I just finished breakfast. I might wait an hour before cracking open a bottle :-)

I didn't specify what kind of drink (;

@RebeccaChernoff I hope you brought snacks and drinks too. :P

me, I'm watching hockey playoffs, so beer it is.

BUT IT'S MINE

ALL MINE

Also, what's with this drop shadow on the footer? Hmm..

drop shadows are cool

Right, let's boogie

HI Y'ALL

(you can say hi too, I won't bite)

hrmph!

Welcome to the Skeptics SE Town Hall Chat

We're just here to get to know the candidates and ask questions regarding the candidates views on moderation that may help in voting.

A few notes about the format:

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)

I won't be able to hold back @TimStone if you don't.

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: @Fabian, @Sklivvz, @SamIAm, and @RoryAlsop

Go for it :-)

@RebeccaChernoff Still awake at the moment

Hi Sam

Hello!

hopefully @larianlequella @alain @samiam @konradrudolph @roryalsop can join us shortly (:

aha, hi @SamIAm (:

With that, I think I've got all my initial messages, so I open the floor to y'all. Who has a question to start us off? (:

OK I'll start with an easy question, just to break the ice

What are your strongest tags on skeptics?

@Sklivvz Probably environment

@Sklivvz medical-science, probably a bit skewed as it's the most popular tag on our site and there's just so much bad science in that field that needs to be debunked.

medical-science as well for me, for the same reasons (also: generally it's easy to answer), followed by physics

How much experience do you currently have using the moderation tools (particularly those available to non-moderators) on Skeptics?

@Shog9 Zero. I'm not a high rep user (1.5k at the moment)

@Shog9 I'm interested. Do you think that is an important skill to have coming in to the role?

@SamIAm That still allows you to flag (and prior to the recent graduation, a lot more)

@Oddthinking Yes, very much so. There are a ton of tools available to ordinary users (more as your rep increases naturally) that enable moderation of the site. If you're not using them before having access to the whole toybox, you're missing out on experience you could have.

@Shog9 I can confirm that SamIAm is very familiar with the Suggested Edit and Flag buttons. :-)

@Shog9 I use the tools daily, for obvious reasons, especially close votes, flags and I am particularly fond of the review pages. I also use them on StackOverflow, where I am a 10k user.

@Shog9 I've used them for over a year now here on Skeptics (also the diamond-mod-only features), so I'm pretty familiar with them. I've also used them on sites where I'm not a moderator, e.g. Gaming.

@Shog9 Well in that case, I've flagged a lot and edited and retagged. When we were in beta I could vote to close, which I've done/

I just wasn't familiar with the lingo "mod tools", which features were considered "mod tools."

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?

Hi @RoryAlsop

hey all - apologies for being late. Just back from band practice and had to check my flag queue :-)

@TimStone I see a lot of "non-answer" answers, which I currently flag, I have over 100 helpful flags

@TimStone I think that this site is quite healthy to be honest. However, the community has decided to adopt a number of rules which are a challenge for moderators. The scope is determined in a non-obvious way, and explaining this to new users is challenging (i.e. notability rules). Also, we require references, which is unexpected to our first time users and not really supported well by the system.

@TimStone Not scaring away the new users due to our rules, which are not exactly obvious and also different from every other SE site. Our scope is not obvious, so getting users to actually ask questions that are on-topic, and getting users to back up answers with references without scaring them away is pretty important.

@RoryAlsop you can catch up as we go, but it might be easier just to carry on with the present and then go back after the event and respond to the first couple things...up to you

can quickly catch up on the first couple of q's if you like.

@Shog9 A fair bit from my time as mod over on Security. Even had to use some of the suspicious voting tools

When you see a question with major issues (poorly-written, argumentative, no indication of relevance to a notable claim, etc.), what tool do you reach for first?

@TimStone the real challenge is keeping the balance of staying in the background letting the community police itself, but being available when needed to support the community

@Shog9 Google for notability, comment and edit is my first choice, always. If the question can't be salvaged (or we really need to understand what the OP meant) I sometimes close, sometimes comment. It depends how much risk there is that the question starts to get bad answers. Of course, more and more, I see the community taking care of it, in which case - do nothing! :-)

@Shog9 the comment button first - a little bit of guidance can help the questioner rearrange their post - if they can come back with a couple of refs themselves, all the better

@Shog9 If the question is easily salvageable I might edit it myself, if it is salvageable but e.g. contains multiple questions, I'll comment on the problem and let the user edit themselves as I don't know what exactly the user is after. If the current issues are likely to lead to bad answers, I'll close the question and explain how they'll get it reopened once it is edited. For questions that are not salvageable, I'll just close them directly.

@Shog9 Edit if I can grasp what they meant and just needs (for example) a link for notability, or some copy editing but comment if it is unclear what the questioner was asking.

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?

(Test. I just posted a question, but I don't see it yet. This is a test to see if my messages are getting through.)

@TimStone I have only had this a handful of times, and my approach is: try to educate through comments first, then through private messaging; then suspension. One of those users did supply good content, but was very argumentative, so I just remained patient and tried to escalate through those steps slowly. The other had very average content, so I was probably a bit less polite. But he too was worth the effort. If people want to contribute, I want to support them at being better contributors.

(That one did, at least, but no question)

@Oddthinking this went through but I don't see a question from you

While there are signs of improvement, the community itself is still reluctant to Vote to Close/Delete - and even comment and downvote - instead they rely on flags. Have you any ideas on how to encourage the community to be more directly involved in self-policing the site?

(I see what I did wrong...)

@TimStone Oddthinking prepared a wonderful Welcome to New Users page, that's the first step. For more problematic users there are different steps, contacting them in chat, via mod mail and finally successive levels of suspension. Fortunately we've had to use these tools a limited number of times since the site's beginning.

@TimStone I don't expect new users to immediately know our rules, but I expect them to be able to learn and accept them. There's a huge difference between a user adjusting to the Q&A format and our very specific rules, and a user just causing trouble. If there is no change in behaviour after explaining the problem to them, there's not much more moderators can do except to clean up and suspend if necessary.

@TimStone I think comments are best in that case. I try to be welcoming but explain our rules are a little different. Most people are posting in good faith and they just need a nudge. What point is it not worth it? If it is clear they are not in good faith.

@Oddthinking From experience on Sec SE, I found the best way was in chat. I found a critical mass in chat made communicating actions and options much easier. Although in the early days mods need to do a lot of closing, discussing the powers that the community have in chat is valuable.

How much time are you willing/able to spend moderating per week, and how much do you expect is required for successful moderation? (I ask because I would have gone for nomination but can't afford to spend enough time here)

@Sklivvz Oh, and the one I missed at the start: medical-science and then history (which is odd, as they aren't the ones I thought I would have...)

@TimStone I'll add that very, very few trouble users are responsible for a completely disproportional amount of moderator time spent.This amount is completely unsustainable if we get more of those users, so we have to limit ourselves there as we don't have unlimited time.

@Oddthinking Hopefully high rep users will lead by example (hint, hint, wink, wink)? I think we need a bit more high rep users now that the levels required have changed. I think the bottom line is, we have few questions per day and we can dedicate our time to them at the moment. However, there are strong, strong signs that the community is quite active in policing the answers which, IMHO, is more important and difficult. I rarely need to intervene lately on them.

@Oddthinking Probably Meta would be a good start. Also, we might just need to wait for some more users to (re)gain the ability to close/delete.

@Oddthinking I see comments very regularly on problematic posts here, community closing is certainly rarer than I'd like, but not at a problematic level I think. This is just something that should automatically happen over time, as more users have the tools available and feel comfortable using them.

@jozzas I probably spend about 30 to 45 minutes a day actually moderating - scanning the review pages, following up flags and responding to chat messages. I spend almost the same again doing what I can only class as marketing - publicising the value of the place, sharing URL's of useful questions and generally supporting growth.

Do you tend to live inside a (set of) tag(s) or do you interact with the site as a whole?

@jozzas I think a minimum of 2/3 hours per day is necessary for being an effective mod on skeptics. I think that all the current mods give at least that amount of time.

@RebeccaChernoff Whole site (main and meta, all chats, all tags, no filters) :-)

What do you think will be the biggest challenges facing the site in the coming year or so? Do you forsee growing pains? Lack of growth? Difficulty attracting/retaining quality users? Something else?

Just got a "parse error" notification bar?!

refresh should fix that

@jozzas I already spend a lot of my time "moderating" here by commenting, flagging, and editing and voting to close when I had that ability. I'm usually here every day (unless I'm away from home and work)

(or at least, I've only heard of this happening once and a refresh fixed it)

@jozzas There isn't all that much time required for stuff that only moderators can do if all the mods are active, but you can certainly spend much more time on editing and posting content. I'm using the SE network a lot, and more of that time is moderating nowadays.

@RebeccaChernoff The whole site, definitely!!!

@RebeccaChernoff I tend to go whole site on all my core sites except for a couple of SE sites (like gaming - where there is just too much I know nothing about)

@RebeccaChernoff Our tagging scheme isn't exactly optimal, the site is broad enough that stuffing the questions into neat categories is often problematic. While I have a preference for science questions I tend to look at pretty much everything.

@jozzas The biggest challenge so far has been the question per day metric, plus communicating the site vision to new users. (And the yellow template). I expect both challenges to stay for some more time. Then there's the political fact checking initiative as well. That's going to be a tough initiative for the mods, but it will put skeptics on the map!

@jozzas Enforcing the citation rules is very mod-dependent at the moment, in the long run that probably needs to be done mostly by the community (might need tools support, as the citation-needed banner is mod-only) to be able to scale to higher traffic. Scaling Skeptics up significantly is likely to be pretty challenging.

@jozzas All being well, growth will continue and accelerate. The main issue with that is at various points in a sites lifecycle you seem to get an influx of new users who either don't read the faq or are just not interested in the rules. These do cause growing pains, but as mentioned above, that is where community and mods need to pull together to educate them in a way that makes them want to stay and improve.

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?

@jozzas If you asked my before graduation I would have said "growth" by the way, but we've since doubled our traffic without much pain... so I am not so sure anymore!

@jozzas I don't foresee many growing pains. I think as we get more high rep users, we will see the community doing more of the moderation. Though people still do post off topic questions because they don't know the scope of what is on topic here.

@TimStone Ooh, good one! Firstly ask them to move it to chat (along with the whole comment thread if necessary) - followed by a conversation in chat to understand why and to see if the situation can be defused. If it can't, and the argument simmers into other questions, a short suspension is an option - for both - as high rep users should know better.

(about 15 minutes left)

@TimStone I will stop the flame straight away, moving it to chat or meta (as appropriate). I will intervene on any valid flags (e.g. insults). Finally I will clean up the thread if necessary (eg. is it off topic?) Typically the result is a comment similar to this.

@TimStone Probably nuking all the comments and telling the users to stop attacking each other. That should be enough in most cases. A suspension is only necessary if they still won't stop.

@TimStone I will not take sides or lengthen the flame war at all (and this is very tricky sometimes)

@TimStone I would remove the comments in question which are inflammatory and insulting by nature and telling each user to stop.

Is there an example you can describe/point-to that shows you taking initiative or showing leadership on the site in past actions?

@RebeccaChernoff Not on this site - here I am only a 2k user so flagging/commenting has been the extent of my activity here. However, initiatives I have undertaken on behalf of StackExchange in general have included contacting my local practice rooms to get them hooked into Music SE, arrange sponsorship for high profile events for Security SE, and leading the Sec SE blog from its inception.

These are all transferable activities

@RebeccaChernoff I have over 154 answers and 53 questions on meta. More or less 150 and 50 on main too. Mostly, I've run the topic of the week, worked on a few FAQs, found a bunch of bugs in the design (and voiced community complaints a lot, publicly and privately). I've promoted our community to various prominent skeptics and on various sites. You could say I've lead by example extensively.

@RebeccaChernoff I'll point to the sum of all my meta posts, not any specific instance. A lot of steering the site I was involved in also happened together with the other pro-tem mods, so it's not attributable to a single person.

@RebeccaChernoff I always try to act when I can on "bad" posts. I've edited, flagged. commented, voted to close (when I could), etc. I try to always welcome new users and point them to the rules here.

we've got time for maybe one last question if someone has one?

Why do you want to be a moderator?

I agree with @Fabian. Our private mod room has almost 10k messages. This gives you an idea of how much time we spend coordinating and helping each other in leading the site.

@jozzas Because I love it to a fault. I know we make the Internet a better place. Quite literally.

@RebeccaChernoff: Is there a place where I could put my (necessarily subjective) opinions on the candidates, to help people make their voting decision. I had anticipated putting comments under the nomination statements, but there is not an opportunity to do that.

@jozzas I enjoy experiencing a community growing together. I like to be able to give something back. And I really am a scientific skeptic in so many disciplines - seeing the quality of answers here impresses me immensely. I have put great passion into growing the Security site, and watching its development does feel good. I think the same can be true here.

@Oddthinking - Perhaps in chat?

@jozzas I'm interested in seeing this site succeed and try to do my part to help with that. That was my initial motivation to accept the pro-tem nomination, and while I think Skeptics has succeeded so far, it could go quite a bit further.

@NeilFein Regular chat? Would using this room be inappropriate?

@rebecca? Not sure about this.

@jozzas I want to be a mod because I want to keep the quality of the site high. I really like the community we have here and we are a GREAT resource.

@Oddthinking How about here: meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1714/…

To conclude: final thoughts from the candidates?

@Oddthinking yeah, comments on nominations would have been best. doing it on the meta post like @Shog9 mentions I guess works, but feels odd.

Yeah, that's some odd thinking right there

@RebeccaChernoff Honestly, I think the current pro-tem mods are doing an awesome job, so they should be voted for. I'm a fallback plan, but either way will keep supporting an excellent site that deeply interests me.

@RebeccaChernoff Skeptics is a place where I feel using my time to contribute to is valuable. The current mods do a good job too.

alright folks, let's conclude (:

Best of luck to all the candidates, thanks to all for participants!

if you missed a question or couldn't attend, respond as you can now or tomorrow morning or whatever...

Cheers!

night all :-)

we'll be posting a digest on meta, your responses will be included there

Thanks!

and hey @Sklivvz?

sup

GO TO BED

q:

I am in bed, I type as I sleep!

lol

GO TO SLEEP THEN!

no sleep-typing!

hahahaha

@RebeccaChernoff Aren't you in roughly the same timezone as us? What are you still doing here instead of sleeping? ;-)

tis 20:15 here (:

quarter past 2 in the morning here :-(

She's also contractually obligated not to sleep, so there's that too.

@RoryAlsop same here, got permission to WFH tomorrow though

@Sklivvz lucky. I have clients to meet, so will now go to bed:-)

@TimStone shhh, let's not talk about that ):

Of course @Shog9 was here just to check that @RebeccaChernoff stayed up as per her obligation...

Someone's gotta watch the watcher-watchers

On that note, I'm out, HOCKEY TIME

@RebeccaChernoff How many more candidates are there?

@Shog9 It's OK, I watch everything. o_o

@TimStone 3 who weren't here

Ah, alright. Will wait a bit on the digest then to get as many as possible in a single go.

g'nite

'nite all

As suggested, I posted my personal run-down on the candidates here: meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1714/…

Sorry for not attending the discussion yesterday – I fell asleep. :(

@KonradRudolph you can still answer in the Town Hall Chat meta page :-)

@RebeccaChernoff I'm sorry I missed the town hall. I am on travel and have work conflicts. I guess my availability was too limited for this discussion.

@Sklivvz Surprisingly, History. I also enjoy answering questions on aviation (duh), biology, and any of the hard sciences.

@Shog9 I use these tools on a regular basis. I also have experience with the tools available to a mod from my time at Astronomy. As a daily visitor, I am often here to catch the notifications.

@TimStone I think the main problem is that new users may feel overwhelmed by the rigor required. Although they may also be turned off by some of the limits imposed on them by the current reputation system. I don't expect that as a moderator I can actually change any of the rep system mechanics, but I do want to make sure that new users don't get chased off or feel the site is cliquey.

@Shog9 At first, I tend to flag. I feel that a collaborative approach is better than just going in with the edit stick. I do make suggestions in the flag though (most of my flags get tagged other for that reason). Then I may go in and edit. However I try to get in tuch with the original asker to see if I manage to preserve the intent of their question.

@TimStone Hmm, I've never "given up" on a user (although I will freely admit human bias on some). Again, edit is a powerful tool, and that can be used to salvage questions and answers. Again, I try to make it a collaborative effort as opposed to my unilateral view on the situation.

@Oddthinking No idea if there is a way to change that mechanism. I actually think that flags are a great tool if used because they will give people an opportunity to collaborate. And as you said, it appears that the community is coming around to downvoting, although perhaps not closing. Given the tools available, flags here are actually much stronger than I have seen at other communities and forums.

@jozzas I visit the site daily, and am on it for extended periods in the US Eastern timezone in the evenings. As you may be able to tell from answers that I post, I spend a great deal of time on them, and I do the same in moderation.

@RebeccaChernoff I have a specific set that are my favorites because they are the ones I am most knowledgeable on as well as know where to find references, but when I go to the site, I visit the main page without any tag filters. I have 118 tags on my profile apparently.

@jozzas I think that the biggest challenge with be the lack of sustainable growth, as well as perhaps getting a reputation of being a closed and somewhat isolated community. I see this on a lot of skeptical groups and forums that I am a part of. Skeptics sometimes do have a reputation for being snobby or even mean. I tend to be a bit of an effervescent person, so I am hoping that my personality will come through and show people that this is a fun place to come and stay.

@RebeccaChernoff I lead by example. Again, I have a large number of answers on the site. I admit that I am not as involved on Meta as I should be. Perhaps something I will need to work on.

@jozzas I care about this community! That's about it. :)

@RebeccaChernoff Nothing in particular. I am enjoying my time here, and will continue to be here no matter what.

All, I didn't read the other candidates answers (doing this in an airports so trying to get it done fast before I board). Hopefully this gives you all a little something to go on.

Hello everybody :)

All of the candidates are good, I don't know who to choose... Please make 7 seats available! :D

@RebeccaChernoff I would like to change this answer from "Because I love it to a fault." to "Because I love the site to a fault."

it's what I meant :-)