@Chad don't know yet. I do have two other diamonds (one's pro-tem and a smaller job), but I think I could do a reasonable job here. I was hoping a pile of strong candidates would nominate themselves so I could just say "yeah, that works". :-) I have some questions for our current mods (which will take the form of a meta question today), and I'd like to see answers to those before committing. (And I'll ask them publicly so everybody gets the benefit of those answers.)
For a long time I ignored the 10k flag queue because I didn't see what piling on more NAAs or VLQs would do. But in recent weeks I've gone back to it, using it as an entry for voting/commenting on stuff I missed, and occasionally to use a custom flag to suggest some other outcome (like adding a post notice).
(I expect to be starting a new job in the next couple months, so that's a big unknown, but I don't intend to get sucked into one of those "outside life? what's that?" places.)
@MonicaCellio that the one you are flying out to interview for?
@MonicaCellio The thing to consider is it seems being a mod here is going to be pretty time consuming to do it right. At least if Jmort is to be believed(which I do)
@Chad that's one of the questions I want to ask the current mods -- not just "how much time", which has a lot of variables, but more specifically the work profile -- what do mods spend most of their time doing and how big does that tend to be?
@Chad yup. I've already had the Skype interview with the hiring manager and interviewed with the local team, but the rest of the group is out of town and I need to meet/interview with them. I have a good feeling so far, but I've got other applications out too. (I got RIFfed recently, in case you're wondering why I'm willing to talk publicly about this stuff.)
@Chad yeah, I worked for a defense contractor, and sequestration trickled down to us. The customer on our biggest project loves us (our software really has saved lives, which is awesome), but they couldn't protect us and the program got a major cut.
@enderland A year or so back I thought about leaving, but then we got a project that really hit my sweet spot of skills and interest, and its next phase was supposed to start last month. Then it didn't. :-( But there's some compensation, so I don't have to worry about meeting the mortgage this week. So long as I land in the next couple months it'll be fine.
@Chad oh whoops -- thought we were in the other room for a moment. Sorry 'bout that.
@AlexM. (and any other mods nominees) The mods here tend to get mistreated by some of the users(mostly low rep but not all). The users can be rude, and obnoxious and the more experienced users are likely to question some of your decisions as a mod. Do you think you have the temperament to withstand this, keep a good attitude, and turn the exchange into something constructive?
@Chad: I guess its part of learning - "The users can be rude, and obnoxious and the more experienced users are likely to question some of your decisions as a mod. "
In the interests of full disclosure: anybody who's a moderator anywhere on the network -- people whose names show up in chat in blue -- can see deleted messages. Just FYI.
@Chad I know and I approve. I just thought it prudent to point it out since there is the possibility that I could be a candidate in this election and I have that privilege.
Hey all, a proposal: it seems likely that this room will have a lot of discussion this week. One of its purposes is to be able to ask questions of candidates. I've seen one of those so far, currently starred, but it may well be off the starwall by the time later candidates decide to run. So what do y'all think about a practice of pinning open questions (questions addressed to all candidates)?
@enderland I've seen nothing problematic in any of the deleted comments in either room today, just for the record. And I don't expect problems either. It's pre-emptive.
(I also don't promise to look at deleted comments, so attempts to get me to look just by deleting might not do what the person wanted. :-) )
I was flagged numerous times on gd.se's chatroom mainly because of that; what disturbed me is that the only thing leading to that was a set of rigid rules that were not written anywhere, and 0 judgment from the users flagging things
@Chad ok on the basis of one "yes" and no objections in all of 5 minutes, I'll pin the one question and any others I see. If anybody objects to this please ping me; I'm not trying to take over or anything, just make sure stuff doesn't get lost. (And, in particular, any site moderator can veto this; it's your room, after all.)
As experienced job-seekers (and regular readers at The Workplace) know, an interview is a two-way street. Just as it's important for the community to ask questions of candidates, it's also important for those candidates to have answers about key parts of the job. Sometimes the best answers come...
@RhysW I don't know. I'm gathering information. Also hoping that enough strong candidates will run that I can just avoid the question. :-) I don't have a burning desire for the job but I'm open to the idea.
trust me, I want your delete votes back since I'm the only person casting them right now other than moderators and it feels a bit sillly to even cast them (at least on answers)
@Shog9 and by that definition we have good questions. That those good questions also attract bad answers is not a reflection on the question. (This is the "on subjective-seeming sites everybody thinks he's an expert and the world needs to hear his unsupported opinion" problem. We're not the only site that has it.)
@enderland as a mod (elsewhere) I'd like to encourage you to keep casting those votes where you think they're called for. It makes the difference between a deletion looking like a unilateral mod action and one looking like it has community support.
Meh. If a question attracts a bunch of crap, it's by default a liability. If it also gets a really good answer, it may be worth salvaging - but you do have to weigh the cost of the salvage against the worth of that answer.
I think we have pretty decent consensus on the first tier of answers that aren't worth saving. We just don't have enough people who can act on them yet. We'll get there.
@Shog9 indeed. People need to do that too, and that doesn't require much rep.
That was one of the unexpected benefits of participating on Stack Overflow for me: I thought I was pretty good at explaining stuff when I signed on, but looking back my first answers were... Pretty typical forum fare.
@Shog9 add signal and, where you can, remove noise, yes. For formats where deletion isn't available all you can do is add signal; we can address both sides.
@enderland oh, interesting. I didn't know. But ok, here we have somebody who learned to do better, and look at all the great content he's contributed. If most of the visible stuff on the site were crap, would he have done that?
@Shog9 I think that my experience in SE has improved that for me as well. Which has greatly improved my participation at work because I find the skill translates well in requirements gathering and project planning/management
^^^ get hordes of fastest gun SO regulars into the question and there will be no time to edit it to repel all the garbage that comes to their heads. Been there at Programmers, it's a lost game
For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.
These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.
Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by ...
What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to repel garbage answers, I can easily name a handful of active regulars who can and do just that.
Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that invalidates my edit. And answer that exploits another minor ambig…
> Not everyone agrees with the premise that StackOverflow is exemplary and that all other sides should follow its model. I find its huge volume of traffic exhausting and daunting. It is too fast-paced for my taste. Questions are asked, very quickly answered, and then forgotten.
> It might work fairly well for technical programming-related questions, but it is not necessarily a model that I would like to try with theoretical research problems. I think that reasonably low volume is an important feature of this site.
The core question here should be, why do we even have separate CS and CS Theory sites?
And the most convenient answers to this can be found by reading this thread on the CSTheory meta.
If you have time, please read through it before continuing here. If you're still stuck in line at the DMV afte...
> This brings me back to Jukka's answer (quoted in part above). Even though the Stack Exchange software seems to be working fairly well for that community, this is mostly accidental - it was never designed for small, low-traffic, mostly self-contained groups of people. You can actually license the system for use on private, internal sites, but very, very few groups ever do this: not many internal organizations reach the scale necessary for it to actually work.
everyone's worried about workplace graduating and having site quality and being subjective when in reality they should worry about people volunteering to be moderators after it graduates
@enderland Not that I do not think you will be a good mod... but you are one of the more active users on the site... community moderation is important and having you to help champion that is important too
My luck despite my candid admission that I would play favorites and arbatially close and delete comments, and answers I dont like, I would get elected anyway
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
Here's how it'll work:
During the nominati...
Two experienced users, both good contributors at times, just can't get along. Every time they interact in any way, sparks fly. Acrimonious comments pile up, distracting everyone from the actual questions being answered. Tit-for-tat flags and votes accumulate. Passive-aggressive meta posts ruin yo...
@Chad I don't easily get angry, especially not with new users, and for the more experienced ones, I spend long hours near the water cooler, happy to discuss everything and find a common denominator. Past experiences with kids groups as well as sales jobs taught me a good deal of patience and when all else fails, sticks and stones.
@CMW that question is to collect questions that will be asked in a group by the team. Don't answer on the meta post; you'll have a chance. (Or, for questions that don't make the survey, you can answer in chat later.)
@MonicaCellio I imagine shog as the type to have a swivel chair and a cat and spend all day inventing names like the 'deathinator' and the 'destructobeam' for his latest evil inventions
@YannisRizos yes, very handy! (I wish the historical data were frozen at the time of the election so one could look at similar past elections, but oh well. The info for current elections is very useful!)
@RhysW I think you can still find it through programmers.stackexchange.com/election. It was awful and extremely long (it was before they put a limit on nomination stubs, and I think I might have inspired that particular feature).
I think I'm probably the wrong mod to ask. Both my sites need more moderation compared to TWP, Programmers being old large-ish (and having a rocky start) and Politics being naturally controversial.
TWP suffers a bit from forum-itis, but I don't think it's going to be a lot of work for the new diamonds. That said, I don't have much more info than you do.
On a more serious note, I'd consider being in a European timezone a good thing. At least one of the three mods should be in a non-US timezone, to provide almost full coverage throughout the day.
The Workplace is a fairly active site with a significant amount of moderation activity needed. How would you classify the amount of time you would be able to devote to moderation activities? Are you up for the commitment that may be needed?
For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.
These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.
Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by ...
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
Here's how it'll work:
During the nominati...
Workplace 2014 Election
Workplace 2014 Election