@JustinjjnguyNelson Promoting the growth of the site is one of the jobs of the moderator, but rather than be a cheerleader, I see a well-run site as a reason to come to the site in and of itself. That is, I subscribe to the Google-esque philosophy of websites: if you build it and it's good, they will come. Moderators are here to keep the site good.
@JustinjjnguyNelson All users should be doing what they can to promote the site - I don't think moderators are anything special in that regard. The title has no meaning outside the Stack Exchange community
@JustinjjnguyNelson I don't think moderators are really responsible for driving traffic to the site. Their job is to keep the site running as intended, so that new users find it helpful and stick around. That said, I link to interesting questions on Twitter on occasion and I plan to continue doing that.
@JustinjjnguyNelson However, as @MarkTrapp says - it's our job to make sure the site's a nice place for people to visit. If it's not then they won't turn into regulars and help grow the site.
@JustinjjnguyNelson There are two things a moderator can do. One, they should be helping the SE community keep posts in the right place - and that would mean being active on those communities that occasionally receive posts that fit best in Programmers. Second, a moderator needs to be helpful to new users when a first question or answer is not great right off the bat. This is what comments are great for, and maybe even a helpful edit (with a good edit message explanation as well)
As before I would like to thank all the candidates for their participation, and I would like to extend a big thank you to @RebeccaChernoff for organizing and coordinating all these town halls!
Anyway, my time is up & I've got to go. I'll check the transcript later.
user2334
@RebeccaChernoff Final thoughts: I think after a lot of work, Programmers.SE is finally in a great place that everyone should be proud of, and we shouldn't do anything to buck that trend. I think whoever becomes the moderator will find it to be rewarding to help maintain one of the best sites on Stack Exchange.
@RebeccaChernoff, Good work juggling all of the schedules with all of the candidates from all of the sites! pats on back
user2334
Yeah, thanks @RebeccaChernoff for organizing, @Josh for transcribing, @JustinjjnguyNelson and everyone else for coming and asking a ton of good questions!
@RebeccaChernoff I don't have much else to add. ChrisF and Mark said it best. Thank you everybody for coming and asking/answering questions. This site is doing well and will only get better.
I'll be adding answers to questions I've missed on Meta. As far as final thoughts, I think that my #1 view on moderating Programmers is that the best way for a moderator to help Programmers become a great source of information is to remember that positive contributions are key, and removing negative contributions is hopefully a small part of the job. Ideally many of those negative posts can be turned into positive ones. I agree with others, I think P.SE is already going in a great direction.
@JustinjjnguyNelson I check the site often throughout waking hours in the US, and that will continue to be the case. I'm not sure how "much" time that will total, but during those hours I should be able to keep on top of most the activity coming in.
If another mod closed a question (or any other mod action really) that you feel shouldn't have been closed (or whatever other action), how would you handle the situation?
I didn't want to bother anyone with transcribing my answers or cutting and pasting a million times so I followed Renesis' lead and posted the answers to questions I could find on meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1078/…
