@jca In addition to what @thorninmud has said (i.e., that older questions are already “buried” anyways), it bears noting that edited questions go back into the “Questions for You” queue once they are approved. That way, anyone who might have missed them during the editing period would still be alerted to the question’s existence. It is also worth noting that question was down for 15 minutes before @SQUEEKY2 sent it back for approval the first time (but without the needed corrections). The only reason it took as long as it did (two hours) was because @SQUEEKY2 refused to actually make the required changes.
I would also like to mention the steps taken by the moderator in question to minimize the inconvenience. First, they checked to see that @SQUEEKY2 was currently on the site (meaning he would be able to make the changes right away). Second, they wrote out exactly what was needed so that he could copy and paste it into his question if he so desired (though he also had the option of editing it in his own way so long as it met the guidelines). Third, they stayed around to make sure that the question could be approved as soon as it had been edited. The entire delay in getting the question back up is the result of @SQUEEKY2 refusing to edit and posting this question instead.
@ibstubro There are two possible things you could be reasonably referring to by “the question.” You could be referring to the question title, or to the complete question (title + details). Given the context, it was clear that you were referring to the title. And given that you misquoted the title, you absolutely did misrepresent it. There is no rational way of denying this. The misrepresentation may have been accidental, but that does not change the fact that misrepresentation occurred.
As for your doubts about whether it was spared from editing because it was asked by a moderator, you are again being disingenuous. You flagged two other questions at the same time that had the exact same title format, and none of them were moderated. So if you had exercised due diligence and kept up with the questions you flagged, you would have known for a fact that my status as a moderator had nothing to do with my question remaining up.
I don’t find the Green Bay Packers example at all compelling, by the way, because it does not strike me as a parallel case. I understand why you think it is, but you seem overly caught up in surface technicalities. Moderating decisions, however, are made with an eye towards context—including the question of how oblique a title reference is. The existence of an obvious alternate title is one thing we consider when choosing to moderate because we try not to moderate a question for its title without being able to offer an acceptable alternative.
Side note: most people who flag for title problems offer an alternative. You do not.
As for other possible questions that might be asked under the same title, the same point applies. There are obvious alternatives in the cases of Ferguson, ransomware, and Robin Williams. By contrast, the alternative title that you offered for my question—which I have changed, by the way, so thank you for the suggestion—is hardly more descriptive than the original title. It adds the fact that I am asking a philosophical question, which I agree is a useful keyword, but otherwise does not clarify the situation.
An additional point—which was made to me by the former Community Manager during my initial training—is that some questions are such that their titles cannot be both fully descriptive and short enough to avoid violating the rule against overly long titles. This is why the “see details” convention exists. Moreover, it is the questioner who bears the risks when using the “see details” tag. People may ignore the question because they don’t want to read the details to know what the question is about. I accepted that risk when posting my question.
Regarding other flags you have made, many factors go into determining whether a question will be sent back for editing. Time frame is one of them, but it is not dispositive. So the fact that it may have been an important factor in some decisions—and the one reported to you on the occasion you are thinking of—does not mean that a certain amount of time passing is always and in every case an absolute indemnity from moderation. Again, context matters. Otherwise, robots could do the job.
Finally, I do not ever take arguments personally. That you used my question as an example is irrelevant. Had you used someone else’s (e.g., one of the other questions you flagged at the same time for the same reason), you would have gotten exactly the same sort of answer. If you receive a forceful reply from me, it is only because I refuse to be convinced by any but the best of arguments—and the only way to test if an argument is any good is to see if it can withstand forceful scrutiny.
It is in that spirit that I hope you will not take it personally when I say that if you are really trying to be helpful and are not being contrary for contrariness’ sake, then you have taken the worst possible approach in doing so. I will not get into the details about your flagging habits here. That goes beyond what it is appropriate to make public for the purposes of adequately answering this question. But I am happy to send you a message explaining the problem if you are interested.
Suffice it to say for now that the key word in your answer is “perceived.” You lack the information to know what is and is not an aberration. I have no problem with Meta questions about moderator actions, and I am happy to answer them in my free time. I am confident that the rest of the team feels more or less the same way (some more, some less). But I think it is worth keeping in mind that you have no information about 99.99% of the moderation here, and have been frequently informed that you are misconstruing the rules in your arguments against particular moderator actions. These are important background facts to keep in mind when “trying to help standardize the moderation process.”
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