How do I privately contact the moderators?

Question

The answers to this earlier question about contacting moderators essentially say flag one of your posts and ask them to create a private room for you.

But my current position isn't exactly that. I recently received and replied to a message from the ELL mod team within the User Interface. A little later, I realised I wanted to send some additional text - I still had the browser window open from which I'd sent my first reply, so I just wrote it there.

But I couldn't send that second reply (it seems to be a "one-shot" facility). So I copied what I'd written into a temporary text file on my computer, and tried raising a mod flag (on a relevant question), hoping to be given a link or something through which I could continue the interaction.

Unknown to me at the time, the initial communication from the mod team was sent to my ELL-registered email address (which isn't set up to alert me about incoming mail, and which I don't even necessarily check every day).

Having now just found that email, I've used it to "reply" with my second block of text (somewhat more than would fit into a single post in ELL comments or chat rooms, btw).

But after having clicked "Send Reply" in my email system, I notice the address is actually donotreply@... So I guess it won't be received anyway.

I assume that one way or another I'll be able to get my second page of communication through to the mod team (maybe they're dealing with it even as I compose this question). But given I couldn't find what I was looking for here on ELL Meta, it seems to me this question might be useful for anyone else who gets stuck trying to continue an interchange with the mod team in future.

I don't know how to tag what I'm asking here. Maybe Feature request: Is there, or Can we have a way to continue mod-initiated communications beyond the User's initial response?

Answer 1

The most direct way to ask for a private conversation with a moderator is to flag a post for "moderator attention" and explain that you would like to talk and what you would like to talk about. Flagging ensures that all site moderators have a chance to see it, and on average should get you the fastest response.

Some moderators may be "pingable" in ELL's main chat room if you have a quick question that doesn't need to be privately discussed. People who haven't joined a chat room in a while will not see "pings" from that room, so this isn't as reliable as raising a flag.

If you need to talk privately, a moderator will usually create a private chat room and ping you to let you know when it is created. Only moderators can create private chat rooms and any moderator (even moderators from other sites) can see the contents of any chat room, so if what you want to discuss is very sensitive, you should use the "Contact" link to raise your issue with the Stack Exchange Community team. Users who have earned enough reputation may create "gallery" chat rooms where only specific users can chat, but everyone can join the room and see the discussion.