What happens if there are too few candidates for moderator?

Question

At the moment there are fewer candidates for moderator than there are slots. What happens if this remains so?

There are, potentially, a few members here that others, including myself, would not like to see as moderators as they seem, in posts and comments, to have too negative an attitude.

If there turn out to be "too few" candidates, it might be useful to let the election proceed but in a different form. "Should X be a moderator? yes/no".

If the no votes outweigh the yes, perhaps the person should not be given diamond status.

It might be useful to do something like this in any case if the number is more than the number of positions but below some other value. The number of open slots is two. Maybe with fewer than five candidates (or some similar value) the form of the election would change.

Disclaimer. This is not directed at any current candidate as I write this.

And maybe it is too late to make any change at present, but it should be considered for future elections, IMO.

Answer 1

If the nomination phase is coming to an end and there aren't enough candidates, we (the Community Team) generally extend the nomination period for one more week. We also make a new post in Meta, to draw attention to the lack of candidates.

Hopefully, that's enough to draw in more people willing to step up and moderate, but if it isn't then the election is cancelled. After that, the Community Team will need to convene with the moderation team, and assess next steps — though waiting for a bit before retrying the election is standard practice (if it failed, we wanna make sure we're not retrying just a month after, lest if fail again). We can also make a "interest check" Meta post before retrying the election, so we can assess how many people will be willing to moderate before starting another election that can potentially fail again.