@smci It sounds to me like you have an axe to grind with moderation on academia.se and may be better off making a meta post over there. These are not "canonical issues" on SE, they are very specific nitpicks that can be fixed by the community easily and don't require moderator attention. If they are so common here, then you can easily find examples and ask about them here or on meta if you think they are so important.

@aProgrammer Thanks, but I have to disagree that it's "obvious" :) The other two candidates are both very strong and deservedly have every bit as much chance to win as I do, if not more. They would both be great mods :)

@Jan

@JaneS true..

Of course, I hope I'd be ok at it too! :)

Hello candidates! How do you feel about the current environment of the workplace? What do you want to change about it?

@smci Yes I did read them, but I have to admit I didn't find them very relevant here. Additionally, almost everything you called out is entirely handleable by 20k-ers.

Sure, mods can easily edit and correct tags, but so can the community.

In the past I've kicked off the odd tag cleanup - but again, I wouldn't expect a mod to do that, just to encourage and to take part the same as any other user

@Ajaxkevi Hello! I think the environment in The Workplace is generally positive and helpful. One thing I'd like to see is comments on questions and answers to remain polite while still conveying the point, even on posts that are likely to be closed. Play the ball, not the man, so to speak :)

@Ajaxkevi I'd have to agree with Jane - the Workplace is actually relatively polite and positive compared to some sites, despite it dealing with topics that include some very confrontational/opinion based ones. The mod role includes supporting more of the positive, and politely working with those negative comments/posts/users to help improve them.

@RoryAlsop Moderating is done best when they don't think you are moderating them ;) A gentle touch is often more effective than a steel-capped boot :)

@JaneS definitely agree with you there :-)

@RoryAlsop I can't remember where I heard the quote, but one I like is "A good leader can tell you to go to hell and make you glad to be on your way." :)

I think that Rory and Jane summed that one up so well there's nothing left for me to say :)

@JaneS I had a manager before ask us to stay behind and work to get something out the door on a close deadline, a bunch of us stayed because he stayed with us and ordered pizza rather than going home and leaving us to it

@RhysW @RhysW Now that is a good boss :)

@JaneS yes. Even if there's nothing he can directly do on whatever's keeping his team there (e.g. it's too technical and he's too manager-y), he can find something to do to support people while there, and being there with them is huge.

It's amazing how... betrayed people feel when managers don't sit in the trenches with them

@MonicaCellio @MonicaCellio Totally agree :) Last time I was running a team, I never asked them to do anything I wouldn't do with them. I'm technical though :)

@JaneS that's my attitude as a lead or manager too. There might be things I'm not capable of doing 'cause people have different specialties, but the lead should be willing to roll up his sleeves and do the annoying tasks alongside everybody else.

@MonicaCellio I often take the annoying tasks on to let the others concentrate on their assigned tasks. Nothing worse than being asked to jump from thing to thing.

One thing I have noticed is that all the current mods are in the US. All three of the candidates are in a different timezone (I'm in Australia, yochannah and Rory are in the UK). From experience, that can be useful to have coverage over times when the US mods are offline.

@JaneS last time I was a tech lead I reviewed all designs and interfaces, reviewed some of the code, did all the source-control integrations, which meant my actual slice of the implementation was the smallest on the team. And that's just what the project needed, so I think that worked out fine. (I also have a very complex branch diagram to show in interviews if needed. :-) )

@JaneS I'm glad that all our candidates are in non-US timezones. One of our current mods has been keeping odd hours lately so you'll sometimes see coverage when USians should be asleep, but it'll be nice to have more coverage there.

@MonicaCellio Your work ethic seems similar to mine :) What's important is that the project is done on time and well, not personal glory. Teams are made up of more than one person!

@MonicaCellio I'm GMT+10, and both the others are GMT+0 so that would no doubt help. Plus I get to review all tomorrow's problems before you get here ;)

@JaneS that last part has been working quite well for me on Worldbuilding, where the other mods are UTC+0 and UTC+1 or thereabouts (handwave for BST and the like). So by the time I see things in the morning they've already done a pass through the site. :-)

@MonicaCellio I used to be an admin on a big gaming community site (about 40,000 members) and it was critical to have that coverage. It was interesting to see what the US based mods had to deal with while I was sleeping :)

@JaneS yeah, with that many users and assuming they're reasonably active, you'd need a fair bit of moderator attention. How many admins were there? How active was the site?

@MonicaCellio The site was pretty active, dozens of posts each day. We had four admins and four moderators. Admins had some elevated rights over the site that the mods didn't have (and we elected admins/mods), but otherwise functionally the same.

@JaneS so mods were kind of like our high-rep users, and admins were kind of like our mods?

@MonicaCellio That's probably a fair analogy :)

@JaneS by the way, if you don't know about it yet, you might be interested in this SE site: communitybuilding.stackexchange.com

@MonicaCellio I didn't know about that, thanks!