A plea for action

Question

The First Posts and Late Answers review queues are arguably the two most important review queues on the site. They help moderate content from new users and point them in the right direction to act in accordance with our rules. There should always be some action taken even if it's just a welcome message, especially as a lot of these users aren't registered and haven't taken the tour yet.

However, we seem to get a high number of people selecting "No Action Needed" (higher than it should be in my opinion). I'd like to campaign to remove the "No Action Needed" button altogether but that would most likely be a system change and a local policy change or wake up call should be a first step.

To avoid calling out any users out in particular or being accused of doing so here's the last 10 "No Action Needed" reviews from these queues and what I think could have been done.

First Posts

• 1: Certainly needs editing to be easier to read, if you don't feel up to editing it either skip or post a comment asking them to do so.

• 2: It's a nice answer: let them know and/or upvote it. Leave a comment as me and another user did. Point them to the tour.

• 3: This was reviewed in the questions initial state as far as I can tell, it certainly needed editing to include information.

• 4: It's a decent answer though answers from an out of universe perspective so leave them a comment. There are some grammar mistakes so edit it.

• 5: Looks to be a decent answer, encourage them to edit in the actual sources and ask them to register/take the tour.

• 6: A bit of an awkward one but the tag might not be right, is it about the film or TV show? They're from another site so will have a bit more knowledge but welcoming them and pointing them to the tour again is always better than nothing.

• 7: Could be improved by adding sources/evidence - let them know! Encourage them to register their account and take the tour.

• 8: A decent out of universe answer but would be better if it had some in universe evidence too, let them know. Other than that you can always upvote the answer in the queue!

• 9: It's a nice find and answer to the question but isn't the oldest, let them know. They haven't taken the tour and point to the author not the book series. Comment.

• 10: Comment encouraging them to register their account and take the tour. Ask them to add evidence to their answer. It isn't a great answer but with some editing could be quite good.

Late Answers

• 1: I think we can all agree this isn't great, it's more of a comment on another answer than an answer itself. Flag it and in fact I did the First Post for this and commented along with my flag. Let them know why you're flagging/downvoting, a new user is unfamiliar with the site and so needs pointing in the right direction. (Note: This has now been deleted, not sure if <10k users can still see it).

• 2: A decent answer but would be greatly improved with sources - encourage them to add them. The end part of the answer is tangential and a slight rant edit it out or ask them too. Encourage them to take the tour.

• 3: Same user as above and the same advice as above follows. Might also be worth editing this one so it's not one large block of text.

• 4: Again same user so same advice. As another user comments on that answer they also provide OoU reasoning so encourage them to add IU reasoning too.

• 5: On first glance I can tell this needs editing: incorrect markdown and mistakes in a few places. As a user has said encourage them to add an actual canon backed answer not just fan fiction. And again point them to the tour.

• 6: Not bad of an answer but has some irrelevant information in it so edit it out. Ask them to add evidence to their answer. And of course encourage them to register their account and take the tour.

• 7: This is FP 5 explained above so look there.

• 8: Decent answer but would be better with sources encourage them to add some. Of course point them to the tour.

• 9: As usual encourage them to add sources, let them know they can [edit] their answer to add the extra information from their comment and encourage them to register the account and take the tour.

• 10: Same user as above so general advice there applies. Could do with some basic editing and looks like a nice answer, let them know and/or upvote it.

Even with that specific advice there here is some general advice that apply to a most posts:

• Comment: You can always comment something even if it is just welcoming them and giving them some basic feedback on their post.
• Let them know they can [edit] their post.
• Point them to the [tour] and/or [ask].
• Edit the post yourself.
• If it is a story-identification post point them to the relevant guide.
• Upvote/downvote if applicable.
• Flag/close/vote to delete if applicable.

There is always something to be done on a post and in my, admittedly, limited reviewing experience I have yet to see a post that requires zero action and I'm pretty sure I never will.

Can we take action in these queues from now on? Doing so will welcome new users and point them in the right direction to contribute better content to our site.

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As an aside we have this guide on our meta written by @Rand al'Thor♦ that gives the same sort of run down as I do for general guidelines and also this one from Puzzling's meta which strongly suggests to try and not click "No Action Needed". As linked by @Null♦ in the comments Code Review also recommend against no action.

Answer 1

^{Disclaimer: this answer may contain some personal biases, as I'm an active reviewer myself. But I'll try to make clear where I'm speaking as a moderator and where I'm just voicing my own opinions as a user.}

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NAN is sometimes flat-out wrong, but sometimes it's a matter of taste.

You mention the idea of removing the "No Action Needed" button altogether, but that's absolutely out. Not just because it'd mean a system-wide change and isn't high enough priority for SE to work on it, but because we wouldn't want people taking some random action on the post just for the sake of taking an action. That would just be a different kind of robo-reviewing, and a harder one to detect.

Also, we can't dictate how people review. As a moderator, I have the ability to temporarily ban people from the review queues for robo-reviewing. I've done this when people were e.g. clicking "No Action Needed" on blatant spam. But if people decline to take action on a "meh" post which is (at least arguably) neither particularly good nor particularly bad, I'm not going to review-ban them for that.

Taking my mod hat off here: I personally hardly ever click "No Action Needed". But that's because I'm a prolific voter and editor - I vote on a lot of posts which others might consider neither good nor bad enough to be voted on, and I edit a lot of typos and minor things which others might consider not worth bothering with. But I'm also aware that it's not possible to fix every post, nor to impose my own standards on other users. Voting and editing are privileges, not responsibilities.

All this is not to say that your points in this meta post are wrong - just that you shouldn't take them too far. Of course people should review carefully, and NAN is rarely the best option, but it is still possible to consider a post carefully and still decide not to take any action on it. (As I did for this review which you mentioned.) It's important to distinguish between the following two possibilities:

1. blindly clicking "No Action Needed" because you haven't taken the time to examine the post properly and work out what kind of feedback it needs;
2. clicking "No Action Needed" because you've examined the post carefully and decided that, in your opinion, it doesn't need any specific feedback.

The first of these is "robo-reviewing"; the second is proper reviewing but just not the same review that you would have done. The first is bad, and just the sort of thing that can lead to temporary review bans; the second is fine, and trying to eradicate it would be bad.

Remember that disclaimer I put at the top of this answer? The same idea can apply to one's attitude towards reviews. As a moderator, I try to talk about what's good for the site as a whole; as a user, I feel freer to express my own personal opinions and preferences. Are you opposing "No Action Needed" reviews because they're objectively bad for the site, or because they're not what you would have done? Are you sure? Is it an absolute necessity that this post be upvoted and that one be downvoted, or is it just your opinion? We have to draw a line between "making people review properly" and "making people review as we would".

(I hope that last paragraph doesn't come off as patronising. Obviously you're acting in good faith here, and trying to do what's best for the site; I just think you may be being a little too over-zealous about it. I say "we" because your ability to review reviews is almost moderator-like, and in some sense you're overseeing the whole site on a high level by making use of that.)

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Please don't leave "contentless" welcome comments.

I mention this because it came up in the comment discussion on this meta post, and also because earlier today I had to handle an abnormally large number of flags on recent comments which all said something along the lines of "welcome to the site, please take the tour" without providing any constructive feedback on the post in question. I suspect this is a direct consequence of your meta post, but it's not a good one ...

... because we have a policy against such comments. They're discouraged as useless, and should be flagged and deleted. One of the concerns mentioned in those previous metas - that they can be seen as some sort of chastisement - was also mentioned by Kevin in the comments on this meta.

In fact ... dare I say it ... if you really can't find anything to do to a post except to leave such a comment (not worth upvoting, downvoting, flagging, or editing, and nothing more substantial to comment about), then it might be a case where "No Action Needed" is appropriate!

Answer 2

It would confuse people to run these queues differently than the rest of SE/SO

NAN is generally the idea that the post doesn't need any moderation action (edits, flags, comments, etc). SFF is a bit different in that it considers "noisy comment" answers to be non-answers(NAA), but, failing that, NAN is often a good choice because as long as it attempts to be a constructive answer it doesn't need moderation (NAA/LQP).

I also don't fault people for not wanting to edit giant run-on paragraphs that are otherwise acceptable. It would be helpful, but not everyone is that skilled at writing, let alone discerning what other people wrote. I'd rather have no edit than a terrible edit that prompts a rollback.

That having been said, I've seen good responses to canned instructions on SO (I use a flagging tool to nail NAA/LQP all the time using 10k tools to find them). I've seen several people take the canned advice and edit their posts into shape. Maybe SFF needs an AutoReviewComments library of comments. But you need to remember that the comment is meant to be corrective. Needlessly saying "Welcome to SFF! Here's our [tour]!" on a post that has no other issues probably isn't going to be received well. I also don't want to see nitpicking used to justify a comment. If it looks good, give them the benefit of the doubt and just move on.