Super User Election: Town Hall Chat

Which one of you candidates will get bored or think "This isn't what I thought it was," and disappear after the first week?

You strongly disagree with an action taken by a fellow moderator. How do you proceed?

> Why the heck do you want to do this? Moderating is a lot of work, and you will get called out frequently for the decisions you make. What motivated you to run for moderator, and are you sure you're ready to handle it?

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?

Some time ago, we had a notable user (KCotreau) that didn't agree with a moderator action and just moved away from SU because of the disagreement. If this would happend again, how do you will deal with this kind of situation?

Is there anything in particular you'd like to change about Super User/Stack Exchange? What would that be & why is it such an annoying thing?

Moderating is a lot of work. Do you expect to be able to keep answering questions or will you spend all your time here moderating?

We have a lot of new users that comes here, makes a question, get a good answer and disappear, never come back leaving the question without any accepted answer. How do you feel about it? Do you think that some answers could be set by a mod to be accepted or it lies just to asker?

Which candidates do you think are most suited for filling our current positions?

Tangentially to @Sathya's question. Will you have enough time to help with moderating in the near future (say coming 6 months) or can you anticipate any changes that might not make you the best person for the job right now. For example: job changes, upcoming kids or going to college/university

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?

Going to /review I've come across quite a few low quality posts from high rep users. Some of them even have quite a few upvotes, but clearly don't pass our current set of standards. How do you deal with this situation?

You close a question / delete a comment thread / take a normal moderator action and get called out on meta. The post blows up. How do you handle this?

As a moderator you're not just a janitor, but also involved with promotions of the site, for example our anniversary contest or the blog. If elected, do you plan to get involved in these things as well and if so, do you have any specific ideas to help promote SU? For example with the upcoming release of Windows 8

If you find a problem with how the site works or think a change in our scope is required. How do you go about changing it? And/or if you're unhappy with how changes are being made right now, how do you plan to fix that when you become a mod (if at all)?

there's a feature request/bug that appears to have been ignored by the dev team, that's posted on [metasu]. The person who posted asks you why isn't anything being done about it. What's your next plan of action on this?

On Super User, we tend to downvote and close a lot, esp recommendation questions. Tell us about a downvote, close, deletion, or other such "negative" action taken against you on Super User, and what you learned from it.

> Somebody goes absolutely nuts after you delete their offensive post and suspend them. I'm talking death threats and every bad word in the book. What do you do?

> How would you handle a user who makes valuable content contributions, but causes significant disruptions to the site in other ways?

I am closing you all as Subjective and Argumentative.

To take a page from Josh's book and steal SO town hall questions: 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?

Question: How will you handle having a binding vote (to close, flag, delete, reopen...)?

Folks, one thing, can you use the "reply" function when replying to a question? (the arrow to the left when you hover over a question) that will make it easier to sort the responses later. (Unless there is some other new system that I'm not aware of, @Rebecca makes the final rules around here :)

Who thinks he'll do a better job than me? ;P

Could we perhaps all introduce ourselves?

@DMA57361 you are sorely missed

Thanks @GraceNote, @TimStone for holding this.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, the Town Hall Chat officially closes now

You spot an epidemic of bad tags/tag wikis (think 1K + questions to deal with). Do you take it up on meta for community approval, or do you just go and solve the problem by mass editing?

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?

Some user (not necessarily low reputation) decides that he wants to put up inappropriate content (whether name, avatar, about me section or post). How would you determine if it goes over the line and how would you deal with the user in that case?

When you see a question with major issues (poorly-written, argumentative, etc.), what tool do you reach for first?

@DragonLord Do you feel the current style of moderation is perhaps too lenient? :)

Welcome to the Super User Town Hall Chat

> With a diamond after your name, everything you say and do on the site will be perceived in a different way. How do you plan to handle this, especially when having discussions about site policy and scope decisions?

Perhaps sending a message to my fellow mods saying OH GOD THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE HAS COME, please come help me out!

@MichaelMrozek It certainly won't stop me from answering questions, etc. It does mean I'll be even more certain when talking to users to be polite and respectful, but I think I already do that well.

A diamond will be attached to everything you say, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that? (-- badp )

Also, I think I'm ready to become a moderator because the great and all-knowing ;) @IvoFlipse thinks I am:

Why should we pick you (over those who got more votes than you in the primaries AKA @Sathya)?

How do you, the potential moderators, feel about suspensions? in what cases should it be used? and not?

But then again, I don't think people would want to run for moderator if they weren't bound to the community

Question is heading toward being closed, but doesn't suit any of the options, do you slam it closed just to reopen it and wipe away the close votes or just let it ride out?

Yes to second what Pekka said, please use reply, it makes it much easier to follow and helps me with the digest.

While we're reaching closing time, closing thoughts from candidates?

How do you fell about being downvoted on primary elections? Some people had a lot of downvotes even having a lot of edits/flags and activity that already helped on superuser.. What do you consider that is being the largest difference on these cases?

Everything you vote on (both close and delete votes), once elected, will be a binding Super Vote. How will this change your voting habits?

@IvoFlipse needs to be dethroned.

@TomWij Write about it in the blog