2014 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Question

In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Here's how it'll work:

• During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, May 12th, at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

• We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

• This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.

• At the end of the phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

• Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, containing 10 questions in total.

• This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this new process, feel free to post as a comment here.

Answer 1

A user posts something you find (off-topic/wrong/offensive) and you (close/delete/migrate) the (question/comment). The user posts about it in Meta and the post gets a lot of upvotes. Answers are posted both in favor of you action and and criticising your action; both get upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?

(In case you're wondering, yes, this happens all the time.)

Answer 2

A quite specific question: what is your position with respect to undergraduate questions?

A significant part of my moderator actions have been to arbitrate if a question was on-topic or not, because it was somehow related to undergraduate studies. It can often be argued that some questions can however easily generalise to graduate studies, which would make them on topic. So, what is your position:

• Anything related to undergraduate should be off-topic. If a question can be generalised, then it should be generalised first, and then it can be made on-topic.

• Anything related to academia should be on topic, regardless of the level of studies. Other factors should decide if the question should be closed or not (too localised, too broad, subjective, etc).

• Undergraduate questions could be on topic, but "shopping-list" questions are not (e.g., "which degree should I choose?", "which university should I go to?").

• Any other position.

Answer 3

How will you use your "binding vote" moderator privileges?

• Let the community weigh in first on most close, reopen, delete, undelete, etc. operations. That is, I won't use diamond mod privileges to unilaterally perform operations that can be done by the community (with a few very rare exceptions).
• Let the community decide on things that could conceivably be subjective, but for things that are definitely not going to be controversial (e.g. closing a question on "Why doesn't this code compile") I will use diamond mod privileges. Why prolong the inevitable?
• Vote as if I was a normal user. That is, I'll vote to close/delete/open/etc. according to my understanding of how this site works, without much special consideration for the fact that my votes are binding.
• Use diamond mod privileges deliberately to keep the direction of the site on track. I have an idea of what this site is all about and I was elected because others agree with this idea, now it's my job to enact it.

Answer 4

What change would you like to make in how the site is currently moderated, and how would you go about implementing that change?

Answer 5

What is your position on boat programming questions?

Whereas some questions are clearly off-topic (e.g. "what is 2+2?"), some questions could be on topic, in that they are related to academia, but Ac.SE might not be the best place for the question. We have had several complex situations where a question could technically be asked on different sites, with some users asking for migration, while others asking for the question to stay. In such a situation, what would you do? (especially considering that only mods can migrate questions).

• If it's not 100% academia-related, then it should be migrated.
• As long as it is academia-related, it could stay.
• I'll wait for the question to be closed to decide whether to migrate it or not.
• I'll migrate it only if the OP wants to.
• Other approaches?

EDIT

As suggested by aeismail, some examples of questions (for which I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong decision):

• https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/49395/representing-experimental-data was migrated to CrossValidated. The point is made in the comments that it is relevant to many academics, and the question on Grid lines on graphs was not closed as off-topic.

• https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/24046/carrying-poster-tube-on-amtrak-trains was migrated to travel.SE (by me, actually, under request), while Flying with a poster tube as a hand luggage was deemed on topic.

• https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/99886/is-et-al-used-as-a-singular-or-plural-subject (on how et al.) was migrated to ELU, while a question about the formatting of citations What does YEAR: NNff means in research papers? eg 1965: 47ff was not closed.

• As mentioned here, Is it more difficult for teetotalers to develop academic contacts? received some closing votes and comments to migrate it to WorkPlace.SE, but stayed on.

I think that in general, we have many intersections with, e.g., WorkPlace (is working in Academia that specific?), ELU (is writing an academic paper that specific?), CrossValidated (many academics use stats for work), etc.

Some of the questions could have been migrated, some could have stayed, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. But a significant responsibility of the moderator is to arbitrate the migration, and since there is no strict on/off-topic line, it would be good to know on which side of the line our moderation team is.

Answer 6

How would you moderate postings where your opinion or the community's opinion and official SE policy disagree?

Answer 7

Under what conditions will you delete comments?

Answer 8

What is your time zone? What is the time period you are available for moderating our site everyday? Please specify the answer in UTC format.

Answer 9

What is your position on the following statement from aeismail: "In the long run, Stack Exchange sites are not just about answering people's questions, but providing long-term curating of the answers"?

We have some very active users who look at old questions/answers, and curate them, for instance by flagging for comment removal (typically because they are obsolete, too chatty, not constructive, etc). Will you support them in this task? Or do you rather think that content should be left unchanged as much as possible?

Answer 10

What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? If you are currently a moderator, do you believe you've carried out the role effectively?

Answer 11

What should be done with the popular "Don't walk. Run." comment that shows up on questions. If a user begins systematically flagging the comment as "non-constructive" what will you do?