Webmasters Town Hall Chat

Grace Note

1:58 PM

Got some pre-answers from people already. We can lead off with those

Aurelio De Rosa

Hi to all

paulmorriss

Hi

John Conde

Good morning, afternoon, evening! What ever applies to you. :)

Grace Note

Welcome to the Pro Webmasters Town Hall Chat

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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, be sure to 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 (and bold it if it isn't already) - 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.

@TimStone 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.

@ionfish can't make it and @Christofian can't answer any at this period, so for now we have the other two candidates: @paulmorriss and @AurelioDeRosa

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Let us begin, then! Christofian has already left some early questions, which I've bolded and starred above

Aurelio De Rosa

Well,let's start.

@Christofian First of all, I would like to talk with both of them to understand their point of view and why this happens. Besides, I'll clear all of the useless flags they added in the system. Finally, I suggest to both of them to use a chat to clarify their problems and suggest to keep calm otherwise actions will be taken against them.

The first thing that came to mind is this: Until few months ago Stackoverflow, that we all know is the most used website of the stackexchange network, has Webmaster as one of the options you can choose when you flag a question as off-topic. Now Webmaster is no more available, so people have to use the generic off-topic. I think that restoring the option could be worth for this website since a lot of users post questions about SEO, SEM and similar topics on Stackoverflow and having a direct option could let the discussions migrate easier.

paulmorriss

2:09 PM

@Christofian I think Christofian's idea of a blog (suggested a few months ago on meta) would help attract more people to the site. I'm disappointed in how many questions are left unanswered, so we could do with more people with a variety of expertise. However a blog needs a small group of people who can write regular posts. So it's a chicken and egg situation.

@Christofian I think the key thing is to turn those looking for answer into those who give answers. I don't think we need a lot of daily activity, but we need quality questions and answers so that people value the site.

@AurelioDeRosa Interesting. I didn't realise that we were even an option on Stackoverflow, as I don't spend much time there. I did some research a while back on a meta and it seems that list of options is drawn from the sites that questions get sent to: meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/771/… So to get webmasters back on the list we need SO mods to send more stuff our way.

Aurelio De Rosa

@Christofian Well, undestand the point is good and surely every opinion should be taken into account. Anyway it all depends on the user opinion. Some of them can simply have a problem with me (or any other moderators of course) and try to create difficulties.

John Conde

@paulmorriss This can be done by flagging questions better suited for Webmasters such as SEO, payments (non-coding issues), etc

Picking some tags and following them is the best way to accomplish this

And they value flags from mods and generally migrate whatever we flag as being better suited for our site

Grace Note

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?

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paulmorriss

@JohnConde Yes, I've done this with [hosting] but I didn't realise that seo was even a tag there.

Aurelio De Rosa

@paulmorriss Since I'm a very active SO user, I can say that there're lot of questions that are not sent to Webmaster even if they should

paulmorriss

2:18 PM

@GraceNote Yes. I think there's a difference between people who, for example, struggle to express what they want because they don't know the right words, or have enough of an idea of the concepts to frame a question clearly, and those who are lazy and just want an answer, but aren't prepared to answer the clarifying questions you ask to try and track it down.

Aurelio De Rosa

One of the funny things of SO is that it has so many users that even if the question is not related to the SO topics

they answer before the discussion can be migrated

Tim Stone

Do you feel like a representative percentage of the community participates in your site's meta? Based on that, how strongly do you think feedback presented on meta should factor into your decision making as a moderator?

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paulmorriss

@GraceNote I find asking a clarifying question useful in work generally. If someone can't be bothered to answer your question they probably didn't want what they wanted to ask you in the first place. (Though I appreciate that sometimes they don't come back until a few days later as, even though they do have a genuine problem to solve, they've got things that we don't know about that are more pressing that don't involve stackexchange.)

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote This is a good question. One approach is to invite them to go in the chat to get more and quickly assistance.

Grace Note

How would you deal with a user who contributes good content to the site, but consistently causes trouble in other ways (is rude, confrontational, makes bad edits/tag wikis, etc.)?

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Aurelio De Rosa

2:23 PM

@GraceNote About the "boiling point", I think this is subjective to the moderator and the user you're trying to help. The best I can say is that I'll stop at the time I'll understand that the user is not trying to put any effort but he's only using you as a private consultant for he's problems

paulmorriss

@TimStone There's no point being a crusading moderator who is way off the centre of gravity of the community, so I think it's key for keeping in touch (also the comments on closed questions help if people don't bother to take the discussion to meta). Webmasters particularly, as I've probably said on meta, is in the middle of serverfault, stackoverflow and the design-y sites, so it's key to know where the lines are between us and them.

Grace Note

@Aurelio I'm assuming your latest that I just edited was a continuation of the answer to my question, but if that was in error, let me know and I'll properly redirect it

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote Be polite is a must for me. As a moderator I'll try to "educate" the user with comments on his/her replies, chat and how I can. Of course the user has to show the willingness to undestand better what he should do (in case of bad flags and so on). Otherwise take some very basic actions could be a solution for a bad behavior.

paulmorriss

@GraceNote One of my mottos in life is "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Halnon’s Razor. I think it's worth spending time pointing out that their behaviour isn't helpful, even though we appreciate their content. If that doesn't help though I guess we (because I'd consult other mods) reluctantly need to take what action we have the powers to do.

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote You're absolutely right

paulmorriss

2:28 PM

@GraceNote People can have bad days, so there always needs to be time for calm reflection on what was said previously.

Grace Note

A post is flagged. All moderators have looked at it. No one's taken action/cleared it because you're all unsure what to do with it. What do you do now when there is no consensus?

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We're at the halfway mark. It's mostly Tim and I again (though, John is here too), but at least this isn't the two of us staying up late again, haha

Is there anything about the way the site is currently run that you would like to change? If so, what would you try to change if you were to become a moderator, and why?

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paulmorriss

@GraceNote Difficult one. With an even number of mods after this election, there is no casting vote. I would tend to defer to @JohnConde because of his experience and activity.

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote I'm a person who often make decisions assuming responsibilities so I'll do something, take action. In the case I'm wrong, I'll apologize with the others and will learn from my error.

Grace Note

And, similarly, are there big plans for the development of the site that you have in store? What do you look forward to doing for the growth of the site?

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paulmorriss

Just to say, I'm resisting the temptation to put jokes in here, because not all jokes work cross culturally. However if I did put in a joke just then, I would say "Well, that's got me a vote from John then."

Grace Note

2:33 PM

Haha

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote I think this is an equivalent reply chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/5534280#5534280

paulmorriss

@GraceNote I think it's going in the right direction. We have canonical answers on hosting and CMSs that eliminate a lot of the shopping list questions. I'd like to write something on how redirects work so that people can start somewhere when they're trying to get something to work and want to put a bit of time understanding what's going on rather than just "I want to redirect this to this, please give me the exact lines for htaccess".

@GraceNote That would probably only fit in a blog, so it's worth trying to revive the blog idea again.

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote Honestly I think the site and site moderation is good. John do an amazing work. One thing that probably would be good for the site audiance is to merge some of the existing sites or at least topics on others sites that are very related to Webmaster. As someone has already pointed out, be a webmaster is not only about SEO, SEM and so on but it's also about servers, html & css, and so on

paulmorriss

@GraceNote It would be nice to get some people who know Magento as we get a few questions about that, which don't tend to get answered.

Grace Note

Reviewing, acting upon flags, voting to close - all gets repetitive more so as a Mod because you essentially don't have vote limits. What steps do plan to take to keep from getting burned out? If you do get burned out, how will you handle this?

2

...whoops, got the order wrong there, haha. Ah well. Still can ask. Do you expect to be able to keep answering questions or will you spend all your time here moderating?

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Aurelio De Rosa

2:43 PM

@GraceNote Maybe my answer will be a little strange but I think it is releated to the one about improve community. In my opinion one of the key steps is to don't moderate too much. What I mean is that not act for every question/answer could empower users and community. Most of the users are interested in gain points and badges so leave chance to get them could be a good thing...or at least a good try

paulmorriss

@GraceNote As we don't have that many questions I never get near my vote limits. I do a little each day of the routine flagging and editing. There are also some more interesting and borderline decisions which I tend to leave for later in the day. I think I'd start keeping track of those, because even a few hours later I don't always know what to do.

@GraceNote It will be useful to chat with other mods (I'm assuming we have a private chat room) to get their opinion without filling up the comments on a question with stuff.

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote I like the order so I'll do a lot of moderation since webmaster is not the place of 30-questions-at-a-second. Anyway if I know the answer, I'll surely answer the questions.

paulmorriss

@GraceNote If I got burned out I'd resign. I work with volunteers and I don't mind those that say "I can't help". I get annoyed when they say they will but don't. I wouldn't be like that.

@GraceNote When I hit 10K I eased back on answering and spent more time flagging. I'd expect to keep the same ratio (hard to say, but maybe 1 to 4).

Grace Note

Hah, I guess Tim hasn't had his coffee, he hasn't asked his iconic question: When you see a question with major issues (poorly-written, argumentative, etc.), what tool do you reach for first?

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Tim Stone

(I did, but I need more :( Also, to be fair, I stole that from Shog :P)

Aurelio De Rosa

2:49 PM

@TimStone Just to be a bit chatty. Next time I'll send you coffee from Italy :)

Tim Stone

I am down with that. ;)

paulmorriss

@GraceNote Halnon’s Razor - see above. Fixing typos helps. Then you can see the bones of the question and whether it fits the site - on topic, and answerable with a specific answer.

I could do with a nice cup of tea. 10 minutes to the end of the chat...

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote If it is reasonably editable, I'll do..otherwise close it and wait the the user post a better question.

Christofian

Packing took less time then I thought: so I can answer some more questions

paulmorriss

Hello @Christofian. Glad you could make it. It's a two person show at the moment.

John Conde

2:52 PM

@Christofian Look for the questions in bold

Grace Note

@Christofian Just check the stars list

John Conde

They're starred, too, so finding them should be easy.

Grace Note

We're nearing the close of the thing, so, to that end - closing thoughts from the candidates?

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Aurelio De Rosa

@paulmorriss Just like an annoying political debate :)

Christofian

k thanks. There won't be an issue with me going on vacation during a moderator election?

Grace Note

2:54 PM

ionfish is out until next Tuesday, so...

I can't honestly say there's an issue except simply that there is reduced ability to address things brought up during the election process

Christofian

@GraceNote It depends on the question. If it's possible to make it usable for the site, then the editing tool. If not, then the closing tool

Aurelio De Rosa

@GraceNote I'll do what I can to improve community and the site but I'd love to do this kind of things with the help of the other moderators. My final proposal is merge, merge, merge......other sites, topics of other sites in the network and so on.

Christofian

@GraceNote I just want to say that it's been fun participating on the site and getting to know people, and that I'm looking forward to doing more of that when I get back.

paulmorriss

@GraceNote I like webmasters. It's not super-crowded like SO. Very few problems with difficult people. I'd like to keep it that way, but improving - less unanswered questions, more experienced answerers.

Grace Note

And that brings the town hall to the close. Thanks, and good luck, to all of the candidates! Thank you for those who could all make it

Christofian

3:00 PM

@GraceNote I'm going to try to do both: I think that keeping active in the community is as important of a moderator duty as moderating the site. If a moderator isn't active on the site, then they don't really know what's going on with the site.

John Conde

Thank you everyone

Aurelio De Rosa

thank you to you

Grace Note

You are free to continue answering any questions that you didn't reach yet (mostly for @Christofian)

Aurelio De Rosa

have a nice day. Bye

Christofian

Thanks for setting this up, and thanks to everybody who participated

paulmorriss

3:01 PM

@GraceNote Thank you for facilitating.

Christofian

@GraceNote I might not get to them all, bc I'll probably have to do something soon. Thanks for running this :)

Grace Note

You're welcome~

Christofian

@GraceNote If I get tired of being a moderator, I'll resign or take a break. I don't think that I should do something that I don't enjoy, and I don't think it's good for the site if I don't like being a moderator

Grace Note

As mentioned, @TimStone will be working on a digest. I'm sorry to rush you on these this week, since they were done so late, but the sooner the better.

Christofian

@GraceNote see my answer to the question of how we can get the site more active

Tim Stone

3:03 PM

Will be posted after @Christofian has a chance to finish answering. :)

Grace Note

@TimStone Ooh, nice

Christofian

@GraceNote I would ask mods on other sites if I think they might have experienced this before, or I would ask on the meta (ours, or meta.so if it's more of a system wide issue) for opinions on what to do and try to get a consensus.

@GraceNote I would talk to them, but if they continued to do things like that, I would ban them. No matter how good their contributions are, their inappropriate actions are causing more trouble for the site than their good contributions can make up for.

@TimStone I think that anybody who bothers to give feedback and participate in the meta should be listened to. I have gotten great advice from the meta, and if I am a moderator, I will continue to seek advice there. That said, it would be great if we could get more activity on the chat and the meta

@AurelioDeRosa I'm not referring to a problem user, I'm referring to someone who respectfully disagrees with me

@GraceNote I think that we should be polite to new users, and that's something that we need to work on. I'm willing to work with people who want to be part of this community. Anyone who takes the time to improve their contributions is someone I'm willing to work with. If they don't respond to my comments and don't try to improve their contributions, then I'm not willing to work with them.

@TimStone all done, thanks

Thanks everybody, and see you in three weeks :)

Tim Stone

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to answer!

Grace Note

Thanks, @Christofian, for being able to drop by

Tim Stone

4:51 PM

@GraceNote As a reminder, primaries for EL&U and DIY start Monday

Grace Note

5:12 PM

@TimStone Yeah I know, I already have those queued up

Tim Stone

Good stuff. :)

Transcript for

Webmasters Town Hall Chat