interest, this event seems to me to be better treated as opening a discussion about the general questions I enumerated above rather than as a disciplinary issue. After all, nobody died; nobody lost any money; and I can’t see that anyone was even inconvenienced.

At this point, the chief damage seems to be the credibility of the rules governing what actions are permitted in relation to a moderator’s own questions, subject to clarification of points 1) and 2) above. Let’s just establish what those rules are (or ought to be), adjust them as necessary, and move on. I think everyone involved is smart enough to learn lessons from this which they will apply in the future: let’s not turn a molehill into a mountain.

Answer 8

I was one of the closevoters on an earlier question from the mod who subsequently overruled the usual means of re-opening by reopening their own closed question (not entirely unilaterally, in that I know another user had already voted to reopen).

At the time it seemed blatantly Off Topic, but now I've just considered it more carefully I disown my closevote.

In the final analysis though, the issue here is simply whether we the user base are happy that mods can unilaterally reopen their own questions.

Personally, I've no objections at all to mods being able to do such things. We elect as mods those people who are willing to put their names forward, and whose judgement we have reason to trust. The fact that they might sometimes make mistakes (by which I don't mean to implicate the "meth" question, on which I currently have no opinion) doesn't mean we need to restrict their powers.

In the unlikely event that a specific mod repeatedly makes bad calls, I suppose there might be a problem. But that doesn't seem to be the case, so I see no reason to call for any rule changes.