To trigger this process, a moderator must send a “Community Emergency” report through the Contact Form detailing:
The exact nature of the situation that has violated the Moderator Agreement;
Which part of the Moderator Agreement has been violated;
Anything that must be retracted and nullified;
The username of at least 15 moderators who sign the petition (their signatures will be accepted in good faith without needing them to confirm individually unless one of those whose name appears protests, in which case all signatures will be verified). In the case of a petition with fewer than 15 signatures, the matter will be closed without further need to follow this process.
If moderators so desire, a second backup copy of the petition may be emailed to the executive in charge of the Community Management team (as of the time of writing, Philippe Beaudette, VP Community, [email protected]) although the petition “of record” is the one sent via community emergency, which must be received for this process to be enacted. A petition sent only to the community executive will not be sufficient to begin the process.
Upon receipt, Stack will have seven business days (based upon the ordinary business days observed by Stack, that is, excluding weekends and observed US holidays, made available to Moderators) to post the entire petition to the Moderator Team alongside their reasoning for why the situation does not violate the Moderator Agreement or their concession that the Moderator Agreement has been violated. This post will be featured to all moderators (for example by using the orange diamond notification). At this time, Stack will post the total, deduplicated number of active moderators (“Total Moderator Count”) for use in calculating the vote percentages enumerated below.
If Stack concedes that it has violated the Moderator Agreement, it must post a public apology in no less than 30 days, including language that will immediately, upon posting, fully retract and nullify any actions outlined in the petition. If it does not, then it will provide two answers: one for the moderators to vote that Stack has violated the Moderator Agreement and one for moderators to vote that Stack has not violated the Moderator Agreement. Each moderator may upvote one of the answers; downvotes will be ignored. Stack employees are not allowed to vote, and no electioneering, lobbying, or questions may take place on either of the two designated answers, though discussion and questions may happen in other spaces (such as on a different question or answer). Voting will be open for ten business days.
Once the ten business days pass, if at least 20% of the Total Moderator Count (as designated at the beginning of the process) have voted and a minimum of 90% of the voting moderators agree that a violation has occurred, Stack will retract and nullify the actions outlined in the petition and post a public explanation and apology to the Meta Stack Exchange site.
However, if less than 20% of the Total Moderator Count (as designated at the beginning of the process) vote or less than 90% of the voting moderators agree that a violation has occurred, then no action from Stack is required or expected.
In the event of questions or challenges regarding this process or the execution of it, Stack will endeavor to honor both the letter and the spirit of this process and will move to take corrective action where necessary to correct a manifest wrong, but reserves the right to determine that the process has been fairly completed, once all steps have been completed. Such questions or challenges should be directed to the community executive (at the time of posting, Philippe Beaudette, VP-Community, [email protected]) by email. Acknowledgment of receipt will be sent.
