Popcorns, pizzas, hamburgers, french fries!

Wonders if he is too early, or too late.

Too early ;-)

Good, good. I can prepare my questions.

:)

Won't be for another 30 minutes.

Evenin' all

Evening :)

Oh... I was getting worried about asking questions to just a candidate. :)

Guten Haben.

(Whatever it means, I always wanted to say it.)

hehe

@kiam I think it's Guten Abend ;)

@Clive That is if you don't want to make a rhyme. ;)

lol

right...I got 15 mintues, I'm gonna go put the kettle on and get some Pringles ;)

> Visit our Second 2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat, going on right now.

Now, it's a little early.

I bet on MPD being late this time too.

/me checks if "/me" works.

@kiam He said he wasn't sure if he could make it: meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/1115#comment-1327, but he's gonna come and answer the questions later if he can't

It's in the middle of his workday, there was no workable time to fit everyone on one day.

3 minutes more before preparing popcorns.

At least, not at the same hour.

I blame us British :)

Oh right... It's just 12:49 PM, over there.

Me too ;)

I was used to NY timezone.

That... is the NY Timezone.

?_?

What is this chat for? I'm a little lost. :(

@fzmaster It's for preparing popcorns.

To talk to me, Clive, and MPD and decide the order of awesomeness ;-)

Who arrives last prepares them.

Can you guess who arrived last? ;)

Long version: Your chance to ask the three moderator candidates anything you want to better prepare you when you vote in the election :)

@kiam what kind of popcorn do you have?

@fzmaster I'll give a brief overview when the event starts, but even briefer, basically people ask questions to the candidates here and they answer.

@Clive Uhmmm... They are with butter, and no salt.

It's not back-and-forth like a debate or anything, just each candidate usually gives a statement and then we move on to the next question.

@kiamlaluno Humm..... I know its about Drupal, but it is only online or is happening in a place???

@kiam Niiiice

So when is the event starting @GraceNote

Talking of that, I need to prepare them!

It's only online

In 7 minutes.

hmm..a statement you say

@fzmaster It's to happen right in this room here.

@Chapabu Yeah I've been revising all week, haven't you? ;)

well bugger :p

@Chapabu It just means a statement in response to each question, no need to break out the thesaurus ;)

Its just to Drupal subdomain, right?

@Clive you say that, but I'm slightly concerned about what Kiamlaluno has to ask.

@clive

@fzmaster It's for the current election here on Drupal Answers.

@GraceNote Nice

@GraceNote t.y

@Clive you remember at school when you had those teachers who you always thought were just trying to trick you and catch you out and make you look silly.....

@Chapabu lol yeah I do

@Clive That's how I envisage @kiamlaluno :)

Save the stars for after. You need them for the questions being asked.

It was not me. :)

@kiam thanks for the tip, didn't know they were limited

@kiamlaluno I'll star that one anyway - just in case :)

Welcome to the Drupal 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.

@Clive They are not; they are reserved for the questions, right now.

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)

It's a good idea to bold your questions (use ** or __ around it) to make them easier to see. 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.

@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 as we go along.

For candidates, we have the following among us right now: @Clive and @Chapabu and @MPD.

Without further ado, let us begin!

Currently, there are five 10/20K users; two of them are moderators, and two of them are candidates to be moderators. If elected, are you prepared to shoulder the the bulk of the community's "janitorial" responsibilities?

@kiamlaluno Absolutely. I already spend quite a bit of time in the review queue (even more so since the new version), it would really be just a continuation of that with escalated privileges (as far as the "janitorial" work goes)

Do you think that having more power will limit your participation on the site? Are you prepared to change your voting behavior, if you are elected?

@kiamlaluno As @Clive has mentioned, the new style review queue has made things even easier!

@kiamlaluno I wouldn't say limit so much as shift the focus of my participation a bit. Obviously mods needs to be mindful of casting close/delete votes as they're binding, and as I understand it should only really do so if the question is blatantly off-topic/spam/etc. Other than that the community needs to decide. It'll definitely take a bit of getting used to but I can't imagine it being a problem

There are a lot of Drupal questions on Stack Overflow. How do you see the relationship between these two sites/communities?

@kiamlaluno There's a fair bit of overlap in my opinion, plenty of questions are perfectly valid on either site. I actually spend plenty of time in the Drupal tags on SO and flag a lot of duplicate questions between the sites, flag to migrate questions that really belong on DA, etc. I think they can co-exist perfectly well

@GraceNote Would that be a previous contribution or a potential one for the future?

@Clive Be creative here.

voting... being a mod wouldn't change my question/answer voting, as i vote a lot anyway... i am more "hands off" with close votes, non-answer flags, etc, as i would rather err on leaving bad things than removing something that someone may find usefull... as a mod, though, i wouldn't have problems casting the binding vote/close when there is consensus

@MPD Make sure to use the reply-to feature.

@GraceNote, i think flag history is an indication that a candidate understands what is good.bad on the site... i also think that "encouraging" commentsto new users, as opposed to downvoting immediately is also an indicator

@GraceNote I think a big contribution to any Stack Exchange site is the ability to contribute without feeling that reputation is the be all and end all. If someone can contributes through every channel of the community, even the ones that reap no benefit to the individual, then that shows great commitment. I feel that I can and do contribute in this manner so that question askers get the best possible advice for their needs.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

@GraceNote I think mainly the fact that I genuinely care about the site and how it progresses in the future. I'm a huge fan of the SE platform, I love the way it works and encourages such high quality content. My main goal would be to help make sure that standard is upheld as much as possible.

Drupal terminology (views/nodes/triggers/etc.) can be difficult, particularly for new users. Drupal novices are likely to get their first few questions voted down if they do not understand the terminology, discouraging them from participating on the site. As a moderator, do you see this as a problem and do you think there is anything that can be done to mitigate that sense of discouragement?

@PatrickKenny it is a problem and no-penalty downvoting has made that worse... editing questions and asking for clarifications are a way to help these users

@GraceNote Interesting. I think it would depend on the arguments on a comment by comment basis. I have had one situation where I have been in a 'comment argument' with another user, and I felt I was in the right. That said however, I flagged all comments as abusive including my own.

@GraceNote There could be situations where the "problem user" is well within their right to voice their opinion. I would perhaps suggest to them to move a discussion into a chat room and away from the public forums, or air their concerns on the meta site.

@GraceNote In the first instance I would contact the user privately and raise those concerns, in the hope that will resolve the issue. If it continued I would seek advice from fellow moderators (or in the Teacher's Lounge) about whether a short suspension would be appropriate, or whether it could be handled in a less intrusive way.

If elected - How will you promote "good behavior" on drupal.SE among the users?

@PatrickKenny Yes it's definitely a problem, there are also language barriers that don't help on occasion. I think the only thing you can really do is comment liberally in a pleasant manner, in the hope other users take their cue from that and do the same, rather than downvoting immediately

@PatrickKenny With no penalty down voting there is always the danger that a community such as this is going to turn Reddit-esque. However the only downvoted Drupal newbie questions I have seen voted down recently have been very poorly written (grammar wise, not terminology wise). I will sometimes link to tutorials/API docs in comments for people who are obviously new to Drupal, although I leave the answers to newer community members.

Do you think that automatic flags for low quality posts should be first visible in the 10K users' queue and then in the moderator's one, or that moderators should immediately see them?

@PatrickKenny Of course it would be easier on everyone if new users could comment...

We're at the thirty minute mark, so halfway through. I have some emergency business to attend to so I'm handing the direction of this over to @AnnaLear. Good luck to all the candidates!

Do you have any plans or ideas for promoting and representing Drupal SE to the wider Drupal community?

@googletorp I would make myself visible, definitely. As a moderator you are a community leader; leading by example is a great method of moderation, and really works well on all of the SE sites. For example, I think a "Welcome to DA" comment is always a nice sign on new users' posts - and I have seen other people (including myself) saying it more frequently because I have seen others do it too. I would promote good behaviour by being a role model myself.

@googletorp Mostly be "leading by example" as it were; being friendly, resolving and mediating disputes between users quickly, etc. I also think smiley faces in comments can break down barriers :)

There is no straightforward upgrade path between Drupal major versions and backwards compatibility is not preserved with modules. Drupal 8 is under development and may be released within the next year. There are already a large number of Drupal 6- and Drupal 7-specific questions on Drupal Answers. As a moderator, do you foresee any problems with treating Drupal 8 the same way? What impact, if any, do you anticipate the release of Drupal 8 to have on this site?

@kiamlaluno I'm not sure it makes a huge amount of difference. But I guess the queue would probably be handled at the same speed, if not quicker, if it was shown to moderators at the same time.

@AnnaLear I am quite close to the Brighton Area Drupal Association (although I don't regularly attend myself due to distance constraints), and would go more out of my way to present this site as a sounding board for discussions/problems that begin there. I have also recently taken on an intern (in my office...not personally ;)), so would encourage them to bring their questions here as well as to myself. Word of mouth is a powerful advertising method. :)

@PatrickKenny this site just came out of beta around the time D7 was released... DA handled this fairly well, and there were a bunch of good discussions on Meta.DA about this and how to handle version tags

@kiamlaluno If delaying the moderator visibility increases the flag action time from say 1-2 hours to 3-4 or even 5-6 hours then it's a bad thing. I think it would be a trial and error event, but it would need to be monitored. The new review queue is fantastic though, and I should hope that low quality flags should start to become fewer and fewer as more people catch on to it.

@AnnaLear Honestly no, I don't have any ideas currently (wish I did). I'd love to see a tighter integration of the two communities, and I'd definitely jump on any initiative to make that happen. There was a meta discussion some time back about it but it sort of petered out a bit. Perhaps rejuvenating that post would be a good start, some of the core contributors visit the site quite regularly

If a user complains about a flag not being handled correctly, asking a question on the meta site, what do you do? Do you reply to his question explaining why you marked the flag as not helpful (even just to say that you were wrong), or do you avoid writing an answer?

@PatrickKenny I don't see it being a problem to be honest. as @MPD said, it was handled pretty well when the last major version was released and I think it would be handled just as well this time round. I can imagine there being an influx of duplicate questions from new users when D8 is first released, so there will probably be more closing to do than normal. Other than that, though, I think it'll be fine

We're at the 15-minute mark now, so if you've been holding on to any questions, now's the time to ask them.

@PatrickKenny Hi Patrick :) I foresee the probable re-appearance of version tags for a while after the release of Drupal 8. I've been following the core development, and it seems like it's going to be pretty different. Drupal 8 will have an initial impact on the site, however it'll peter out. You'll probably also see a drop in the difficulty of questions as seasoned users try to find out where the dang admin options are ;)

@kiamlaluno I would always answer the question. If I declined a flag there must have been a good reason (unless I made a mistake of course). I would either explain that reasoning, citing sources from the various meta sites, or apologise for the mistake

@kiamlaluno If I was accused of an incorrect flag, then yes - I would answer a potential question. Nobody wants dispute in the community, and it's the mod's responsibility to help prevent that. If after further discussion it turns out I was wrong, then yes - I would admit that I was wrong and apologise.

@kiamlaluno If you leave questions unanswered on Stack Exchange, then what's the point of Stack Exchange - it's like the opposite of Fight Club ;)

How much time, on average, do you have to devote to moderating Drupal SE?

We're also coming up on the end of the town hall. Any final thoughts from the candidates?

Do any of you foresee moderator responsibilities taking away your capacity/availability for providing answers? And if that were to occur, would you consider stepping down so that you can get back to helping all of us out?

@AnnaLear As I previously mentioned, I always have a DA tab open, as well as Newt running for notifications to new activity on DA. Between 9 and 5 I can probably spend an hour or two throughout the day, and then in the evenings if needs be.

@AnnaLear Probably 1-2 hours a day on average, a bit more on weekends. I tend to spend time on DA during my down time, and I allow myself a fair bit of that :)

@JohnathanElmore Short answer, no. I don't foresee moderation taking over general use of the site. Drupal is something I love doing, and I'd love to see the community flourish - taking time away from helping others goes against that. I would see moderation as an extension of contribution, rather than a replacement.

@JohnathanElmore If I ever felt that being a moderator prevented me from answering questions/helping others, then I would be prepared to open a meta issue to discuss why this has become the case, as I guess it won't only be my problem.

@JohnathanElmore Not sure how to answer that :) Any mod will have less time to answer questions obviously, but there are so many knowledgable users that use the site on a regular basis that I don't honestly think it will be a problem

This marks the end of our Town Hall. Thank you to all of the candidates for their time, and to all others who came here to ask questions and to support the candidates. Good luck to everyone as this election approaches its close!

@AnnaLear Not much, just to wish very good luck to @MPD and @Chapabu in the election and long live Drupal :)

As mentioned, @TimStone will be making a digest of this that will be available after this at some point. Candidates who haven't finished, you are free to continue answering in here until you reach the end - this end only signifies the end of new questions, not the time you have to answer.

@AnnaLear I think to be honest, this election is really a case of two people looking for one spot. Thanks to everyone who asked any questions, and thanks to everyone who is an active member of DA :) Don't forget your vote ;-)

@Clive and best of luck to @Clive and @MPD (but not too much luck ;-))

And now, popcorn for everybody!

Hooray!

(Just don't look at me: I have eaten mine! ;))

lol...I don't see it =\

Hey - nobody told me I could have popcorn

WHERE'S MY POPCORN KIAMLALUNO :@

@googletorp You arrived too late. Popcorn was prepared before the Town Tall chat. ;)

aw

I offered, but nobody said "Me, me!" ;)

(The trick is not speaking loudly.)

"Me, me!"...I'll remember that for next time ;)

:)

@Clive Be careful not to answer so when the question is "Who is going to take the trash outside?" ;)

@kiam Your game is deep, I'll have to watch for that ;)

Righty - I have to go now I'm afraid :(

Pregnant hungry wife = me doing what I'm told ;)

Yep me too, being nagged to make dinner for a hungry wife

lol @Chapabu

See you later guys :)

Night all, see ya soon :)

Buh bye.

@JohnathanElmore DA is my primary "head clearer" during the day, and also part of my daily work routine (ie, reading questions to keep up on things)... I anticipate moderation would fit in with that. I still plan on answering question, and don't forsee a general change in how much I do this.

@AnnaLear My time on DA is hard to judge as. It tends to be many short visits, with some longer times in the morning as I settle into the office. I would guess over the day, it adds up to 1hr or so.

@kiamlaluno If a user brings up a flag issue to Meta, then it is the handler's responsibility to address it, and also for other moderators to weigh in. Over the last year or so, I have been reading a lot of these posts on Meta.SO to see how decisions get made.

@kiamlaluno Given the low number of 10k users right now, I think flags should be shown to everyone until we get more 10k users. As I gained 10k right around the same time the new review system was launched, I don't know how much impact that has had on the flag queue.