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After first trying StackOverflow for code-related questions years ago, I more recently stumbled into Photo SE. There are some really great questions and answers on the site, but I couldn't help notice that updates are infrequent. The "Photo of the Week" doesn't appear to have been updated for months, for example. If the feature has been discontinued, perhaps it should be removed.

Does Photo SE need assistance with moderation? Is there anything else that new users can do to help? Thank you.

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Photo of the Week has not been deliberately discontinued; however, it is a manual process to update it and honestly all the work since it was restarted has been done by one of the other moderators who is currently not active.

Practically, this means it is on hold. I will see what I can do to at least indicate this status. To forestall the obvious question: Photo of the Week is outside the normal Stack Exchange operating model and unfortunately it's not possible to delegate the running of it to anyone other than a moderator.

In terms of the more "official" moderation tasks, I think the active moderators are on top of them but anybody has concerns, please raise them, either here, in chat or directly with the Stack Exchange team.

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  • Thank you for the reply. Perhaps Photo of the Week can be omitted until it is active again; it makes the site look dead to have it unchanged for months. No doubt the contests are a lot of work and I don't think anyone gets paid for the effort. If feasible, how about having the contest run each week by a different top user from the last month that opts-in to indicate interest? If someone is just doing it once a year (52 different top users), it would be more fun and less of a burden, etc. I'll try to contact you directly for other matters.
    – travelgasm
    Oct 10, 2022 at 23:31
  • "unfortunately it's not possible to delegate the running of it to anyone other than a moderator."
    – Philip Kendall Mod
    Oct 11, 2022 at 7:19
  • With regards to your edits: that's not something that needs moderator intervention, the community will get to them eventually :)
    – Philip Kendall Mod
    Oct 11, 2022 at 7:20
  • I read your lack of delegation woes; I'm respectfully suggesting that you propose a change to the higher ups. If Photo of the Week can run "outside the normal Stack Exchange operating model," presumably it could be changed to include more community involvement, too. I understand that edits don't require moderators, also. I'm just surprised that five days can go by without anyone looking at edits because that hasn't been my experience with other SEs. I hope there will be greater community involvement soon so that it will be less of a burden for moderators, etc. Thanks, again!
    – travelgasm
    Oct 11, 2022 at 9:04
  • The change would involve adding a whole new level of delegated admin to the entire Stack Exchange platform, affecting every site on the network; that's not going to happen for a niche feature on a small (i.e. not Stack Overflow) site.
    – Philip Kendall Mod
    Oct 11, 2022 at 9:28
  • By "outside the normal Stack Exchange operating model", I meant that it's not a Q&A, rather than that it has any specific support in the platform. I suspect a site trying to start something like PotW today would be gently discouraged from doing it, we have it to some extent because it's been grandfathered in from an earlier age.
    – Philip Kendall Mod
    Oct 11, 2022 at 9:30
  • No problem. If existing moderators don't have time and/or interest, no one else is interested in replacing inactive moderator(s), and no one else can participate in the admin, perhaps discontinuing Photo of the Week is the way to go. Hope you can figure out a good solution.
    – travelgasm
    Oct 11, 2022 at 9:40

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