<p>Thank you for the effort to dig up those numbers. But, <em>simply</em> copying the text from last year day's post is not showing that the wishing of a happy new year is very sincere.</p>
<p>Given what happened last year and how SE has been breaking up with it's contributors and moderators, the tone of the post could have been a <em>lot</em> less festive and positive. The situation is not so great and this should not be covered up with a pile of numbers.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As we enter a new year, <strong>let's pause and reflect</strong>, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together. And what could be more <strong>festive</strong> than a <strong>big pile of numbers</strong>?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(emphasis is mine)</p>
<p>What is this post supposed to say? Is 2019 a year in moderation like 2018. Like everything is good now?</p>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Ostriches-head-in-sand2.jpg" alt="heads in the sand" /></p>
<blockquote>
<p>We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You post a bunch of numbers. Some of them are in the thousands and make it appear as if we are all happy and active in moderating.</p>
<p>Do you really think that this nonsense data makes statisticians happy? There have been several strong negative moments (especially with respect to 'self-regulation' mentioned in the quote) with much more impact than those numbers without context and depth.</p>
<h1>2019 is the year where you <em>lost</em> moderation.</h1>
<hr />
<p>Just some other data:</p>
<p><a href="https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/1175890/number-of-close-and-reopen-tasksreviews-per-quarter#graph" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Number of close and reopen votes per quarter, separated according to the time needed to clear the queue</a>:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xwxab.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xwxab.png" alt="image1" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/1175882/distribution-of-number-of-votes-in-close-open-queu#graph" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Distribution of number of reviews per review task in close/open queues, separated per year and quarter</a></p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZHstF.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZHstF.png" alt="image2" /></a></p>
<p>The year 2019 separated into quarterly data in order to zoom in on the anomaly that <em>closing and reopening is occurring with much less votes in 2019</em>, a change that has developed halfway the year and is very strong in the last quarter.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJRhY.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJRhY.png" alt="image3" /></a></p>
<p>I believe that we need to look at these numbers in much more depth like the above figures.</p>
<ul>
<li>Certainly the quantity of review tasks will increase as the site grows, and likely the review tasks will be more by non-moderators since there are a lot of them.</li>
<li>However... how does the site really change? Some numbers like the
duration that a task remains in the queue is a much better indicator
of decreasing efforts and of declining quality of contributions.</li>
</ul>
<p>Also, let's look at the difference between 2018-2019</p>
<pre><code>                                                  2018                      2019
                 Action                  Moderators  Community     Moderators  Community
Tasks reviewed: Suggested Edit queue          1,525      5,169          1,269      5,164
Tasks reviewed: Reopen Vote queue               963      3,759            840      2,931
Tasks reviewed: Low Quality Posts queue         938      2,752            894      2,164
Tasks reviewed: Late Answer queue                57      2,417             59      2,243
Tasks reviewed: First Post queue                234     18,159            161     16,199
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue            5,125     19,257          4,618     15,084
</code></pre>
<p>What i dislike (an allergy of mine) is managers posting a bunch of numbers (meaningless, without context and depth) and wrap with it a pretty talk/story that has very little to do with those numbers and is just whatever they wish to say and not what those numbers support. (see also Tufte's traffic deaths example in the section <a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000Jr" rel="nofollow noreferrer">'context is essential for graphical integrity'</a>)</p>
