2025: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we bid farewell to the year that's concluded and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.

As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.

So as we leave 2025 behind and spring into 2026, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some data! Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Stack Overflow over the past 12 months:

Action	Moderators	Community User¹	Community²
All comments on a post moved to chat	55	0	0
Answer flags handled	46,105	58,606	0
Answers flagged	2,990	2,639	99,087
Bounties canceled	4	0	0
Comment flags handled	74,778	37,776	597
Comments deleted⁸	83,265	1,992	125,238
Comments flagged	24,379	1,171	87,721
Comments undeleted	194	0	0
Escalations to the Community Manager team	230	0	0
Posts bumped	0	32,428	0
Posts deleted⁷	28,849	263,090	59,448
Posts locked	124	12,734	0
Posts undeleted	2,248	50	6,581
Posts unlocked	110	151	0
Question flags handled⁶	8,868	54,564	4,715
Questions closed	6,458	100,700	9,534
Questions flagged⁶	1,502	1,739	68,331
Questions merged	7	0	0
Questions migrated	57	371	0
Questions protected	34	1,342	1,384
Questions reopened	301	2,460	1,009
Questions unprotected	3	0	38
Revisions redacted	149	0	0
Tag highlight language set	0	0	0
Tag synonyms created	37	2	0
Tag synonyms proposed	32	0	14
Tags merged	36	0	0
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes"	49	469	68,707
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers"	0	14	60,582
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions"	2	38	49,762
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Ingestion"	0	0	0
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers"	0	25	52,011
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts"	22	50	89,859
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes"	48	60	22,748
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits"	337	5,893	66,166
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage"	1	4	21,039
User banned from review	65	0	99
User review-bans lifted early	2	0	0
User suspensions lifted early	41	0	0
Users contacted	6,227	0	0
Users deleted	849	0	0
Users destroyed⁴	2,760	0	0
Users suspended³	1,141	1,706	0

Footnotes

¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.

² This refers to the membership of Stack Overflow without diamonds next to their names.

³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.

⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.

⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.

⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.

⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.

⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).

Footnotes

Further reading: