2024 Mathematics Stack Exchange Moderator Election Chat

Mark McClure

00:10

@Shaun I'm sorry to see you withdraw, Shaun! You were far and away my first choice among all the candidates who I've seen this cycle and you would certainly have had my vote.

Having said that, I certainly understand your decision and, if you want to withdraw to preserve your sanity, you certainly should! I doubt that it gets easier. :)

Thanks for your participation!

Jakobian

03:09

Tyma Gaidash, pillar of the community, is now also candidating for moderator

Jyrki Lahtonen

04:43

Very sorry to hear that @Shaun. No candidates with an adequate candidate score remain :-(

2

Jakobian

05:01

Adequate?

You don't need the perfect candidate score to have potential as a moderator

D.W. for example is already a moderator on CS.SE and has array of moderator skills already

> As a moderator at CS.SE, I have gained experience at using the Stack Exchange tools to track down sock puppet rings, and I think I'm good at it, so I think I'll be able to help with that as needed. This requires moderator tools.

D.W.

06:06

@JyrkiLahtonen My first reaction is that I think duplicates are great, as long as they are marked as a duplicate): they provide more signposts to help others with the same question find the right page. Where it gets not so wonderful is when nearly the same question is asked multiple times without being marked as a duplicate.

But I am sympathetic to those who ask or answer duplicates without being aware they are a duplicate. The site's search function often doesn't make it super-easy to discover that it was a duplicate. So I feel more wary about saying it is abuse for a veteran to answer duplicates.

FShrike

I agree. Especially since it’s hard to really express the nature of a question just from the title.

And many newbie questions are poorly titled to boot

D.W.

@JyrkiLahtonen I suspect you and I are thinking along parallel lines... I often see many super-specific instances/variants of the same problem being asked. (e.g., they're basically the same problem, but with slightly different constants, or are instances of the same class of problem.) I mention this in my answer to Q3, and was pointed to the notion of abstract duplicates, which I think is a great concept.

Jyrki Lahtonen

06:46

Thanks for your elaboration @D.W., appreciated. The history of dealing with duplicates inevitably also plays a role. Early on, the conditions to be met for closure were very strict, and unlearning those habits seems to be very difficult for some.

I am uncomfortable with the idea that older answers to FAQs would be somehow canonized and protected even though newer users could answer them equally well. But I am also aware about the difficulties of formulating and enforcing different rules for different users based on the time they have spent on the site. No easy solutions :-(

FShrike

07:22

@JyrkiLahtonen I would say old, interesting questions of value shouldn’t really be closed, partly for the reason you say. If they don’t have many answers, someone new could sweep in and make it worthwhile - if it’s open. If they have many answers because it’s just one of those questions, e.g. it’s a “what are some nice ways to think about [X]?” question, then new users can add value to that - if the question is open. If it’s a dupe target, then new answers can be migrated over. Etc.

Their age puts those questions in a different category. They’re before EoQS was a big thing, and closing them doesn’t exactly send anyone a message (closing can usefully inform new users of proper conduct) since the person who wrote the question either got the message years ago, or has left.

This is specifically about old, good questions closed for context reasons. If an old but otherwise good question was closed for any other reason, I don’t have an opinion

Sine of the Time

08:58

@Shaun sorry to hear that

Federico Ruck

10:05

Hi all
I gelive a major issue is downvoating
I believe player should take their responsibilities when down voating
when I started sometime ago I got many dowvoates on a question that brought my score almost to negative, this was a major issue , it was one of my first questions and I was not sure of the rules and instead of explaining what was wrong many users just straight downvoted any question without explenations
you should be able to see who downvoted the question nd be abet o report people if their downvoted are illegitimate or if they were given without any reason of the downvote or i…

Sine of the Time

10:25

@FedericoRuck this is the same message you sent yesterday

Jakobian

10:38

Also "player"? Gamification I see

2

Xander Henderson

15:02

@FedericoRuck I do not think that you understand how the site actually works.

Let us suppose that the moderators on Math SE decide that the policy is going to be "Don't downvote posts by new users; downvoters must explain their votes."

Now what?

How do we enforce this?

Voting is anonymous. The only people who can see which individuals cast which votes are a small number of SE staff. Per site moderators certainly cannot see who voted. So... we announce this policy and... what?

What do you think is going to happen?

You are welcome to hold onto your belief that downvoting posts by new users is unfriendly, or unkind, or "disgusting" (as jasmine stated, I believe), but there is nothing that you can do to stop it. Not as a user, not as a moderator. The only people who could potentially change this are SE staff. I would invite you to post a feature request on the main Meta, and see if you make progress.

冥王 Hades

16:14

What I find puzzling is how some users have turned the simple act of downvoting into some serious moral dilemma.

3

amWhy

19:56

@冥王Hades I can't, for the life of me, understand that either! Are teachers, professors, etc, all to be judged for taking points off of a student's failed attempt? Are they supposed to not penalize a student who writes on their test only the words "I tried, but I stucked," after every question on the text? It makes no sense, unless many of these candidates want to turn math.se into another homework-completion service.

@Shaun Sorry, too, to hear that.

冥王 Hades

21:20

@FedericoRuck The "issue" you faced then, upon your arrival here, aren't the downvotes but simply not understanding how the site works. Downvotes are the symptom, the cause being that you didn't understand how the site works (or a variety of other reasons that warrant downvotes). It's not an uncommon problem (I faced it too), but this doesn't mean downvotes specifically are a problem. They serve an important purpose.

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$Mathematics$ 2024 Mathematics Stack Exchange Moder…