Ilmari Karonen is the only 10K+ Math.SE user who has 10K+ on four other SE sites. Also, nontrivial reputation (200+) on more sites than I bothered to count.
Well, still at least knowing about existence of this site is a positive thing. (This is to say, I am afraid some of the 20 candidates do not even know about that site.)
There are also a few "101-users" among candidates. I hope I did not miss somebody when I went through the profiles.
BTW it seems that the frenzy about the election is declining. A while ago there was almost always some discussion in this room and almost all recently active questions on meta were about election, candidates, moderating and related stuff.
There isn't much new to talk about. The chaos of the first day of nominations was the source of much discussion, but after that things went smoothly. By the way, out of 4.6k Caucus badges awarded all-time, more than 2000 are for this election. Since it's the 5th one, the number shows significant growth of the site or of interest in the election.
What is the most effective way to vote in the primaries? For the three candidates you want to win? For 10 you want to advance to the second round? For any number of candidates you find worthy?
Also, does it make sense to not vote on some of the nominations?
@Behaviour In my opinion it does. It is possible that I do not have enough information to say whether he could be a good mod. So I am undecided.
Or what if there are some candidates that I think probably would not make a good mod, but there are other candidates which I definitely do not want to see in the moderators team?
I only have -1/0/+1 as a possibilities to differentiate.
@Integrator I cheered for the new candidates, since their self-promotion has been long awaited by me as well as many of the MSE community. Pedro nominated himself way earlier.
I believe @AhaanS.Rungta would be a good moderator. I've seen him doing a really great job not only as a TA on edx courses helping students, but also as a brilliant.org moderator. Someone else mentions he was also an AoPS moderator.
@SpinningTurntable @Venus Thanks a lot for your kind words! My relatively low reputation compared to the very deserving and experienced candidates might be a drawback but seeing the support is great. :) I'm starting to wonder if I should mention my many adventures helping and moderating at edX. But again, there's a word limit.
I understand why it's necessary, but damn... I had to cut my original nomination post down to less than a half, and I'm still not sure if I picked the right pieces to keep and delete.
@IlmariKaronen It's new. Voting on comments to the nominations has been disabled recently. It used to be possible. But apparently people thought that upvotes on nomination comments provided even less information value than upvotes on comments on main.
@Michael: True, but the nomination text is still the bit that people read first. I'd really like to squeeze in just one tiny little paragraph more there... maybe if I cut out the introductory sentence, and shaved off a few words here and there... :)
Or I could just drop the moderation philosophy bit, since it's really just restating stuff that's already in AToM, so all moderators ought to basically agree with it anyway... or maybe not. :/
Besides, it's got bullet points, and they break up the "wall of text" nicely. :)
Apparently, we're not supposed to be able to upvote comments in moderator elections any more.
Only, it turns out that you can, if you just know how:
Basically, it's yet another back-end validation issue: while the upvote button is missing from the page HTML, the SE back-end is still happy...
When @Shog9 lowered the number of nominations to 20, this seemed to have side effects: the list of nominees is now preceded by "22 candidates", and the sidebar says: "moderator candidates 20/22". Only 20 are actually shown, so that part is working.
There's a link at the bottom that lets you see all 22 nominees. Since the lower-rep nominees will get back in when somebody withdraws, that makes sense too.
I wonder what the optimal strategy in the primary phase is if there are a few candidates you want in, a few you really really don't, and the rest you don't but will lose anyway.
I suspect it might be to upvote the weakest candidates as well as your preferred ones.
@quid The score on nomination does not go negative. The system makes note of the score, but displays it as 0. At least this is how I remember the 2013 election.
There are currently 2 moderators who have a total vote count of less than 0 during the primary phase. But the total vote count sticks at -1 and is no lower than that. Neal, for example, currently stands at +97/-140 which should give a total vote count of -43.
I remember having seen this during t...
I updated citizenship scores table. Yes, comparing N vs N+1 does not mean N+1 would be a better moderator... but at least it identifies a smaller group of candidates that are most involved on the site.
Well. I, too, would be happy with Daniel, Thomas and Pedro elected ahead of me. They all beat me in one or more relevant categories. Skullpatrol: That would be a bit naughty IMHO.
Two minor flaws of the election page. I felt these were small enough so I would not open a separate bug for each. Interesting that the primary voting begins at 20:00 UTC instead of 0:00 UTC.
Perhaps because this places it at 3:00pm Eastern Time, where SE headquarters are. So the technical and other issues could be addressed promptly without pulling employees out of bed. (Or out of a bar, which has its own implications.)
Winterbash also begins on 15th, but at 0:00 UTC. In 5 hours, to put it simply. Candidates will have time to acquire moderator-y looking hats.
The presence of Atwood was too imposing, imo. Unlike the programming communities, where he fit right in, Math viewed him as an (occasionally evil) Overlord from another land. I suspect this contributed to the site's relative isolation from wider SE.
As for relative isolation... I remember when Math.SE launched (was not employed by SE at that time). It was something of a running joke that the folks here then were dogmatically contrarian, regardless of the topic. I won't go into more detail on that - I'm sure you know what I'm talking about - but for those of us who'd been patiently waiting for features to be implemented / bugs to be fixed for a couple of years at that point, it was not exactly endearing.
@Anastasiya-Romanova秀 You should be advised that the community does not, in general, take kindly to moderators using unilateral votes for anything less than a clear cut case (in particular, to support their own ideological views with respect to a heavily contested issue.)
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It may be helpful for you to look at the response to my (comparatively moderate) position on this issue during the last election.
While I agree that a moderator should not go around using the mod abilities left and right in contested case, I for one consider the restraint demanded by some from mods on this site as excessive, and in fact a cause of problems.
People like to make a spectacle of moderator actions, in the same way they do for politicians, or anybody in the public eye. It can be restrictive. But, then again, there is a large spectrum in the PSQ/homework question debate. Even the current moderators have varying personal opinions on the issue.
Or duplicates. Many of low-level PSQ are in fact duplicates. Often a duplicate is found after some OT votes are already cast, and the closing reason becomes a function of how many votes went in which direction. If a mod sees such a thing, voting to close as a duplicate is entirely appropriate, imo.
@IlmariKaronen As I understood it, that was about not deleting duplicates - when they are not delete-worthy on their own; closing duplicates prevents fragmentation of answers, and the closed dupes serve as signposts to the collection of answers.
@IlmariKaronen Searchability is one of my biggest priorities when moderating, actually, despite being one of the least discussed issues on meta. I guess it is a mostly behind-the-scenes concern.
@DanielFischer I'd summarize it as talking about approximately how many variations of each question should remain on the site.
Anyway I'm cluttering up the room, my questions for the candidates have been answered. I'll be in the main math chat, good day y'all.
Apparently, we're not supposed to be able to upvote comments in moderator elections any more.
Only, it turns out that you can, if you just know how:
Basically, it's yet another back-end validation issue: while the upvote button is missing from the page HTML, the SE back-end is still happy...
Mathematics 2014 Moderator Election
Mathematics 2014 Moderator Election