Home Improvement Town Hall Chat

What do you see as being the moderators role on a relatively small site like DIY?

I'll start us off with the tried and true: 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?

Give the physical nature of the site's subject matter, what would you do if you saw someone posting potentially dangerous advice?

@NiallC., a follow-up question: do any of the candidate have experience moderating other forms of online communities, such as public mailing lists?

With one exception, the candidates have no prior experience of moderatorship and little involvement on meta.SO. How do you plan to learn the ropes?

For the other side of intrapersonnel disputes: You strongly disagree with an action taken by a fellow moderator. How do you proceed?

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?

How do you feel about doing all this hard work for this site as a Moderator, while the larger entity benefits financially on traffic based revenue?

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?

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

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?

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?

Not sure how often DIY would run into this sort of thing, but nevertheless... How would you handle a user who makes valuable content contributions, but causes significant disruptions to the site in other ways?

As we approach the end, closing thoughts from candidates?

How well do you handle being down voted?

How much time do you expect to spend per day performing moderation duties? Or will it just be "as it comes," whenever you have the time or get in the mood?

What is your preferred screw type?

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?

What, if anything, would you different to the current moderators? (same as Tim's question)

@ppumkin So far, I've yet to see anything that would meet my criteria for deletion, but you make a great point.

I spy among us all five candidates: @BMitch, @Tester101, @RoryAlsop, @Steven, @ppumkin

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