We'll get started in about 10 minutes. (:

preparing some bacon waffles

you're sharing, right?

\o/

Food Lust.

okies!

Hi y'all (:

Hello

Hi :)

oh wait -

Hi :-)

Noses are my thing, I almost forgot

It's gotta be (:

lol

Welcome to the Physics Town Hall Chat

!aHaHaH

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)

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.

Someone 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: @dmckee, @Sklivvz, and @DavidZaslavsky.

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? (:

Cool, that means I get to ask, mwuahahaha q:

Go for it!

(:

What do y'all see as the biggest challenge when it comes to moderating Physics-SE?

@RebeccaChernoff It seems that there are some tensions in the community regarding people behaving "like bullies". Also, it seems that some basic discussions weren't completed during Beta, like "what should go in our FAQ", and that is making it difficult to know when to close questions. I think that this should be a happy community, but at the moment it looks the mood could improve. I'd like to help.

Biggest challenge: Well two: Big, strong personalities who are used to being Right, and strongly held, very much off the mainstream, ideas (i.e. those which might get labeled as crank or crackpot).

@RebeccaChernoff Hmm... well, from what I've seen on the site so far, I think keeping arguments under control is the most challenging part of the job. As physicists we have a tendency to be pretty stubborn when our views are challenged (some people more than others) so it's easy for a simple disagreement to blow up and turn into insults being traded back and forth.

Official false modesty meter calibration query for all candidates: What do you believe is or will be your biggest weakness as a moderator?

official...false...modesty...meter...calibration...query. That's a mouthful!

indeed

(:

@dmckee Tough one. I am not a professional physicist, grad level only -- I think there should be some other moderator with me with me with more physics knowledge. My strengths are in "moderation art" and I can also help with lower level question (I have 3000+ rep here)

@Sklivvz I have a temper that occasionally shows through. Just yesterday @Sklivvz had to cleanup some too-strongly-state comments I left on Skeptics. I know better, and I usually walk away from the computer when that happens, but evidently not every time. That can't be allowed to happen whilst wielding the Power of the Diamond (tm).

they weren't that evil

@dmckee Ah, well I was thinking about a good way to say this and then Sklivvz popped up with the perfect wording: I've had the feeling my biggest weakness is "moderation art," i.e. defusing debates, the ability to enforce boundaries without angering people. In practice, this often means I'll let things go (e.g. rude comments) when they should perhaps be deleted or dealt with.

(Can't link to my own comment...so I linked to Sklivvz instead)

@Sklivvz No, not actually evil, but Ceasar's wife must be beyond reproach.

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?

@DavidZaslavsky Sometimes there is little room between too much and too little moderation.

@dmckee true indeed, it can be difficult to stay within the error bars ;)

@RebeccaChernoff Hardest possible scenario, huh? If they contribute to the comment noise, then cleaning up after them can be a warning. If that fails, a private email after consulting with other mods. The sin bin for a short time if they persist, but I'm thinking of Rich B. levels of persistent conflict generation.

(:

@RebeccaChernoff First of all, I would be present on the site and nuke flame wars from orbit. This is not where you come to fight. Aside, I would approach the user in chat first (using the new @@ tool, possibly) and try to reason. I would explain that the community is more important than any single user, etc.

What do you consider the purpose of the 'comments' section (what will you encourage / discourage)?

@RebeccaChernoff If that fails, and the behaviour continues, then I would use a formal warning, and then repeated suspensions. The main point here is that one user can spoil everybody's fun. Even if they are high rep... Actually, especially if the are high rep, they should set the golden standard.

@RebeccaChernoff First reaction: just reply to the comments asking everyone involved to keep a level head and avoid saying rude things. I might delete comments if they seem excessively bad and/or irrelevant to the question. If that fails after a few instances, then send an official warning (moderator message), then after that, suspensions of increasing length, starting with a day or two, until it's no longer a problem.

@RebeccaChernoff (continued) Contributing good answers can earn a user some leniency in the "disciplinary" process, but it's not an excuse to be rude and get away with it.

@DavidZaslavsky I disagree. High rep users should be exemplary

@Edward Comments on Physics.SE provide a place to discuss the limits, exceptions, special cases, and requirements that afflict most statements you can make in physics. It is rare that any of us write an absolutely true statement. Done well, this can clarify without generating conflict. Done badly it makes bruised egos.

@Sklivvz To clarify, "some" is not very much in that case.

@Edward Comments are second class citizens in the SE network. They should be used only for minor discussions related to the post. They should not be used as a forum. I think that physics needs to address this, as we are not using the tools we have in the best possible way.

@Edward Good question :-) The primary purpose of comments on questions should be to ask for clarification, and comments on answers should be used to point out or ask about inconsistencies or errors in the answer posted. In both cases they basically function as a way to point out ways for the OP to improve the post through edits.

@Sklivvz I'd like to say "Hear! Hear!" to Sklivvz's line on the comments.

Sadly I have to go. Surprise, important, colloquium speaker in my discipline today. Can't let the side down.

@dmckee :-(

No problem, you're welcome to respond later to the digest.

For those who joined late, feel free to ask a question if you have one for the election candidates. (:

Do you think the Physics-SE community generally gets the SE engine? What is something you think the community still needs education on, and how can you help improve this?

@RebeccaChernoff I think that the community could use some help. I've been involved in the SE network for 2 years 6 months now, and I believe I can say I've lived through the many changes, errors and corrections of the platform. I know how it should work, and that when it works it's possibly the best community platform available today. As how to make it happen, is through community building (continued)

@RebeccaChernoff I can bring as an example, the Skeptics site I am moderating. It's a very tough gig, because our questions are on the extreme side of subjective. Similarly to Physics we attract "eccentrics" pretty much every other day and we have to deal with them while keeping the community in a happy place.

@RebeccaChernoff I believe the most commonly used term here is "crackpots" but it's possibly too evil :-)

@RebeccaChernoff Not quite. One issue is that the quality of an answer on a hard science site needs to be judged by its correctness (that is, after all, why we call it hard science) and people don't always use that criterion. Another issue is that we tend to overuse the comment system, but then again questions in physics are often more discussion-intensive (or one could say argument-prone) than other topic areas.

@RebeccaChernoff I think that down votes should also be used to judge the quality of the answers (not only the correctness). But I believe that the community should set a standard and follow it, not the moderators. We facilitate.

As a follow up then: If responses are to remain associated with a question, where do you feel 'non-minor' discussion of possible errors or follow up to an answer should go? Sometimes the most educationally useful stuff I've seen is when there are conflicting answers, and learning why a particular answer turned out to be wrong. But previous answers regarding comments seem to want non-minor back and forth discussion reduced in comments.

@Sklivvz I can definitely agree with that, that moderators shouldn't be the (only) ones setting the example for others

The system is not very apt for discussions. Hard science depends on discussion, to sort correct / wrong answers.

@Edward If it's going to be an extended discussion, the chat room can be good for that. But in many cases, I envision a cycle of "comment, edit, delete the comment" to improve the posts without cluttering up the comment section.

99% of the problems are duplicates of similar problems we solved in the original StackOverflow.

What can be done to bring more people to the community? Do you feel that's part of your responsibility as a moderator?

@Georg Georg, the community will sort the good answers from the bad ones through the voting system.

@Sklivvz Do You really believe this?

@Sklivvz but the issue is it is more useful educationally to know why the community thinks something is wrong, than just to know the majority think it is wrong which is all the voting does.

@RebeccaChernoff It's absolutely part of the job of a moderator. I can only say that, as a moderator, I managed to get Skeptics linked by Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) and successfully posted more than one question on HackerNews, bringing over 10,000 visitors in 2 days. See: skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1700/…

@Georg It's the law of large numbers. Sometimes the problem is so tough that it will not work. However, you can't win every war. A larger community will sort out most of these problems. If I may ask, how is exactly the commenting system helping you sort anything up?

@RebeccaChernoff This was a major concern of mine at the beginning of the beta period. I think we have less of a problem with publicity now, but it's still something to think about. The best thing we can do in general, IMO, is build a reputation of giving people accurate answers. More short-term, we should be sharing interesting questions with influential bloggers and other "trendsetters" in the physics community. (TBC)

@RebeccaChernoff (cont.) I believe that the moderators can play a part in spurring this sort of action on, but it's not exclusively their responsibility. Site promotion is a project that the whole community can/should get involved in.

I have one that I guess only Sklivvz will be able to answer right now: For candidates who are also moderators of other SE sites, how do you expect your duties on the other site to affect your ability to moderate physics.SE?

@RebeccaChernoff As a moderator you also need to be able to ask great questions, setting the standard. I have a couple of very very popular questions on StackOverflow. Here on physics my best one is Could gravity be an emergent property of nature?

A last thing. Moderators are the only users with direct access to stats. They must therefore play a major role in promotion.

@Sklivvz I said "the system" is not apt for discussions, that includes comments, even more when limited as spezified above by some of You.

@DavidZaslavsky Actually, I think it is a great advantage. First of all, moderators keep an eye most of the time. So it's a matter of being always present. Obviously I am already around because of Skeptics, so it's easy for me. Secondly, I think that seeing two different communities gives a great deal of experience that you can't have with a single site.

A lot of moderators have two gigs here on SE sites. It doesn't seem to be a problem.

@Sklivvz Good to know, thanks

@Georg I agree - the system is a Q&A site and not a forum or discussion system.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

@Edward In 99% of the cases it's only necessary to point out why an answer is wrong once. You also have to remember that the answer might be wrong, but also the comment. So, surely you can point out things in comments if it's helpful. Remember that our AIM here is NOT to win a right-or-wrong contest, but it's to get the best possible answers, so don't point out errors in an unfriendly way but BE NICE and help improve the answer

@RebeccaChernoff Great question. I can point out this question here that was closed last night on Skeptics. I opter for closing, and the other mod present disagreed. So this is what we did. We posted a question on meta, to let the community decide. In the meanwhile (continued)

@RebeccaChernoff I'd bring it up with the other moderator in the mods' chat room (or perhaps by email if that didn't work for some reason). If other people also shared my opinion, I would encourage them to bring it up on meta so the community can decide. But I wouldn't reverse another moderator's action unless they asked me to.

That just about brings us to the end of the hour. Anyone have a final question?

@RebeccaChernoff I think this answer I posted on physics meta might be relevant to that

The question was quickly becoming problematic - a flame war. So to expedite the decision we went in Teacher's Lounge (a special chat room for all the moderators) and we asked for advice there. After some discussion we all agreed on closing. I believe that we avoided a bad flame war and pointless question without making the community unhappy.

@DavidZaslavsky To be fair, on Skeptics we have a policy to never override the community.

Perhaps some final thoughts from the candidates?

tough one ;-)

I bring the hard-hitting questions!

I really want to help here. I love physics. I come from a family of scientists, so I know them. On the other hand I am a community builder, I've been helping here but I also do it in my real life job. I help maintain an open source project, again, community. Here I can join two things I love :-) And, Bacon Waffles.

@RebeccaChernoff I think the questions covered it pretty well. This is not an easy site to moderate but I think we're doing a pretty good job of propagating good information despite the challenges.

@Sklivvz Don't forget the unicorns!

unicorn puppies

lol

nice :-)

Ok then!

A digest summary will be posted on meta, probably tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for participating!

Thanks for hosting!

Remember that posting a question on meta asking the candidates to answer is totally fine too, tag it election.

And good luck candidates (:

Thank you Rebecca, and David. Good luck to all (I really hope whomever is elected, you will be very successful!)

Feel free to find me in chat pretty much anytime (european day) for more questions as well.

@Sklivvz Yep, me too... honestly I think all the candidates (at least other than me, I can't really judge myself) are well qualified and I wouldn't be disappointed with any of them

@DavidZaslavsky I'm a pro tem mod on CodeGolf right now. It's a easy gig, and I intend to give it up when they get around to elections right now. It means I've had a look at the tools.

@RebeccaChernoff I think mods have to talk to one another in cases like that. Meta or chat should do. Teachers' Lounge is a secure place if the site's meta or general chat isn't appropriate.