Ok, this is 6am for me, will do my best to be there on time. If I'm not there at the start, don't wait for me, I'll join as soon as I'm awake and caffeinated.
The format is open, feel free to ask your question(s) unprompted, however please be mindful of whether or not candidates have answered the previous questions so that they don't get behind and start missing questions. Other than that, feel free to jump in.
Candidates, please use the reply feature so that questions and their answers are linked together. (Hover your mouse over the left of the message, click the down arrow, click reply)
When a question is asked, I'll star it - please star it yourself also to help! Please save stars for the questions so that candidates can refer to the star list to make sure they haven't missed a question.
We will be creating a digest version of the town hall chat after it is completed. This digest will take the form of a question on meta, containing all the questions asked as well as their answers for easier reading.
There's a system message up on the site, so we may get some stragglers joining us. (:
The candidates I see here are: @rfusca. And perhaps @MikeW if someone wakes him up and delivers coffee. (;
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?
@TimStone Its a weight to bear, for sure. But I've always tried to act and speak responsibly on the site in the past and would in the future as well. We should all act as though there's a diamond on us. Its a community driven site, the mods are just the community with a bit more power. I don't think the way I present myself will change or need to, merely the community's view of me.
Photography has an exceptional answered rate, at 99%. However, it ranks towards the bottom of the list of graduated sites when it comes to total questions asked. How do you think this reflects on the health of the community, and do you feel like anything about the way the site is currently run needs to change to ensure continued growth?
As a moderator, you will be required to sometimes take quick action against undesirable content (e.g. dangerous spam). Do you think you can be online often enough to react?
@TimStone :3421106 Good question! I think its clear from our answer rate that we have the expertise. When visiting other SE sites I often feel like the photo.se answer are of a higher quality. I think the problem with the photography site in terms of questions that are asks is that they fall into generally two categories: Common questions that have already been asked and greatly answered or questions that related more to critique - 'ie whats wrong with this picture'...
@rumtscho @rumtscho I am online for about 16 hours a day, not continuously and not always on the photo SE site. If I become a moderator I would keep a closer eye on things. I am in New Zealand which may help since other moderators are in other time zone, I can cover the night shift
@TimStone The second has been deemed offtopic and rightfully so - but we need to encourage the creative questions - that's where we most lack. I think a great way to do that is to encourage questions to come out of our Picture of the Week Contest. "How did this effect come from this PotW picture'. Getting questions that focus on the creative side and less on the technical. We're extremely tech heavy and 'running out of steam' there.
@rumtscho Absolutely. I'm online huge, huge portions of the day for my job or at home. Responding shouldn't be an issue at all. And its a shared task with other mods.
@RowlandShaw Interesting. If they're flagging appropriately, then I probably would send them a thank you card ;) If its becoming an issue, I'd try to invite them to a chat session and explain what was appropriately flagged and what wasn't.
@TimStone We have great answers for the technical questions like moire or sensor noise or spherical aberration. We struggle with all the shopping questions and other "non-answerable" types of stuff which seems to drive a lot of traffic here.
Two highly respected members of the community get in a comment war on a question. They both flag each other's comments and are cussing and it is clear that this is beyond a heated argument. What do you do, what don't you do?
@TimStone to fix that, all I can think of at this point is rather than trying to answer (or close) every "should I buy camera A or camera B" we might have a Q&A for each product, so 550D - what are the features, pros and cons vs other cameras in Canon's lineup, and so forth. I don't know, somehow need to be able to handle what the community wants to see
@RebeccaChernoff Edit the argument out - especially the cussing, warn them to stop immediately, if they don't stop immediately suspend both the accounts for a short time period.
@RowlandShaw If you mean flagging things that shouldn't be flagged, I guess I'd start by addressing why they're doing that. If they're trying to get noticed suggest they answer some questions.
@RebeccaChernoff I'd remove the offending comments so they don't have anything to responsd to, chat/email them both and tell them to take a break and cool off, and if that didn't work give them a temporary ban of a day or two if that's possible. I don't expect it would come to that. I don't care what reputation they have, there's no reason for that behaviour
New users often are not accustomed to the Stack Exchange system, and sometimes struggle to present themselves properly, either in the way they use the site or their attitude. How willing are you to work with "problematic" users, and at what point do you decide that someone isn't worth the effort?
@TimStone very willing. I think people need time to adjust to how the site works. People don't read the FAQ or read through a lot of questions and answers, they just ask away, hoping for a quick answer. We need to encourage people, not bite off their heads on their first visit.
@TimStone I often make suggestions on new user's questions of how to help their questions - for example there was a food critique question recently where I helped the new person realize that posting an example would greatly help the question. I usually welcome them to the site, explain what may be wrong, and suggest a course of action. If its an attitude issue, I'll edit an attitude out of the question/answer as a subtle 'hint' - more involved action would include an explicit note to the user.
@TimStone In terms of 'when it isn't worth it' - rarely, but I'm always willing to work with somebody who keeps responding. When its a 'drive by' - that's when its not worth it.
@RebeccaChernoff I think I could benefit the community by encouraging community growth aspects with a bit more official capacity. It's not about enforcement to me, which is largely what the high rep tools are - close, delete, respond to flags. That is an important part of moderations, but its also about being a leader and driving the community in the decisions that they make.
@RowlandShaw I think for the most part moderators should be like referees - if you don't notice them, they're doing a good job, acting quickly and not being overbearing and noticeable. I don't know what they are doing behind the scenes, so I don't know of anything they should do differently
@RowlandShaw Loaded question Mr. Moderator ;) You're perfect? ;) I think the community handles the majority of the closing pretty well and quick. We've got some great editors. The PotW needs to be handled more on time sometimes - its a burden, but the community gets confused/a little upset when its stale on Monday morning. In your general duties, I think the current moderation approach is fine.
@RebeccaChernoff My motiviation is that I spend a lot of time here and wanted to give something back in keeping the site healthy and hopefully helping to grow it. That can be done having high rep priviledges, but that takes a long time to accumulate :)
Note: I'm going to have to leave soon, one or two more quick questions?
How familiar are you with Meta Stack Overflow, and how much (if at all) do you feel policy discussions there should influence the way things work on your site?
@TimStone I'm familiar with it, I read it. I don't contribute to Meta SO just because of the sheer size. In terms of what to apply. If it's a policy about general SE stuff - how appropriate CWs or other such stuff, I think it should be applicable. Users should expect the same general set of rules across the SE network. You should have to guess what the rules are for each site. For really specific issues, we just have to use common sense - does it apply to a site with creative tendencies?
@TimStone I am familiar with it. Obviously a lot of policy applies to all the sites, and if you're a moderator you have to respect that. But photography and cooking are different than programming or physics IMO, more subjective and rarely one right answer, and I think we have to allow some leeway to be more lenient in what we allow on those sitess
What is the main problem (including problems on how users use the site) that you actually see in the site you would be moderating, if you are elected moderator?
@RebeccaChernoff I think there are two big problem of roughly equal weight - one that @timstone touched on earlier - the lack of new questions and how to address that I answered earlier. The other one is the shopping questions - we get lots of them and they're very similar. I don't think wiki's are an appropriate approach here. We're a question and answer site at heart and creating a series of wiki's just doesn't fit...
Compared to stackoverflow, where people understand they need to include all relevant info and be clear on their question, we get a lot of vague or poorly worded questions, and many are of the type (shopping, critique) that do not fit with the format as SE sees it, many of which also will become obsolete (CS4 questions for example). Either need to handle the shopping Qs better or just not allow them, but many leak through, so we're kind of wishy washy on that front I think
@RebeccaChernoff I think we should encourage some really good questions that answer the shopping questions in a general sense and then direct them to those questions, a comparison site like NeoCamera for that kind of stuff "should I buy A or B for X dollars?", and ask them to join us in chat to further address points that are super specific to them. Encouraging users to come to chat for points that dont fit exactly on the QA site is a great way to get the user help and encourage them in the community.
What do you think the moderator's role is in community building? Should they stick to the janitorial duties, or be actively involved in the decision making process and promotion of the site?
@RebeccaChernoff Absolutely they should take a role in community affairs. They shouldn't decide what the community wants but they should help drive want the community has decided and keep 'the ball rolling' on topics that the community needs to decide.
@RebeccaChernoff I think they have to take care of the janitorial stuff first and foremost. Just because other users have reached enough rep to have mod priviledges, doesn't mean they will take action. Elected mods are obligated to take care of those jobs. The community building is very important and something I'd like to participate in, but only after the other hard work is done. I don't think community building needs to be just mods - we could have a panel of interested parties
@RowlandShaw I think it should be all the community unless one of a few things : 1. It's blatantly and harmfully bad. 2. It would drive the community toward a direction that would ultimately do them harm. 3. It's completely unrelated and there's no reason at all for it to be there.
@RowlandShaw Ideally the community is more involved and it doesn't come across as heavy handed moderating. But I'm not sure the community at large is really confident about what is allowed or not, even mods and high rep users are not sure about whether many Qs should be closed
My final thought is I'm late for work. Great community here, thanks @rebecca and good luck @rfusca
@RebeccaChernoff I think moderators are a balance of janitor and community advocate. We clean up what needs to be (but for closing questions and such, we have enough high rep users that its mostly not done by mods), moderate the 'issues' that arise, and then drive the community in the decisions that they make.
