Back in July, we appointed Moderators Pro Tempore for the nascent Stack Exchange 2.0 communities. Leadership is critical to any community’s success, and the bootstrapping of a community often requires those leaders to be appointed before the community is large enough or organized enough to elect them itself.

Our fellow moderators Pro Tempore have been instrumental in keeping their communities tidy and on track through the public beta and beyond. Now that the earliest Stack Exchange 2.0 sites have been fully public for over 60 days, we believe at least some of the communities are ready to take the last important step towards self governance — by electing their own moderators. As we’ve said from the very first days of the Stack Overflow beta: …