Pondering mod status tags

Question

We've been using the status tags - things like status-review were used for 'internal' SU moderation tasks. At some point, review tags on per site meta get fed into tickets internally.

I feel like a set of tags with the 'same' uses - review, deferred, rejected and completed for MSU moderation and meta moderation tasks would be useful - we wouldn't be stepping on staff toes and it might be an impetus to give a fresh look to stuff we've admittedly let get backlogged like tag removals and such.

Would superuser-status-foo sound like a good idea or do y'all have suggestions for what to call these?

Advantages here would be

• it lets us separate things that need our attention from staff attention

• its an opportunity to try to chew on the backlog a little

• we can use these tags to filter tasks to do

• we're not stuck with the standard set. I feel like an superuser-in-progress for example would be nice for longer term things

Answer 1

Frame Challenge: We don't need to separate mod and CM use of status tags - instead, we should be more discerning in how we apply certain status tags.

Status tags can be loosely grouped into two categories: "final" and "transitional".

• Final tags are added when a task or request is considered 'done'. No further update or consideration of the topic is required: status-completed, status-declined, status-norepro, status-bydesign
• Transitional tags are applied to tasks or requests that are in progress in some form, but pending some action from the company: status-review, status-reproduced, status-deferred, status-planned

The recent CM Community Asks push, which saw massive CM activity on cross-site metas, only updated uses of transitional tags. Most notably on MSU, was the removal of status-planned from tag cleanups. Note that questions with [status-completed] and [tag-cleanup-request] were not touched, for example.

Thus, in my opinion:

1. Continue to use 'Final' tags freely

They aren't interfering with ongoing CM work, they allow us to mark stuff as 'done', and they help to filter out completed or declined requests with ease.

2. Use 'Transitional' tags only in specific circumstances

There are occasions where mods adding status-planned etc are useful, but probably the most likely use case is when you are simply keeping local bug/feature request posts up to date, when the topic of that post has received a staff response elsewhere e.g. on MSE or MSO, or in a Mod Chat room (and the staff have explicitly stated they're ok with an update being made public!).

For example, I added status-planned to Can the review queues respect ignored tags? ^Arqade, after seeing it applied to Review Queues and Ignored Tags ^{Meta SE}.

Note: status-review is a special egg that allows us to raise a post for CM review. So continuing to use that one for that purpose is obvious.

3. We don't need to group by "planned" anyway.

If we are vigilant in applying Final tags, then anything without those tags can be considered as fair game to be considered, worked on, updated, and so on. Filters, like the one I linked earlier, can be used to the same effect as a dedicated 'planned' tag, but with the added benefit of not accidentally excluding ones where status-planned was never added. This might require a bit of cleanup on the mod's behalf.

If something requires action but the question and discussion doesn't make it clear: put what needs to happen in an answer, and update that answer with any stats or other updates as you go.