@GraceNote The site stats show that over the life of this site I have performed the majority of many moderation tasks, including closing and deleting questions, commenting, and managing comments. I intend to reduce my activity after this election, leaving five moderators (three of them active) plus the new ones to pick up the slack. That should help you determine the amount and kind of assistance the moderation team will need.
More seriously, I think the candidates' sober, frank (though over-modest) assessments of what more they could do for our site as moderators (they all contribute a lot already) does them credit.
@GraceNote I looked up what happened on DataScience: it seems that they did not have enough candidates even after additional week. Well, here on CrossValidated we are pretty sure that DataScience.SE should not exist at all (we had Meta discussions about it, with pretty strong consensus) so I cannot help smirking.
@DJohnson Although I characterized the goal of "fresh thinking" as "site-related," let me clarify that that goal is mine. It's not necessarily a stated SE goal. I don't know why moderator terms are indefinite: that has been a feature of SE since the very beginning. But it's consistent with the philosophy of enabling community moderation: after all, active users--who are practically moderators--aren't limited in the duration of their interaction with the community.
meta.stackexchange.com/questions/984/… gives previous discussion of fixed-term or for life. The aim of an election is to appoint new people; candidates can say whether they are offering fresh thinking. As I see it one candidate is offering, or implying that they offer, distinctly fresh thinking; the others' platforms are more in terms of being willing to do the job.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who got into statistics because when I heard of complications that were being swept under the rug in intro stats courses, I perked my ears up instead of hoping for it all to go away.
"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it" - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
@theforestecologist I was thinking exactly the same. I hate to possibly be rude to people whose help I could very well need, but it doesn't truly inspire a relatively new member (as myself) to see veteran members so seemingly sad about becoming a moderator.
Summary of each candidate's election statement: "I don't want to do it, I likely won't do much with it, but I guess vote for me" Why not just cancel the election until you get more interested candidates?
I nominated myself with 3 minutes left until the deadline, but it seems the nomination period has already been extended for a week. Perhaps it's a good thing.
If you have questions about the election process itself, please ask your question on the Cross Validated 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.
Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to statistics, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold
