The http://elections.stackexchange.com/ site with meta data about SE elections seems to be offline. In the event that this is a location change, the links from active election pages on the network should be updated with it's new URL. In the event unicorns have absconded with the servers, they sho...
BTW @terdon while you are here, I would disagree with this sentiment:
> I just found it was an interesting problem (originally) and so thought I'd help the OP by answering and the site by closing.
Answering + Closing is bad for the SE format, that works against what we are trying to accomplish. If it needs closing, close it. If it can be answered in a way that fits the site guidelines, then answer it and let others try to do the same. They are mutually exclusive.
Now I can see if you thought it was fine, answered, then later saw the problem with the question and VTCed, but your comment makes it sound like you can do both for a win-win. My opinion is that is a loose-loose.
Well, I kind of think that sometimes you can. It's not something I do often but in this particular case there were a few factors I took into consideration:
1. It was an interesting problem (a bad, selfish reason, granted)
2. The OP actually needed help
3. I was hoping he would whip the Q into shape
4. This was a new user who didn't know any better. I was hoping that getting both a chastisement and an answer would result in a better user.
@terdon I'm not too worried about unraveling that particular incident as it seems like it was a moving target anyway, but as a general principle I think that's a bad idea. The site ends up messier, questions don't get fixed even when everybody hopes they will, and users don't learn to do things right if they get answers for being lazy. New user or not, I've almost never see it play out any other way.
And as a moderator, that kind of double standard will get you in a lot of hot water (been there done that, I say this from experience).
@Caleb Fair enough, in fact, I don't think I've ever done that (VTC and answer) before.
And I wouldn't do it as a mod, that's for sure.
Basically, I just saw the question and had fun with it and then got really pissed off when the OP refused to fix it up and instead kept changing the requirements.
I would suggest the question get nuked entirely once elections are over (and maybe before if discussion on it settles down). That's just the sort of closed steaming pile that isn't helping the site or future visitors.
By the way @Caleb do you think you'll have time to be a mod on both sites? You've not been very active here this past year or so and I'm guessing that the workload on Christianity will be pretty huge given its subject matter.
(by which I mean that you guys are trying hard to make a secular site dealing with religious material so I imagine a lot of flags and clean up will be required)
@terdon I'm twiddling my thumbs on C.SE as far as flag handling goes. I spend a lot of time there but it's not because the mod load is high. There are going to be elections soon there too, but it's not because I'm not keeping up with flags, it's more like I'm the only one that ever catches them.
@Caleb Really? That's surprising, what little time I've spent there gave me the impression that the mods would have their hands full (and that they were doing a fine job of it by the way).
See also the comment under my nomination, but yes I think I'll be able to contribute a reasonable amount. I'm already on the site anyway (look at my visit stats for the last few months).
I would say there are some things I won't be doing as a mod here: being super creative with off-site promotion, writing blog posts etc. I'm signing up for the janitor part of things, not to be a political figure that spear-heads new projects. What I can do is enable any user mod or not to do those other things. It doesn't have to be a mod doing any of the other things if the mods encourage such contributions, which is generally the way SE works anyway.
Sounds reasonable @Caleb. For what it's worth, what I've seen of you both here and on other sites makes me feel you'd make a fine mod. In fact, while I would obviously like to win the election, I'd be pretty happy with any of the main candidates we have so far. It's a win-win as far as the site is concerned and that's great!
@terdon Check out my last rant about the lack of flag activity :) That did inspire one user to go through who knows how many old posts and find ~30 NAA posts, but otherwise we've been doing a couple flags a day.
And honestly I think even if the volume is much higher, flag handling here is going to be a walk in the park next to C.SE. I could be naive but I'm pretty sure the burden won't be a shock to by system.
Nah, this site is really well-behaved. One of the reasons I like it so much. And believe me, I know, I'm a 20k user on SU and >10k on AU and boy is there a difference in quality.
@Caleb No, but we can see the "last seen on" part and I've happened to stumble upon your profile a few times and noticed that it was never too long ago.
The comment posted by @jasonwryan to @derobert's post says
"You don't feature at all in the Review Queue stats and your flag count is low (for your rep): these are typically indicators of involvement in community moderation, why have you not been as active in this space?"
But derobert has done reviews. 187 according to the site. I'm not sure what is meant by Review Queue stats.
@FaheemMitha I think he meant that he really hasn't done many (187) compared to myself (470), let alone slm (6,275). Caleb is also relatively low at 210 of course. Still both 210 and 187 are non-negligible.
@FaheemMitha Just click on the "Reviews" link on each candidate's post and you will be taken to the reviews tab of their user page which shows how many reviews they've done.
@terdon btw, did you get a chance to look at those reviews I sent you? I've been working on them over the past couple of days. They actually don't look too bad. Mostly straightforward issues. In many cases I've not explained properly what I was doing. There are an embarassing number of stupid errors, even though I reread the thing to death.
@FaheemMitha I mean that it happens to all of us. The silly errors are ofteninvisible to the author. And I just read through the reviews and, as expected, couldn't make sense of them. They sound reasonable though.
Unix 2014 Election
Unix 2014 Election