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Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
00:04
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Being a moderator happens now, reaching a high rep will take a long time. The high-scoring users seem to get 2k-3k points/quarter, so 30k is going to take a sustained effort for at least two years. Moderating is a different task, focused more on what other people are doing on the site rather than chasing votes. Vote-hunting means writing popular answers and steering away from anything contentious, even when the contentious answer is the useful one.
"What's your take on link-only answers that get flagged for not being answers?"

I much prefer to delete them. They're an attractive nuisance and if left tempt other users to do the same thing. Links break in many ways, not least by 404'ing, and the target can be changed at any time.
(I'd rather not see what happens after a porn company buys instructables.com, but it would be funny in a twisted way)
"Do you think bicycles has too many unanswered questions?"

Not really. Quite a few of the unanswered questions are practically unanswerable, especially the "identify this bike" ones. I'm actually inclined to delete some of the older ones as no longer relevant, especially when the user who asked hasn't been back for some time.
Question: can moderators remove users/votes that are inappropriate? I've been followed around one site by a user who was offended that I disagreed with one of his answers, and he'd put in a couple of downvotes every few days. FWIW my downvote had a comment attached "{link to manufacturers website} says XXX, so I don't think your answer is correct"
 
7 hours later…
nhinkle
nhinkle
07:04
I wrote a thing about how I feel about things:
0
A: 2014 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

nhinkle How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been? This has happened from time to time as a moderator on Super User. The first step is to ping the mod in the private site mod chatroom, and get clarification. 99% of the time t...

@Ӎσᶎ perhaps you could answer on the actual meta post? That's where people will be looking
> As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
@Ӎσᶎ also to answer your question, yes. If you think you've been the target of vote abuse, flag one of your posts and ask a moderator to look into it. There are tools for finding voting irregularities, and processes for users who vote abusively.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
07:34
@nhinkle: I definitely could, but like I said, I disagree with using meta for that. Just because someone asks an inappropriate question doesn't mean I have to answer it.
There's also the problem that today is one of the days when I can't log in to meta at all. Some days it works, when it works I almost always have the hand-edit the login URL, but some days it doesn't work at all. Today is one of those days.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
07:56
I was going to comment on your answer: I'm amused that so many of your answers rely on knowing things that only moderators can find out, and some of your answers have been redacted to preserve the secrecy of the site. I'm not willing to keep secrets, should that be a requirement.
 
2 hours later…
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
09:44
Also, for argument/offtopic threads in response to answers, this: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/119080
 
4 hours later…
Carrie Kendall
Carrie Kendall
13:18
@Ӎσᶎ I am curious now. You think that one (or some) of the questions in the questionnaire are inappropriate? Maybe, I am misunderstanding something :)
 
2 hours later…
nhinkle
nhinkle
15:29
@Ӎσᶎ I guess I have to disagree here... the question was posted by a Stack Exchange community manager, so I don't think it's inappropriate.
@Ӎσᶎ also, some things have to be kept private. See bicycles.stackexchange.com/legal/moderator-agreement
 
5 hours later…
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
20:59
@Carrie: I think that meta.bicycles is not the place to have a discussion about what, hypothetically, someone might do if they were a moderator.
@nhinkle: that relates purely to personal information. There's nothing there that seems to relate to the moderator abilities you're not allowed to reveal to the public.
Carrie Kendall
Carrie Kendall
21:30
@Ӎσᶎ isn't that the exact place for it..?
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
22:00
@Carrie: there's no FAQ or guidance from the PTB on this, but I assume you're using something like this: stackoverflow.com/help/whats-meta and calling it "asking questions of the community".
I think that chat is the place to ask specific people speculative questions, rather than meta. You're not asking "the community" that set of questions, you're asking the three specific people who have nominated. And you're not asking one question, or even a couple of closely related questions, you've compiled a bunch of different questions.
The question is also time-bound - in a couple of years time there's going to be no real value in that other than "before you had any experience of being a moderator you said..." type comments.
nhinkle
nhinkle
@Ӎσᶎ the [redacted] part was tongue in cheek, so I apologize if it was confusing for you. For things like vote fraud and spam removal we aren't allowed to disclose certain details about how the tools work. Some pages in the moderator UI literally say "data is intended for moderators only".
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
22:15
@nhinkle: you seem to want to foster an "in-group" feel amongst moderators that I find distasteful. Yes, to the clique it's funny, but to people who have tried and failed to find out what moderators can do it's just cruel.
I can understand that moderators need to be good at finding things on the SE sites, so making that an important part of the election process makes sense. But after hours of following links, reading long pages and pages of semi-relevant material, some of which is outdated, it just feels pointless. The "moderator FAQ" page that I have never been able to find via SE, only through external search engines, is a case in point. Why is it not complete and up to date?
FWIW, the obvious answer "too much work, not enough time" is a statement of priorities. And it's explicitly "encouraging new and potential moderators is not very important to us". Which contradicts other statements, but it's one of those "we say this, we do that" contradictions.
nhinkle
nhinkle
23:11
@Ӎσᶎ I apologize if you were offended by the wording, but my intention is not to create a "clique". The reason I made so many references to previous moderation experience in my answers is because most of those questions are about moderation philosophy. It would be silly to answer hypothetically to scenarios I have personal experience with.
@Ӎσᶎ as for trying to learn more about what/how moderators do, I agree completely that the documentation is inadequate. It's not the job of moderators to maintain that information though. Stack Exchange, Inc. creates the tools and the associated network-wide guidelines. Communication with moderators even (let alone members at large) has always been a problem with Stack Exchange. Meta is not a very good documentation platform, and your point about discoverability is absolutely spot-on.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
@nhinkle: of course not, using real experience is much better. But taunting people who don't have access to the information you do is, I think, undesirable. Especially in a context where you could reasonably expect the people reading to be trying to find that information and failing.
@nhinkle: thanks for the apology.
nhinkle
nhinkle
@Ӎσᶎ as with any job, you learn on the job in moderation. Stack Exchange has limited developer resources, and even though there is a very long list of requested mod tool changes, most of which have not been implemented. The mods ask for more attention, but the reality is that the core Q&A facilities get higher priority, because moderation consists of a relatively small (albeit important) percentage of user interactions with the site.
@Ӎσᶎ and again, I don't mean to taunt. I wouldn't have expected that people reading the nomination are trying to find more details about the specifics of moderation, but I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have that haven't been adequately answered before. Right now, if you like.
Perhaps SE should do more to help prospective moderators know what they're signing up for. I will say that newly elected moderators do receive quite a bit of help to ease them into the position.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
@nhinkle: Why would people volunteering to become moderators not be interested in what moderators can do? And would we want those people as moderators? I think the apparent policy (which I'm following at this stage) of refusing to link directly to what information is available, is foolish, but that's what we have.
nhinkle
nhinkle
@Ӎσᶎ in the context of the candidate Q&A, the candidates at that point have already made the decision to nominate themselves, so the audience IMO is the people choosing who to vote for. At that point the specific technical details of the tools they'd use aren't particularly relevant. However...
I think it's a good suggestion to link to the moderator FAQ from the nomination page.
In fact, I'd suggest that you post that as a feature request on meta.SO.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
@nhinkle: the fact that they don't despite at least a couple of requests that I've seen suggests that there's been a high-level decision.
Like I said, I assume that's on the basis that "if you can't even find the FAQ you're going to really suck as a moderator"
nhinkle
nhinkle
23:22
I see your frustration and understand, but I don't think it's intentional. I think it's due to bad organization.
It probably hasn't occurred to the developers to link to the moderator FAQ from the nomination page.
Something like the about/welcome tour page, but for moderation, would be useful. A sort of "tour of what you'd do as a moderator".
@Ӎσᶎ you've seen moderator.stackexchange.com then?
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
@n
@nhinkle: yeah, but the blog format isn't a particularly good way to organise a FAQ. It transfers the load from one or two blog owners to every single moderator of every single SE site. Appointing a few moderator FAQ owners and having some kind of community process for deciding what's allowed to be disclosed there would be, IMO, better.
nhinkle
nhinkle
I've got to run to a meeting but I'll be back online in about half an hour if you have any more questions :)
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
thanks. I'll around for another 12 or so hours.
Ӎσᶎ
Ӎσᶎ
23:45
0
Q: Add link to the Moderators FAQ to the Moderator Nominations page

ӍσᶎCurrently IIRC the nomination page has links to "a theory of moderation" and "moderator agreement", but it's quite hard to find out what exactly a moderator can do and is expected to do. I think it would be useful to provide a link to the moderator FAQ on the nomination page. It might also be h...

feature-request election
nhinkle
nhinkle
@Ӎσᶎ looks good. I voted for it.

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