2020 English Language Learners Moderator Election Chat

7:39 AM

I remember various discussions concerning moderators (or candidates) who were previously suspended.

For example, I found this feature request: Show previous suspension count for moderator candidates.

Currently the information whether the candidate was previously suspended isn't displayed somewhere during an election, is it?

user435118

8:57 AM

@MartinSleziak Suspended candidates are removed by CMs before the election starts

@Daniil I am not sure about that. Isn't that the case only if they were suspended during the 12 months before the election?

I see that this was discussed here: Let's disallow moderator nominations from people who've been suspended in the past year and Loosen the “no suspension in the past year” requirement for nominees, or at least listen to the community

user435118

@MartinSleziak Yes it is, why, do you think someone who is running for moderator has been suspended in the past year?

I was asking about suspensions in general, not only during the past year.

And my question is meant as a general question concerning elections, not specifically about candidates on this site.

user435118

Suspensions before the past year are fine, you can still run for mod

user435118

Suspensions are not publicly visible to other users after the suspension

9:06 AM

@Daniil Yes, I know that. But still, it would be a useful information. (Knowing that the candidate was suspended and why that happened helps voters to form the opinion on that user.)

Re: Suspension are not publicly visible after the suspension. It depends.

user435118

@MartinSleziak That is private info that I'm quite sure is not going to be shared

user435118

@MartinSleziak What do you mean?

In what sense it is private info?

It was displayed quite prominently on that user's profile page, so many users might have noticed that.

user435118

After the suspension, it is private except to moderators

user435118

Users may want to forget about it and not share it

9:08 AM

As a random example, I can see that this user was suspended.

And similarly, many suspensions might have been discussed in chat or on meta - so in such cases I see the information there.

I am mostly familiar with Mathematics, I remember that this was discussed there after problems with some mod (now a former mod). On that site, the question whether the user has been suspended before made it also into the questionaire.

One thing that struck me in the last election: I was surprised that a user who had been suspended (twice) in the relatively recent past was allowed to run for moderator. Thinking idealistically I can see a rationale for this, but in practice I think that electing such a moderator is asking for trouble. I might suggest that a user who has been suspended in the last year (say) be prohibited from running. However the weirdly private/public mix of current suspension practices could make this hard to enforce. — Pete L. Clark Dec 14 '12 at 20:30

@PeteL.Clark I think the problem was rather that this moderator didn't disclose his suspension on the election question thread where all candidates where actually asked this question. I think a history of being suspended for spiteful downvoting doesn't look good to even the most superficial voter. — Michael Greinecker ♦ Dec 14 '12 at 20:32

And, as I mentioned above, there is also a feature request on Meta Stack Exchange: Show previous suspension count for moderator candidates.

But from the response to that feature request, it does not seem likely that it gets imlemented.

user435118

> A year is long enough. We don't need to shame users for years and years because of some long-since-corrected screwup. We probably all have things we've done in the distant past that we're not proud of, things we'd like to make disappear but the Internet is forever. Ancient suspensions don't need to be trotted out in every election.

user435118

Agreed ^

I don't really agree.

Anyway, the thing I was asking about is whether past suspensions are displayed somewhere. (In other words, whether the above feature request has been implemented.) It doesn't seem to be the case.

user435118

@MartinSleziak No, it hasn't

But probably we can hope that at least this should work in general (it is quote from the same post which you quoted):

> If somebody with a bad record is still causing problems somewhere, you can rely on somebody bringing it up, and then voters will know.

Although as you can see from the above comments, it doesn't always work.

Jesse Steele

10:16 AM

Glorfindel was my choice because he is already a mod elsewhere, English is his second language, and he gave a dissenting, but fair answer to my question here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321466/…

11:13 AM

@MartinSleziak Actually that's not how suspensions are supposed to work. After the suspension ends, users should be allowed to be upstanding community members without their past constantly hanging over them as long as they don't repeat the bad behavior.

I would argue it's unfair to dredge up old suspensions because the user has demonstrated that they're reformed by not having any in the past year.

Everyone can make mistakes, especially if they're new to SE and don't really "get it" at first. They shouldn't have to drag it along with them forever.

Also, I don't think every suspension on other sites disqualifies someone from being a moderator necessarily. Sometimes two people get up each other's nose on a site and the bickering causes problems for that site, but wouldn't for a different site.

11:37 AM

Just to clarify, I only meant suspensions on the site where the election is going on. It seems that in the feature request that I linked to, it is not clarified whether it is asking to show suspensions on all sites or only on this particular site.

It seems that no trusted user is among the candidates. (All of them are below 20k.)

Although probably already at 10k users get a lot of tools which are useful to gain experience for future mods.

11:48 AM

@MartinSleziak I wasn't even at 10K when I was elected.

Honestly, I don't think we could go wrong with any of the candidates. I don't know Daniil very well yet, but caring about the community and being enthusiastic about the site is a big plus in my book.

The existing moderators will help the new folks with the technical details about the tools and such. It's more important that a candidate share your view on what the site should be like.

12:06 PM

Did somebody mark the number of constituent badges before the election kicked off? At the moment, there is 1202 of them.

1:07 PM

@MartinSleziak SEDE hasn't updated since the election started, so 977 is probably the correct number.

I modified a query: data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/edit/1235120

I didn't work out how to handle multiples by the same user because I wasn't sure what you were after

My rough guess is there have been about 235 votes so far, (60 per page, and 4 pages - five from 2018 on the last page) 1277-235 is not 977, so there is definitely something about the fact it can be awarded multiple times. I'm not sure how the number on the badge page is calculated

It looks like if I aggregate it by user, we have 686 people who have voted in at least one of the last three elections.

And probably some number of accounts that were removed and no longer show up in the data dumps

1:47 PM

@ColleenV Nice guess. 240 currently.

2:03 PM

@Catija Nice! Thank you.

user435118

2:30 PM

@Catija Never thought CMs can vote... ell.stackexchange.com/help/badges/81/constituent?userid=16318

@Daniil They can when they have sufficient rep to do so. ... I ... uh... ran to moderate this site once. ;)

ell.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&filter=all I'm on the first page here, even after being inactive for 2-3 years.

ell.stackexchange.com/election/1

user435118

Ah, cool!

2:47 PM

It will be interesting to see how this years' election compares to previous statistics

> 1. 1,384 voters were eligible, 677 visited the site during the election, 500 visited the election page, and 259 voted
2. 2,148 voters were eligible, 946 visited the site during the election, 650 visited the election page, and 370 voted
3. 3,294 voters were eligible, 1,087 visited the site during the election, 749 visited the election page, and 367 voted

You've got a nice increase in eligible voters: 5,095 voters were eligible

That said... there's something off... more people have visited the election page than the site... and since the election page is on the site... I'm somewhat confused.

Maybe... the election page is exempt, so the views are from people getting notifications or emails about the election?

user435118

3:25 PM

@Catija Do people get emails about an election?

Depends on how their notifications are set up. If they get unread notifications emailed to them periodically, they will get an email about the election, yes.

successive suspension

I am unable to understand the election process

user435118

@successivesuspension What about it do you not understand?

It is complicated if you're unfamiliar with the system, so I can understand it being confusing. :)

Eddie Kal

8:21 PM

@Catija I appear to be a second-pager...