Web Applications Town Hall Chat

Would you ever see yourself in disagreement with SE Staff over changes you would like to see take place on WebApps and would you hold firm to your opinion?

How much time do you allocate for WebApps? How much of that time can you use for moderation solely?

What's your stance on webapp-rec questions?

What is your response to a user who registers specifically to post job offers for companies that aren't familiar with the StackExchange model?

Are you running to be a moderator for the site or just so that you can have something to play with regardless of any health or future of the site?

@EvanCarroll The user Adam Davis will not be able to make it, but he would like to ask you the following: "I won't be here for the chat, but I'm baffled by one candidate's promise, "I promise to always publish conversations with other members and moderators," which seems to suggest one can't expect privacy when contacting moderators. I'd like to hear the other candidates thoughts on privacy vs transparency."

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!

We're nearing the end, so as we wind down, final thoughts from the candidates?

A new user posts their first question on Web Apps. It contains lots of rambling, poor grammar & poor formatting, however there is a good question hidden in there somewhere. What do you do?

You have a feature request and a pile of bugs that appears to have been ignored by the dev team. How do you escalate it?

What do you see as the role of your site's chat room, Google-fu in growing and maintaining a healthy community?

@EvanCarroll Do you have any idea of what is and isn't on topic for the site or should all questions by virtue never be closed?

What is one contribution you feel demonstrates that you can be a good moderator?

Do you feel that the StackExchange model of community moderation which escalates to moderator moderation which escalates to SE moderation is a valid system, or do you feel that the entire model is broken? If you feel it is broken, what can you, as a middle cog/janitor, do to improve that model?

A post is flagged. All moderators have looked at it. No one's taken action/cleared it because you're all unsure what to do with it. What do you do now when there is no consensus?

How would you deal with a user who contributes good content to the site, but consistently causes trouble in other ways (is rude, confrontational, makes bad edits/tag wikis, etc.)?

@EvanCarroll As communities grow their definition of on-topic changes -- Do you feel that this is a natural/appropriate evolution for a site? (Anyone else is welcome to chime in on this one too)

Would you ever get bored of moderating when the flags are low?

Follow up to webapp-rec questions, there are more than a couple highly voted webapp-rec questions that are closed as "Not Constructive" / "Off-topic, what is your stance on this? Throw them under the rug (i.e. leave them), edit so it could be reopened (if so how) or kill it with fire (delete)?

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Two highly respected members of the community get in a comment war on a question. They both flag each other's comments and are flipping out and it is clear that this is beyond a heated argument. What do you do, what don't you do?

What's the main problem/improvement area (if any) in your view, that you see on WebApps and how would you resolve it?

How familiar are you with mod tools and what moderators do? Could you explain in your own words what a mod should be doing on a typical day?

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?

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

As a moderator your votes are binding -- If you see a question and deem it close worthy it can be gone with just your vote. How will this change the way you use close votes, if at all?

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?

Moderation on Stack Exchange sites is a fine balance between being the community's janitor (cleaning up junk left lying around the site) and a kindergarten teacher (encouraging all your users to play nice with each other and new users) -- How have you filled those roles currently within the Webapps community?

You are suspended on another site. While you cannot unsuspend yourself as a moderator on another site, would you use the moderator-only chat room to pressure them on unsuspending you earlier? Would you publish those discussions somewhere? [ mainly @EvanCarroll ]

@TimStone Thanks again for your hard work, @TimStone

@EvanCarroll I'd wait until Sathya returns and answers his share of questions, first

@EvanCarroll OK, as a follow-up: What if the post is borderline offensive in some way?

If you're a candidate responding to a question posed for the moderator candidates, please ensure that you use the reply-to feature for purposes of following the conversation.

@EvanCarroll a question of clarification, which other site metas have "degenerated" as you claim Meta Stack Overflow has, and what do you feel contributed to that "degeneration" of those site specific metas?

Candidates currently present: @Fogest @EvanCarroll

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