Theoretical Computer Science 2014 Election

Congratulations to Lev Reyzin and Artem Kaznatcheev, winners of the 2014 moderator election!

You should probably not play the victim, @vzn. You added six answers to a question, when the question was already no longer relevant - as you said, the nomination window was closed. Posting six answers, whose only purpose is for you to make a point is in fact quite abusive.

Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to CSTheory, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/9446/theory-salon

@vzn It's not just your writing style that puts people off (although you do have many writing habits that I find outright annoying). The problem is that your input in the form of questions and answers exhibits the same carelessness as your writing. Many of your answers are either only tangentially related to the question, or the result of an easy Google search, or both, and in any case are not useful.

If you have questions about the election process itself, please ask your question on the CS Theory Meta Site. Remember, folks stepping up to lead this community are committing a significant amount of their time, please keep all discourse civil and constructive.

So take it as a one-time feedback.

I meant "I am not saying this to look for a discussion"

I hope you don't write off my comments as another prosecution and dismissal. You are a very active participant on the site, and I would be extremely happy to see you participating in a manner that more people find to be constructive.

Unfortunately, to communicate to the rest of the community, you have to abide by their norms. Including the norms of respect in writing and conciseness.

Also, people expect one to abide by standard decorum and the 'rules' of public scientific discourse.

@vzn the easiest way to see that I spend a lot of effort promoting cstheory is by looking at the booster badges.

@vzn thanks. I'm excited for the future of the site. It is great fun to learn here and I hope that trend continues. I was a bit disappointed that more users didn't volunteer, but I guess moderating can be a large time commitment and everyone is very busy.

@Babibu. Yeah, I also got an old answer downvoted immediately after I dared to question whether the old moderators should not be re-elected again. This is indeed vulgar.

can't need minemum 150 rep to vote

ok forte was a pretentious word

I encourage you to post a new thread on meta. I am sure it won't get closed. It might get downvoted, I don't know about that

I personally would not downvote a question about the level of involvement from senior researchers

Unfortunately everyone's capacity for taking on new duties is limited. And the world of TCS is relatively small, but still a lot larger than CSTheory @ SE

If you'd like my guess why senior researchers like the ones you mention are not tripping over themselves to be moderators, remember that they are usually in a plenty of leadership positions already (advisory boards, steering committees and PCs of conferences, faculty search committees within their institutions, plus likely reviewing grants for NSF and other organizations, to name just a few). They may not have time for moderating this site.

I wish to see much more friendly and polite attitude taken by future moderators, and I believe many join me in this wish. There were quite a few discussions by senior participants in this site, like Noam Nisan and Peter Shor as well as others who also disliked the aggressive tone of some of the participants. All moderators can take example of the laid back attitude taken by Suresh, for instance.

I also believe that the moderator Kaveh is way too aggressive in his behavior on this site. He promotes lengthy arguments, unnecessary confrontations, and overall a very unfriendly and hostile environment. However, I understand that he is going to step down soon, which is a good news for this site.

@vzn ah, cool. Thanks

inclusive, but specialized and... unapologetically protective.

@vzn it is. But even there, over half of their traffic comes in from Google. Which just goes to show how important that "long tail" is - true, there probably aren't that many researchers out there using Google for their day-to-day work, but that says nothing about the folks who'll be tomorrow's researchers.

@vzn it's easy to forget, since those readers tend to be the silent majority. But realistically, when you're writing an answer those readers are your primary audience - at least, if you want them to be. Answers that keep this in mind have amazing reach and staying power.

Wow... Three candidates nominate right before the cut-off...