2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

Question

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.

Not every question was compiled - as noted, we only selected the top 8 questions as submitted by the community, plus 2 pre-set questions from us.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!

Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.

To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

1. Jeff Schaller's answers
2. Kusalananda's answers
3. Arcabard's answers
4. John WH Smith's answers
5. ilkkachu's answers

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1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

Answer 1

Jeff Schaller

1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

I haven’t seen this happen often enough to know what’s right. If there was a temporary “qualifying life event” that would take priority over moderation, but to where I expected to be able to return, I’d let the mod team know. If I burn out, I expect it’ll happen slowly enough to muster a new election for augmenting or replacing me, as needed. If I’m no longer interested in the duties, I would want to resign, but not before an election could form; that way, I could help with the on-boarding & cross-training, so that we always had enough “hands are at the pump” to handle the workload to protect the site.

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

I expect to spend a similar amount of time on the site in the near future. If elected, I imagine the following adjustments from a user level:

• much less time Answering;
• less time in the review queues (the LQP will probably be the last to "go");
• and probably less overall editing, likely concentrated on the top-rated posts and the Sunday batch editing;
• with only 3 Questions in 3 years, I won’t be missed at all as an Asker!

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

Nothing solid at this point. One of K7AAY’s moderator questions did trigger an idea, though. The markdown/editing of posts is something that many new users struggle with. (Cue the perfectly-timed Meta question "4-space indentation never works"!) Having their first question show up as a jumbled mess starts them off on the wrong foot twice: they can hardly read their own post and get frustrated; and the other users of the site can hardly read their post, possibly downvoting it! I wonder how easy it would be to add a section at the end of the Tour where there’s a sandbox pre-filled with a mini-tutorial for formatting code and bullet points, for example.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

I’ve recognized only a couple classic “homework” questions before JdeBP did. I wrote down a list of them back in 2017, though those particular ones haven't resurfaced since then. My initial urge is to VTC those as duplicates of an original version of the Q, but it’s often hard to find such a Q with an upvoted or accepted Answer. While I despise the idea of laziness or cheating on coursework, I’m not sure it’s Stack Exchange’s (“our”) responsibility to enforce those Universities’ codes of conduct. Homework questions are pretty easily identifiable in their made-up requirements, so my best idea is to engage with the questioner in comments along the lines of “why can’t you use grep?” and “what did you learn in class recently that might apply?” and/or “what about your efforts didn’t work?” because then -- if they respond -- I have something I can work with. I’m in the camp of leaving such comments and then casting a VTC. If the user is intent on learning something at U&L, then they will respond to the comments and edit the question and it may become something answerable that can/will be left Open. Otherwise, the dead-end question is on its path through the Close review queue and will be cleaned up in time. If I was a moderator while making such comments, I would hope that my comments made it clear (to everyone) that the goal of the site is to encourage answerable questions and that "dumped" homework questions don't indicate any sort of starting point for the asker's understanding, thus bypassing the benefit they should be receiving from their education and making their question "Unclear what you're asking".

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I expect to build up some personal guidelines for recognizing what I deem acceptable comments vs unacceptable ones, so I would handle such flags as “normal” until I saw a different pattern emerge. I can imagine, for example, two users who tend to bump heads over some technology and do so in comments on each other’s posts. I imagine, in that scenario, attempting to reinforce the standards for comments as being temporary "Post-It" notes meant to be clarifying mechanisms and not as a discussion board. SE has made it clear with recent efforts that they'd like to see a certain code of conduct, so if arguments are happening, people may need to be reminded of the policy, no matter their current reputation level.

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would try my hardest not to notice -- that is, I don't plan on going around looking for chances to second-guess other moderators’ actions. Ideally, in that sense, an involved user would flag it for further attention. I would remind myself that U&L is not a life or death environment; that posts are easily deleted and undeleted; I’d take a deep breath and find a way to carve out some time (in the mod chat room?) to bounce it off the other mod(s). I freely admit that my grasp on the entire SE workings is less than 100%, but I delight in that, since it reminds me to go back to the official guidance, the FAQ’s, and the U&L meta discussions to see what the community’s direction is. I feel like the U&L community is pretty strongly run by its trusted users, and moderator-level deletions & comment-conversions happen only after the post has been through a review queue.

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

Judging from my time in the Close review queue, most of these are pretty cut & dried for me. The first gray area that comes to mind is where the user wants to know how to configure something complex -- from top to bottom. These often smell like RLM’s (“what's a tutorial for…?”) but IMHO are, instead, often too broad. If I’m understanding the moderator situation correctly, I won’t be casting votes on these myself very often, but instead weighing in if there’s a Meta discussion/disagreement about the voting results on a particular question. I’d like to be able to keep that discussion focused on the details and weigh out the interpretations against what we claim in the help/on-topic page.

I find myself in general agreement with terdon's recent summary on Meta:

(an) important objective of closing is to educate our users about the sort of questions we want/accept. When we close with the wrong close message, we fail that objective.

.

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

I think we have a mild version of this problem, yes. Best case, the comments clarify the question (which is edited as a result), obviating the need for the comments. One suboptimal case is where answers are provided in the comments (and the OP “goes away happy”, leaving an unanswered or unaccepted Question); another suboptimal case is where comments “stall” the question, such as questioning an assumption or pointing out an XY problem. I haven’t personally witnessed a large number of comment strings that strayed wildly off-topic, thus requiring a moderator to clean them up (thinking of the “this conversation has been moved to chat”); it’s possible that I’m happily ignorant of the frequency these situations, though. I like the automatic chat-room suggestion that shows up, allowing the involved users to self-create a room. If a comment string grows and the involved users choose to continue in comments, and the comments are on-topic, and I’m made aware of it -- that’s where I would draw the line and move the comments to chat.

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

I would take note of their objection and try to understand where the surprise occurred. If it’s not an obvious/simple misunderstanding, I’d open a chat room to invite the discussion to take place off to the side. If it sounds like a valid discussion for the greater U&L community to have, I’d encourage (or post myself) a Meta discussion on the topic. As a user, I’ve been a frequent editor and I review (via a SEDE query) posts that had rollbacks to see if my edits were involved -- they rarely are. I’ve also publicly defended my close votes on Meta, when there’s confusion in that realm. I’m happy to explain the reasons for my decisions so that everyone understands what the community guidelines are. If I’ve turned out to have misunderstood the guidelines for a situation, then I’m happy to have explained my (now-mistaken) reasons; I’ve learned another aspect of the site; and the action can usually be undone easily, and life goes on!

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

While the HNQ is, IMHO, a wild ride for rarely a good reason, I don’t see it as damaging enough to require (pro)active protection. I can’t think of a single U&L question that has been protected just because it was on the HNQ. Ok, maybe the “Gimme gimme man” one, but I think even that one was protected by a high-rep user after some low-quality answers -- not much direct moderator involvement there. No, I do not imagine myself needing to protect HNQ’s as a standard additional practice. I do, however, see some merit in each site filtering a list of candidates up to the HNQ algorithm, so that we see valuable and/or interesting questions being highlighted, versus ones that happen to be active and voted-enough to hitch a ride on the HNQ train.

What timing! Hot off the presses, there are some changes to the HNQ, including:

Moderators have the ability to remove questions from the HNQ List.

At first glance, I'm not sure how useful / powerful this will be for U&L. I, for one, don't imagine myself policing the HNQ on a regular basis in order to remove questions; I would suggest the U&L chat room as a reasonable place to discuss such take-downs. Meta seems too permanent and comments/flags on the question itself seems too drastic.

Answer 2

Kusalananda

1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

At this moment in time, and for the last few years, I do not volunteer any significant amounts of my time to any other project.

If circumstances change in such a way that I (or others) feel that my effectiveness as a U&L moderator starts to suffer severely, then I would consult with the other moderators in the team to see whether it would be better if I resigned (option B) or whether they thought it would be okay for me to carry on (option A) with the view that circumstances may change again later. At that point, it would presumably depend on the general health of the U&L community and the workload on the moderator team (and on how much hassle it would be to replace me).

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

I'm likely to spend about the same amount of time on the site as before (this varies from day to day, but I will be available almost every day; I currently have a 436 consecutive days on the site).

My time here has been mostly been taken up by looking for interesting questions to answer, answering them, and reading other people's answers and questions. If elected, I would answer less questions, and I would have to look at topics that usually does not interest me. I'm hoping that I would let the moderation tasks take the time they need.

I've been a bit caught up in the excitement of finding interesting new questions and answering them quickly, but I want to move towards a more relaxed approach. This may mean improving existing answers, and answering fewer questions myself.

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

slm clarified his "item #1" as

My comment around new users was more in people that are new to Unix & Linux technologies, not so much to our site. But there's def. room for improvement in how we as a site deal w/ people that are new to all of this.

Being able to look for information in manuals and on-line, and having the ability to (more or less) formulate what in effect constitutes a bug report (an U&L question), are things that new users to the site and users of Unix in general would be helped by having or learning. I've asked 30 questions on U&L, and answered over 4000. Part of the reason for that discrepancy is that I seem to be good at finding answers (which means I usually resolve my own issues). Some of my actual questions have later turned into bug reports for utilities.

Anything that guides or helps a user to ask good questions would be nice to have, and I'd go as far as saying that this would be good even if that makes it "harder" to ask questions (it signals the level of engagement that we expect from someone who asks a question). StackOverflow have, for example, tested question templates, and some variation of this may be interesting to try, or at least discuss.

I simply want to raise the quality of questions, so that we get less of the type of questions that says "I did something, but it didn't work".

Note that I never said anything about simple questions. In fact, I love some of the simpler questions, because once you start looking at the failure conditions (the assumptions that you need to make), you'll notice that it may not be so simple after all. They also usually make it easy to explain both fundamental and tricky concepts, which helps everyone, including oneself.

I would also want to do something about "silent downvotes". In my mind, a downvote on a question or answer should ideally be followed up with a comment, especially if it's clear that some effort went into the question or answer. I don't really know what to do about this.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

Yes, a few times. I'm not consistent in my response.

The thing is, sometimes these questions are interesting. The professor (or whatever) sometimes obviously want them to solve the question using a particular set of tools. These tools are sometimes obviously the wrong tools (e.g. "use ls to identify the five newest directories and print their names out"). I would answer these questions as if a professional had asked it and as if it would be implemented on a live production system.

I sometimes ask with a comment what the issue is that they actually need help with (see my answer above about wanting to improve question quality), and if they don't return, I would downvote and/or vote to close as "unclear" (I've done this to non-homework questions too when the user don't give enough info, and doesn't seem to care). I believe that I've given, not a complete script, but all the separate components of a script (all the pieces they should need to complete the puzzle), as an answer at some point. I personally think this is okay as it should be available in their course work already.

I'm pretty sure I've answered homework questions as if they were any other question too.

Duplicates gets closed as duplicates, as any other duplicate.

I definitely don't want to ban homework questions on the site. What I would want to see is a careful handling of these, possibly through being stricter with the formulations of the questions ("use your own words", "tell us what issue you have with this assignment"). That would enable a totally different type of answer.

In general, I'd like to also somehow discourage "Try this:"-answers (not just on homework-like questions; "Try this" implies "I haven't really spent enough time on this to know whether it would work or not, and I don't know under what conditions it would fail."). The point of a homework assignment is to learn something (or to prove that one has learnt something), and we should be able to help with this.

What would that mean for me if I was a moderator? Hmm... I would probably be more interested in the formulation of the question, of what the person has difficulty understanding, and what the answers to the question looks like. I would possibly still answer the first type of questions mentioned above (the wrong tool for the job questions).

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Being a brand new moderator, I would talk to the other moderators about it first. They would give their opinions, and I would go with something like what they propose I'd do. Honestly, that's the most likely scenario the first time this happens. Or I'll let one of them handle it! Yeah, that's the non-conflict way out...

Now, what might they suggest? If it's a comment thread that gone haywire, delete it if it doesn't result in an improvement of the answer or question, or at least clean it up by deleting the useless argumentation. That has happened a few times. Call the user(s) into a private chat to talk about it? I could do that if the user was willing to. As a moderator I would be able to suspend a user temporarily. That would rather unfortunate I think, but if they kept on being extremely toxic it may hurt the community more than what their answers would "make up for". I really hope I have to wait a long time before suspending anyone, and I would never do that without the support of the other moderators.

I don't know really... I would just learn on the job I guess. I also suspect that every case would be different. There is no "user", there's "bob" and he's having issues with having his facts questioned, or with having his answers edited, or whatever it may be.

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Hmm... How to resolve conflicts within the team of moderators? Why would you want to know about that? Oh, the old moderators are voting, aren't they?

We also have to assume that I somehow felt strongly about this particular question. Or maybe it was something else, like the suspension of "bob" from the previous question (which I felt was unfair)? Or the fact that homework questions suddenly starts being closed as "off-topic" by some moderators as soon as they appear?

As far as I've seen, the existing moderators are both mature and reasonable. There are bound to be difference of opinions, and these may be discussed if needed. I would not undo the actions of another moderator (if that was possible) just because I would have handled it differently. If it was something I felt strongly about, I would talk to them about it. This would go for things that may have been errors too. If something can and should be undone, it's better if it's undone by the person who did it, depending on the situation.

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

The full reason is:

Requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications). See the Help Center and our Community Meta for more information.

I have had a few flags declined in the past when I've used this reason the wrong way. Each time, terdon has pointed to the literal wording of the close reason to me (in the chat). I now think I've learnt it and I find that I don't use it very often at all.

If I'm unclear on how to handle these, I will ask the other moderators, until such time that I don't need to any longer.

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

I don't think we have too much of the opinion-arguing type of comments on U&L. What we do have is occasional long threads with users asking follow-up questions or doing the "it doesn't work" thing. I tend to try to halt these with a request for a new question as soon as I discover that the user is trying to do a "tutorial session" with me.

I do use the "no longer needed" flag on comments. It's a good addition.

We also have the-answer-is-in-the-comments issues, and I fully understand why we have that. Our questions can sometimes be answered with short pieces of code, or some terse advice. I've done this myself, even though I did complain about this exact thing on Meta a while back. This comes back to having high quality answers. I sometimes see other users pick up on such comments and turn them into answers. This is a good thing.

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

Yes, I do think that I should explain my decisions to users, especially when removing something that a user spent time and effort on, and when there are disagreements. Dialogue is important in these cases and if I've done something wrong I need to fix it. If a comment (in whatever form) is not enough, a private chat will do. Again, this will be dependent on situation and the people involved.

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

I don't think I've seen a real issue with HNQs on U&L. Moderators can nowadays remove questions from the HNQ list, which is nice, but I suspect that would be rarely needed on U&L.

I would probably protect questions that start to gather an unusual amount of very low-quality answers, regardless of the reason this is happening (it sometimes also happens for very popular questions, or when a question has been tweeted or in some other way been advertised).

Answer 3

ilkkachu

1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

It depends. This is really something that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis, since we can't really set any fixed requirements for work done/time spent "on-duty" -- that doesn't work well in a volunteer position.

It also depends on how the organization as a whole is doing: if all is well, and the workload for other volunteers isn't excessive, there's nothing to be lost by someone keeping their position while being inactive. It's not like volunteers who already know the job cost very much and if there's a chance of them coming back, it's only a potential net gain. In a system like this, the number of moderator positions also isn't fixed, so an old one resigning isn't strictly necessary for new blood to be brought in.

An additional problem here is that one has to notice their decreased activity level to even consider resigning. In other contexts, I've thought fixed-length terms useful in that the end of a term is a natural point to consider how much one has been involved and how much one is capable and willing to be involved in the future. Also, not standing for re-election may be an easier way to stand down than having to explicitly choose to resign. With permanent positions, having regular-ish check-ups on everyone's activity level might work similarly as a tool for that. (I understand from some meta discussions that moderators do actually have some sort of activity statistics, so that might work.)

I'm not sure how to quantify activity here, either. Counting distinct actions (handled flags or whatever) fails since not all issues demand an equal amount of work. The only objective measure would be time spent, and even that doesn't work the same way for all: someone might spend time here as way of taking a break from Real Life, while someone might consider it their Duty, duly put on the calendar and done on schedule.

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

Most of my time spent here now is on answering questions, that would have to take a secondary role in favor of moderator tasks and other janitorial work.

I can't say in numbers how much time I will spend here, since I haven't even really measured how much time I spend here now. I do visit the site every day(*), and have at least some tab on the site constantly open, (which isn't always good for the other things I should be doing, ahem). I don't expect my amount of time spent here would change so dramatically n the near future that I couldn't perform my duties.

(* As of Sunday, my profile page shows me "visited 936 days, 82 consecutive". 82 days ago was December 25th, which I suppose will have to be a somewhat acceptable reason for a break.)

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

Not any grand ones to present here.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

I don't think I've seen too many of those, but there may have been some where the whole text of a question looked like a copy-pasted assignment. Those clearly don't show any research effort, and we already require the askers to make at least some research effort before posting questions. That should apply regardless of if the question is homework or not, so questions posted without any work shown should be downvoted and closed.

In general, we can't really know for a fact if a question is about homework or not -- or rather, we can't detect all questions that are related to homework. The really obvious ones may perhaps be recognized, but if someone wants to cheat, there's nothing stopping them from asking a proper question about the subject of their homework. We also can't stop them from cheating in other ways, so we should probably just focus on what we can see, the quality of the question.

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

First, if they were aggressive/abusive/otherwise behaving badly towards other users, they should be dealt with as usual, with deletions, warnings and possibly suspension. Producing valuable answers mustn't be an excuse for bad behaviour. For one, that wouldn't be right, and also getting a reputation as an abusive environment might drive users away, which would decrease the amount of people reading those answers, and hence their value.

That said, someone capable of posting a steady stream of valuable answers would hopefully be also capable of learning to change their behaviour if the issues were brought up to them.

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I think there's some gray area between questions that are fine, and questions that definitely should be closed. In questions falling there, I probably wouldn't second-guess the choices of others. Not those made directly by moderators, or regular users through the usual voting mechanism. If I disagreed strongly, I'd probably start by asking the mod in question (privately) if there was something to their decision that I'd missed and then work from there to get a consensus decision. In the (unlikely) case of a serious standoff, I'd hope a third moderator would provide a "tie-breaking" opinion. Really high-profile cases should be discussed in meta by the community at large, though.

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

I think that's a rather mis-used close reason. Most of the time I see it applied somewhere, it seems to be on really trivial questions, where e.g. the answer is right there in the manual, but the asker has seemingly not read the whole manual. Those aren't actual requests for learning materials, though should perhaps be downvoted and ignored.

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

As far as I've noticed, the moderators here very seldom move messages to chat, and I haven't seen that many cases of deleted comments either. (But then, I wouldn't be able to see them post-facto.) It seems that the site doesn't have much of a problem with extra chatter in comments, but comments mostly seem to be mostly technical clarifications or otherwise related notes. Compared to something like Politics, that doesn't seem really surprising since the subject of the site is different enough. The questions are more clear-cut and don't invite as much emotional response. (*)

In other words, as far as I've seen, there doesn't seem to be much of a problem, and I wouldn't feel the need to tighten the screw on comments.

(* Well, at least as long as no-one starts an argument over which editor or software license is the one All Should Use.)

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

I'd at least try to explain my decisions, as I've tried to do with regular close-votes etc. even without prompting.

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

As far as I've seen, the questions from unix.SE that have been on the HNQ haven't seemed to attract that many problematic answers. If I would have seen excessive low-quality answers, I would have protected the questions even without the diamond; I don't see how that would change.

Also, as far as I understand, even moderators don't get notification for questions entering the HNQ list, so it wouldn't even be that easy to systematically go protecting them. On the other hand, if someone proposed having the SE software automatically protect questions added on the HNQ, I might not oppose it.

---

Some questions that weren't in the official list, but which I think were interesting enough to answer anyway:

N+1. A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

I don't think I've said (written) anything too inappropriate, or anything that would reflect badly on the site even with a diamond next to it. If I have, I would hope to be notified of such mishaps, moderator or not.

N+2. Would you favor a pop-up which suggests questioners use {edit} instead of Comments when they start to respond with a Comment?

I fully agree with terdon's comment. There's already the gray placeholder guideline including the phrase "If you're adding new information, edit your post instead of commenting" when you open the comment box, it's just not very visible and disappears the moment you start typing... We already have the "N.N. is a new contributor, be nice to them" banner that appears for others; promoting the instructions for the asker in the same way would seem like a good idea. But that's not something moderators can do directly, we'd have to petition for it on meta.

Z. What's your favourite editor?

I'm not sure I have one? I know it's not vi, or any of the variants, I never really learned how to use it... The one I most often launch is jmacs on systems that have it, it works well enough for all the small tasks I usually do.

Answer 4

John WH Smith

Good evening everyone, and here is my modest attempt at this questionnaire following my nomination tonight.

1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

To begin with, having now read the various posts and FAQs related to SE moderation work, it appears to me that the system we have in place is designed with such situations in mind, as unpleasant as they may be. I am of course not (yet) well-versed in the art of U&L/SE moderation, and with that in mind, would be more than willing to step down should my fellow moderators consider my activity insufficient. Taking the issue on a less personal level, I would be inclined to go with option B, which in my opinion is better aligned with the communication-heavy process the moderators are encouraged to go for. As for a threshold, I'm afraid I cannot quantify it using SE metrics such as flag handling counts. It is my belief that our moderators are elected on the assumption that they will be able to address such situations on a case-by-case basis through discussion with the moderator(s) involved. Should this be impossible, there remains the moderator removal procedure which also follows a similar path and encourages discussion when possible.

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

I have admittedly been less active on the site lately, mostly due to changes in my personal and professional lives. I do still find a lot of interest in writing (sometimes too verbose...) answers to questions which interest me and I do hope I will be able to come back to this in the near future. So I guess my answer to this question is "I cannot really do much less than I have been doing in the past few months or so." I do feel capable of committing more rigourously to moderation tasks, which would fit better in my schedule, however I can see how this could be a concern.

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

As a user, I have actually been mostly satisfied with the way things are done here. I do not think I have ever been unsatisfied with community/moderator decisions. I have seen a few reviews being processed a little too quickly and ending in rather debatable decisions, but I know these can always be discussed and rolled back, something which I have also seen happen here and there. If I had to pick a few things which have tickled me over the years though:

• The restricted list of sites available for question migration. I am certain there is a reason behind this, but I have here and there found myself giving vague flags/reviews to what I believe were movable questions, simply because my only option was Stack Overflow. Then again, I am not very aware of why this is the case.

• I may be mistaken, but I believe the same thing can be said of duplicate flags, which can only reference certain network sites?

On the user side of things though, I have never been bothered with any of the features and inner-workings on the SE framework on U&L. Regarding new users, that is definitely something I have seen changes for during my time here, however I have not (yet) given enough thought on the subject to provide valuable insight. As far as I am concerned, I do find U&L rather welcoming.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

As a member of academia myself, I have always been quick to pull out the "we won't do your homework" card and flag/review the question as such. I haven't given that much thought to this matter so far, but given the additional weight given to moderator votes, I would try my best to consider alternatives when the question isn't a clear copy/paste from a homework sheet. Such an alternative would be the one found on our two mathematics sites, where users are encouraged to give hints and put the poster on the right track without actually giving a full fledged answer. As a matter of fact, I believe several of the answers I have given on this site begin with such an approach (although these questions were not homework assignments).

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Oh. That was definitely, absolutely, me. Back when I had just arrived on SO and U&L. Minus the steady stream of valuable answers. I do not recall starting too many arguments, but I do have a few of my comments in mind which led to rather unnecessary discussion... I have been redirected to chat a few times and I believe that would also be my go-to move as a moderator. Should the issue be more about the poor quality of the comments or their tendency to go against our community guidelines, I might also try reaching out to the user via email as I have done once or twice, mostly to clarify the situation without loading a comments section with small and rather useless public contributions. Beyond that, the situation would, in my opinion, have to be treated as any other violation of our guidelines, regardless of the quality of the user's answers. Here again, I would first be inclined to ask more experienced moderators for their opinion, especially on the first few occasions when this may arise.

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I do not really see any answer to this other than "discussion." This is what our chat room is for, and I would be inclined to extend a first chat with the moderator by involving users (and the poster) when possible. If the poster understands and agrees with the decision (as I have several times as a user) then I would most likely follow. Should there be any debate, I would expect the moderator to not hesitate and reach out to the rest of the team. I will admit I have myself made some quick decisions in the review queues and the only reason why this is hardly ever an issue is because I am not the only one deciding. While moderators do have the option to expedite the process, we do still have the option to discuss it amongst ourselves.

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

Unfortunately, this reason is often used for homework-related questions. As I have stated in a previous question, I have been, as a user, very inclined to have these questions taken down. I would most probably still go this way on blatantly obvious "do my homework" questions (especially if I can find the coursework with a quick Google search...) Again, for the other cases, I would be more likely to "suggest" an answer rather than take vote/flag action immediately. When in doubt, I would also consider the option of letting others vote, working from the assumption that if 5 users agree on the flag, then it is (more) likely justified. I find that most people who actually post homework and get closed tend to not discuss it. Should they do so, we do still have the option to reopen the question if we are satisfied with the edits.

Questions aimed at finding good references (books, tutorials, and so on) are of course a bit different but can be seen as good wiki contributions in my opinion. I would therefore be tempted not to use a vote there. I understand that this may not be a common approach on U&L but I believe these questions can be extremely useful when properly reorganised into a wiki contribution. I have found myself googling for such things and arriving on U&L or another SE website, and the contents were usually spot on.

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

The only thing which would make me take such actions is the length of the comments section, which I believe should never go over a reasonable (yet undefined?) threshold. I do not think this feature is suited for discussion, and we do have a chat room meant for such things. I see the comments section as a good way to help users write better questions, or to extend answers with additional information which does not deserve an answer of its own. Whenever a long debate looms or happens, I believe a redirection to /dev/chat is best. If the users involved are willing, it can also be a good idea to summarise what happened in chat in a final comment, in which case the moderators could clean up more thoroughly to make room and leave the section centered on the actual conclusion of the debate.

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

I would actually be more than happy to accompany any decision I make with a note explaining it. As a moderator, I would do my best to make myself easily reachable, be it on chat or via email. As I have said before, my goto process would be to (1) review my own decision after it has been discussed with the user (2) ask fellow moderators for their opinion and (3) go from there. I would also consider passing the case over to another moderator should they see more room for discussion on the matter. I have made several questionable decisions with votes, flags, reviews as a user, and understand that this may happen again.

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

I will admit I have never really given thought to this list and so my answer to this will most likely be thin. To begin, I would argue that the 10-rep threshold for action on a protected question is still reasonably low and therefore leaves little room for risk. Unless someone registers to answer a very specific question because they have the very specific bit of knowledge to do so, I do not see too much risk in protecting a question a little prematurely. Regarding the Hot Questions list, I do not see myself protecting questions simply because I have found them there. I would be more likely to base such actions on flags and other reports, and therefore wait for community feedback rather than to hunt down the questions in the list myself.

Answer 5

ARCABARD

1. A common issue with volunteer posts like moderators is for the volunteer to simply not have enough time to devote to his or her mod duties. This isn't a theoretical question. It's not restricted to SE, either. It's a common issue with volunteer work. And I've seen situations in SE (and indeed elsewhere) where most of the work fell to a subset of moderators/volunteers because the remaining ones were not very active. In this situation, there are at least a couple of ways to go. (I can't think of any other alternatives, but there might be.) [A] Do nothing. Carry on being a mod to the extent of ones diminished capacity [B] Resign, citing lack of time, other commitments, whatever. In your opinion, what is the better choice, [A] or [B], and if [B], what is the level of threshold activity that would make you think that it was time to give up the post? How would you quantify activity for this?

I believe that A is the best way to do it. Removing people from the role would just leave an empty spot that needs to be filled. Allowing people to stay though with diminished capacity at least keeps a roster of people to try and pull from. It is also very possible the people without the time to commit do not have the time because they are skilled and their time is more valuable.

Reasonably the best thing I can think of is having a system where inactive volunteers ( as determined by time spent working on the site ) had to select members from the community to maintain the positions duties. The original elect would be responsible for the deputies they chose. I could go on forever with the way I imagine a system like that could work but I think the general idea comes across.

2. While it says on the tin, at the Stack Overflow blog: A Theory of Moderation, that the moderators should do as little as possible, we're having an election because the site has "grown and it would be nice to have a larger team" (paraphrasing terdon from chat), so I assume that there'll be moderator tasks for you to do. If you plan on spending about the same amount of time on U&L, what other U&L activities (such as Asking, Answering, Editing, or Reviewing) that you currently do today do you see yourself doing less of when as a moderator? How much time do you think you'll spend here at U&L?

I am an oddball case. As it stands I don`t do much of anything on U&L. I would be coming into this with ~10 hours a week I can volunteer. That's how much time I have set aside to volunteer to a programming community whether it is for U&L, IRL meetups, or some volunteer teaching.

3. Do you have any visions or plans to enhance the U&L community? Specifically around community guidelines such as welcoming new users, as slm commented in their answer at "What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?", but it could be around voting or tags or any other area where you see room for improvement.

I have a dislike of the way duplicate questions work. From a community standpoint it has turned the network into a bit of an oligarchy. The way the site works now tends to push new users out of the interactive and human parts of it. I`m not sure what the answer to the problem is but it should definitely be addressed.

4. Have you ever identified questions from people attempting to cheat on school/university tests or coursework? What actions did you take? What actions do you think should be taken? How would having the extra voting weight of being a diamond moderator influence your actions in such circumstances? (See: 1 2)

No, and I have not put that much thought into the topic.

It is not that hard though to tell the difference between someone looking for help with homework and out right trying to cheat. Certainly Exchange exists to help people with their homework.

5. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This is about dealing with someone who is contributing positively dealing with negative reaction. I would start by writing a list of reasons I suspect they are experiencing this situation. My first suspicion would be that they have attracted the attention of some kind of automation whether it be bot or social. This could be wrong but I would be more interested in the downvoters then the posters initially. How are these downvoters getting to this post are these down voters down voting multiple posters? Does it make sense the down voters would naturally come across these posts along a logic trail.

6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I think that the moderators are pretty consistent about what they close/delete/etc and the conversation should really be more about the philosophy of why they are choosing those actions then the specific questions themselves.

7. Given that a diamond moderator can close a question with a single vote, how will you be construing the "Request for learning materials" closure reason?

"Question Overly Broad example lacks understanding"

My thinking is that the lacks understanding part addresses people who are asking for the solution to problems and not for help with specific problems in their implementation of a solution. In general I imagine the issue is not with students seeking help but seeking shortcuts. Though I may not entirely understand what is meant by the question, as I am familiarizing myself with the issue as I go.

8. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, question comments and answer comments are regularly deleted by diamond moderators for straying from the purpose of clarifying/improving the relevant question or answer. On Politics, for example, diamond moderators regularly step in when comments are abused to argue people's personal political opinions (example). Does this WWW site have an analogous problem needing diamond moderators to do the same, in your view? Where would the line be drawn, if there is a line at all?

I think that comments pushing people back on track are far more useful then deleting them.

Your wrong is always less useful then this is why I am correct.

9. Suppose a user expresses disagreement with you over a closed/deleted question or an edit to their post that you've made. How would you handle it? Do you think you always need to explain your moderation decisions to ordinary users and if not, where would you draw the line?

No, I don't think a moderator should always explain their reasoning. Every once in a while though someone may be seeking genuine clarity and understanding and more time can be given to them.

There are a couple of lines but mine is, the moment someone compares their question or situation etc to another`s that had a different outcome.

10. On some other StackExchange WWW sites, it is routine practice to protect questions that come up on the Hot Network Questions list (a list that is, to put it mildly, controversial). Given that diamond moderators can protect a question with a single vote, will you be doing this for Hot Network Questions here? Please give your reasons for whatever your answer is.

I would not automatically protect. Going into questions that are having problems, protecting it, and cleaning it up is what moderators exist for.

On some of the more active sites though if it seemed like moderation was falling behind and these questions where turning into a time burdon it might make sense to protect them outright but I highly doubt that is the case on U&L.