@Catija @StoneyB Thank you, both of you. If only I were 10 or just 5 years younger than I am, I wouldn't hesitate. Or if we have 4 seats on ELL, I may not have to think as much as I'm thinking.

@DamkerngT. Well I don't think I'd get as many votes, prolly the last place.

In any case, I'm happy to see our @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M running for it. IMHO, he is the best candidate for NNS. His English is really good, and he's not just an ordinary NNS. He's multilingual, and multicultural.

6 outta 6 I mean.

I'm not sure how many people will vote, and who they'll vote for.

I'll be blunt. Of the 6 we have, you're my 2nd choice.

But I'm pretty sure if you or Snail jumped in you'd've gotten more votes.

@DamkerngT. I haven't been running to answer everything on ELL.

I don't think people on ELL know me as much as you do.

That's one problem. If only people used the chat room more often.

@Stoney we're chatting here; let's keep LOF outta election business.

@DamkerngT. Yeah.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Certainly not... You're active on more than just ELL.

There's only one definitive answer: It'll all be settled in the election.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M As I said to a mod on M&TV yesterday... your ability to answer a question is irrelevant to your ability to moderate a site... There's no correlation.

@Catija I know. That's not what many people consider. But maybe they do consider. Who knows?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M But .. but .. but elections are supposed to be brokered in smoke-filled rooms out of the hearing of the electorate. Ask @snailboat - she's from Chicago and understands these things.

@StoneyB Clearly not as well as someone from the Vatican, though. ;)

At least seeing you folks backing me up is the biggest enlightenment I would've wished for. :)

@Catija I remember that scene in Angels & Demons!

@StoneyB Well I didn't want Dam to tell us "let's bring meta discussion to the Cabin." This is the election chatroom anyway.

Speaking of which, why are the candidates not here? O.o

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You are... reaching out to your constituents... :P

It's kinda a semi-duty to be available for talk when you nominate for mod-ship.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M They probably didn't see the link?

@StoneyB Are you thinking about nominating yourself?

SE culture, I may call it.

Yeah @Stoney, who would make a better ELL mod than you?

Why not nominate?

@DCShannon Pro tem mods are gonna remain mods until the results of the election comes out.

@Dam you see 7766 rep yet?

I'm not mod material, truly. Responsibility transforms my cheery arrogance into crabby authoritarianism.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Ah, yes! :-)

@StoneyB I wonder if that is true, even in the slightest, but I respect your decision.

@StoneyB Your choice. But if you're arrogant, I must be a supervillian or something.

In any case, there are still many other problems on ELL, though many of them are not up to the mods. Voting is one of them.

I wish people spent more time reading and voting questions/answers on ELL.

@Catija Well, I'm from the South, where we follow these things, too. See Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the Deep South

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hey, sometimes I think of you as the BSD devil. :P

@DamkerngT. Big Sad Darn evil?

Nah! Just a smart little devil. :-)

HUH WHAT?!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M If we don't pat you on the head occasionally and tell you that you're doing well are you going to go on a rampage and delete all of our high-rep answers?

I clearly deny my being a BSD thingy.

@Catija I'm crazy. Not that crazy yet.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Aww... I think he's kinda cute.

Power corrupts ... absolute power corrupts absolutely.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'd like you to all recognize the "yet" here...

Precisely.

Too bad you can't make text huge here using markdown or something.

BTW, how long is a moderation term?

IIUC, it looks like once we've graduated, the mods will always be the mods, unless any of them steps down.

@DamkerngT. Permanent.

Thanks. So I assessed the situation correctly.

@DamkerngT. And even if they step down, they still keep the diamond, I believe...

Til death us do part.

@Catija No, if they step down themselves, they'll lose the diamond.

But that's them shouting "I wanna lose the diamond!"

A mod stepped down a few days ago on SU.

Oh!

Slhck.

They can linger in silent inertia forever. Sorta like college professors.

Ah. I guess it depends on the reason then... because I've seen current mods on sites who never come to the site but they're still mods.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M "Til death us do part" -- see, that's the big advantage of being young. :-)

@DamkerngT. Not being dead?

@DamkerngT. A lot of adventurers don't see old age though.

@StoneyB Exactly! :D

@Catija Yes, there was something in Meta Stack Exchange about whether if users can make mods un-mod.

(If the mod is inactive for about a year or so)

TL;DR, noone's taking their diamond unless they say so.

By the way, I asked a question on the Questions list... Does it make sense to you guys?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."

@Catija A moment.

@Catija I +1'ed.

@Dam how do you organize 2k tabs? I'm stuck with 20.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Normally, I don't need to use all 2k tabs at the same time. So I have one or two anchored at the middle of the screen and I will normally pull the currently used tabs to be next to it.

Right now, this tab is at the center of my screen.

@Catija +1'd too, but then the chat question won't make it to the real questionnaire. :(

LO is 4 tabs away.

I can't and won't manage to survive in a never ending sea of tabs.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M There's still 5 days of voting... right?

@Catija Makes sense to me.

@Catija Left. But most users will only vote what's on top.

I wonder what @Grace'll do if his suggested answer is one of the top five.

Guys do you think we can get more than 10 candidates?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I bet we will.

I speculate that we'll get about 8-12.

Chem didn't get to see the primary phase. I'm excited to see what the UI will look like in the primary phase.

There are more people opting not to run that I would have thought. I'm surprised at some of the people who haven't nominated themselves yet... particularly people who I thought would want the position.

(If we get more than 10 (or maybe it's 30 on SO) candidates, we'll have the primary phase. For lunch. But if we don't, we'll skip to the election)

@Catija Like Colleen and Nathan and you and Stoney and FF? Yeah.

But if you nominate, I'll grow white hair when voting for only three of you.

That would be a big pain. O.o

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well except for Stoney, who doesn't seem to want the job, but... yes. I'm having a difficult time deciding if I will run.

And I don't like writing about myself so getting past the nomination statement is difficult.

And then horror of the horrors! What if @Dam and @Snail nominate?!

Then I won't vote or something. :)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M HA HA HA... except for yourself :p

@Catija Wait, can a candidate vote for himself or herself?

@DamkerngT. Why not? I don't know for sure but it seems silly to not allow a user to vote for themselves if they believe they can do the job.

@Catija Writing the nomination thingy is really hard.

@DamkerngT. You can, and even as the first choice.

@Catija Shhh, don't reveal my evilish devilish plans.

Interesting. We could get a Pirate King situation. :P

But seriously, if I don't vote for myself, I can sleep better at night.

That might come off as rude to the other two.

LOL

I wonder if I should turn on my nagging device to talk @Stoney into nominating.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Sometimes people simply need to be badgered into things like that...

Right! Let's do it.

K, here's how it's done.

We remind @Stoney three times before saying hi, and three times after saying bye to nominate.

It's no good, guys. Me as mod would be classic Peter Principle: promote a guy until he reaches a position he can't handle. Any of you would be a better mod than me. I'm old enough to have learned my limitations.

Ah, I didn't know the name of that principle.

Peter suggests that "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties" and that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle]

nods -- Around here, we have a similar idea: don't promote your best programmer to be a manager, unless you're sure he (or she) can handle it.

Chances are you will have neither a good programmer nor a good manager.

I guess the idea must be inspired by a similar principle, probably the Peter Principle itself.

@StoneyB It's the rule the military is based on... from what my mom says. She's civil service for the air force... and she complains about a lot of inept people doing jobs they have no competency in.

Same thing in academe - except that the best scholars are in position to resist being made Heads of department.

I also get into the trap of "if a person wants power, they probably don't deserve it".

Department heads tend to be people whom everybody likes and who can't do anything else very well.

@Catija That's usually true.

@StoneyB Well... why would anyone expect them to do well... if everyone likes them, that means they never say "no" and don't know how to be the "bad guy"... And that's what a department head needs to be, sometimes.

But the moderatorship doesn't have any meaningful power.

It could be used as a leverage elsewhere.

You wanna get tough, guy? You wanna mess wit my punctuation? You touch that semicolon and I'll turn the ELL dogs loose on ya.

Haha!

@StoneyB No... but it does have some... abilities to single-vote close a question among other things... suspensions, chat bans... access to contact info and "real names"...

@Catija Ahh... having access to the user base.

Also unobtrusive and obtrusive interventions, besides persuasions with a diamond.

And, the biggest draw for anyone... Access to the top secret mod chat rooms....

Speaking of suspensions, I think we have no rules against a once suspended user running for a mod.

Basically the power to harass people with impunity. Hey, I can do that already!

@DamkerngT. Well, if they learned their lesson, perhaps that's fine. I'm not aware of which users have been suspended in the past.

There were some.

Is it bad that I want to recommend the "word" - "sth" be banned?

@DamkerngT. Hm. Yeah, I don't know... It might be worth asking @GraceNote

?

@Catija Not at all. ... But why bother with recommending it? Just go edit it out everywhere it appears.

"sth" is commonly used by ELL teachers.

@GraceNote It was about my wondering:

And dictionaries.

Suspension is, in most cases, a timeout. It's time to sit, think things through, so that they can return and be a better and productive member of the community.

@StoneyB Oh, right! Only in dictionaries for learners, perhaps?

@GraceNote Makes sense.

So, yes, as long as the user isn't currently suspended, we have no problems letting them run for moderator.

We have no shortage of users who have had bumpy histories turn out to be some of the best moderators on their sites. Because suspension isn't really meant to be some black record "You're a criminal" thing - sometimes even the well-meaning just, summat happens, y'know?

My internet died. :(

@StoneyB I do, when I see it. :P But I can't edit comments.

@DamkerngT. There was a Meta Stack Exchange post from a month ago who asked for suspension info to be revealed when a user nominates for modship. It was about Stack Overflow though, where you can even find trolls who nominate for mod-ship.

@snailboat I figured that much; I was daydreaming.

Technically speaking, you could put "Have you ever been suspended? Should we be concerned about this?" in the Q&A question collection, but my general feeling is that this is irrelevant for most people who have been suspended, and all the people for whom it is relevant, there probably would've been comments about it on their nomination post.

Agreed.

In fact, I don't think any kind of figures can tell us precisely who would be a good mod.

There is a need for a human factor.

Sure, someone with 150 rep and 3 bronze badges isn't gonna make a good mod, most possibly.

Oh, @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M How did you figure out the mod score earlier?

@Catija SEDE query.

A moment . . .

Full description by me and query by Geoff.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Ah, Thanks. Meh... my score is really low.

Say what now?!

What now?! :D

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I’m voting to close this election as primarily opinion-based.

As for me, I'm just glad that this one didn't get closed as proofreading:

@DamkerngT. It seems that the meta discussion of it is helping. And I hope that we can make a decision regarding rewording the reason so that it is more clear.

nods

Are we gonna get a blog when we graduate?

@StoneyB I think they killed the blogs.

blogs are so 2005. The new hotness is code repositories.

If blogs are 2005...

What are 2015?

iWatches?

I guess code repositories aren't for most people!

@StoneyB Because of wordpress issues, more blogs weren't being created.

But the blogs are independent now.

@Shog does that mean we'll see more new blogs?

@Loong You? Here? O.o

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Independent of what? or who?

@StoneyB Of Wordpress. Now they're literally SE blogs. Lemme find that meta.SE post.

@Stoney

and

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I was thinking more of site-specific blogs, like ELU's

At the moment, s'far as I know, this isn't built in a fashion that allows us to scale it to per-site blogs, so per-site blogs that still exist are still all Wordpress.

Oh?

Dammit!

I spose then that my questions are Do we want a blog? To do what with? And whadda we gotta do to get it?

@StoneyB I want a blog.

I mean,

I REALLY want a blog.

It didn't happen on chem. :( But if it happens here, I'd still be as much happy.

What do you want to put on the blog?

Cute cat images.

Seriously though, we could tackle with learner mistakes, write about why learners from X have a problem with Y construction etc.

I don't think we should mainly focus on grammar as ELU's blog covers that better, I think.

captioned I CAN HAZ COMPLEMENTIZERS?

Of course. What are we doing in @Dam's chblog?

If it's about language, or language learning, please feel free to write a chblog post in Language Overflow.

We could be doing it in a more fashionable, neater and cleaner way.

(Which means I won't be there to interrupt when @Dam has an interesting thing about grammar to discuss)

Perhaps you will need to prepare your text elsewhere before posting it in LO.

And that's a pain; Win8 keeps crashing when I want to continue my long answer.

To a point that makes me go ლ(ಠ益ಠლ).

I've experimented with chat room features, and I think chat room bookmarks can work blog-like very well.

Que? chblog? (I feel old. But then I've felt old ever since Windows 3.0)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Aww...

@StoneyB I coined the word myself. It's from chat-blog, i.e. writing a blog in a chat room. :-)

Oh, well, then, if it's poetry and not tech I feel better.

@StoneyB Q = Question. Made up, as usual.

A chblog example: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/24938/conversation/…

Another bookmarked conversation: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/24938/conversation/…

@DamkerngT. That was one informative shoe. I wish they meet us more.

Indeed.

Ah ... Yes, some things could be done within the context of Chat. A lot of things could be done within the context of Chat. But you'd need, on the one hand, some sort of framework for keeping participants on point, and on the other some sort of wrapper/index to alert folks to what {was being / had been} discussed.

nods

SE chat comes with the feature "schedule event", which could be used for alerting folks about a coming up discussion.

Which makes me wonder, why don't we have events?

We could, but the number of participants has still been small.

The number of participants has been larger than many SEs.

We announce that there's something important going on, and they'll come to see what's happening.

4 at best, most of the time?

I believe some ELLers don't come to chat because of the connotation the word has on the internet.

Oh, you meant in the main room.

Yes, that could be arranged.

@DamkerngT. Doesn't matter which room it is.

We have to show them we're doing something a bit more ELLy than just jabbering about weather.

A pre-scheduled discussion (an event) will need an event manager.

RO(s) of the room can manage that pretty easily.

OT talk --> Warn, and kick out in case of trollish remarks.

I think there's also a fundamental sense among most folks -- not just our folks, but everybody on the internet -- that you go to chat to participate in discussion, not observe discussion.

nods -- Though we have some lurkers too.

Well, I'm pretty sure some think all that is going on in an internet chatroom is talks of profanity. Maybe my teen nature is to blame.

\o Captain @J.R.!

(Which is okay. It's by design.)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I mentioned "event manager" because, like most events, you will need a few key persons as the main speakers in your event.

Or at least, you'll need someone who knows how to guide the discussion.

Yeah. So?

I think at the very least you and @snail can handle discussion pretty well.

So what?

So we can and we should arrange an event. Why aren't we?

Most of the discussions are unprepared.

Well, actually, I think none of them are prepared.

They don't need to be.

Just throw in a topic and speak about it for some time.

If during that period it gets OT, bring the folks back to the discussion.

Just as simple as that.

You could try that, too.

The only thing that needs to be prepared is the topic.

And everything from "Accounting on learner errors due to convergence of blah blah blah" to "cute kittens" is a topic.

I don't completely agree (that only the topic for a discussion is enough).

I compare it to meetings and seminars, but I open to new possibilities. It may work, imho.

Pre-screened questions from the audience, like the political debates.

That works too.

We shouldn't get ourselves buried in the vision that we can't do this for some reason.

Something.

Yes.

BTW, hello @J.R.!

We have quite a lot of people that want to know "how can I improve my X skill in English?"

Or, more objective questions, like "how to use modals?"

@snailboat This started with me asking if we were going to have a blog on graduation, and if so what sort of content it should have. Then MAR and DT suggested that the functions of a blog could be handled through chat ... and we started discussing mechanics without addressing the content question.

As you have delicately pointed out! :)

My idea was that we can use the event to "inform" everyone about an upcoming (chat)blog post.

We can have more than just one event.

English stuff, just from a more teaching-to-a-leaner POV.

Yes -- message, not medium. What do our folks need which the Q/A format cannot provide?

@StoneyB Too broad thingies. Subjective thingies that are helpful to a learner. etc.

By subjective, I don't mean "As a native speaker, what color is your favorite toothbrush?"

There's clearly a demand for "how do I improve my accent", "how do I study for standard exams", that sort of thing.

But "I wanna improve my reading skills. I heard A and B are beneficial. But due to time limits I can't do both. Which one should I do?"

I think you meant the original idea of ELL's Cabin when the room was created.

That, along with more grammar-y/meaning-y questions.

But discussion-event-like. -- nods

The ones that don't have a definitive answer, but can benefit from an experienced opinion and educated guess.

The ones that really want to be answered by successful learners and experienced teachers.

And perhaps cross-cultural conversations: how academic English differs from academic Mandarin or academic Persian.

Exxxactly.

Oh! Hullo @Stephie!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hi! And hello to the others, too!

@Stephie hallo

Hi!

Grűss Gott!

@StoneyB ü (not ű)

@StoneyB This one is actually a very, very good idea; I dunno how many competent enough learners we have that can discuss that.

@Loong What's the difference?

@Loong Yah .. I couldn't find the umlauted u in a hurry.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ü is German; ű is Hungarian

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M One is German the other Hungarian...

That's . . . a pretty big difference.

Achoo! Darn this cold!

That explains it... why I haven't seen ű in German.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Gesundheit!

Hungarian even has both...

LOL

@Loong Um, thanksch!

@Stephie I think Hungarian came up a couple weeks ago in our chat.

Ahh

Eh?

Is that Japanese, Thai or English Eh?

[gotta work .. have fun, all]

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Japanese "Eh!?" would work.

Good night @StoneyB!

Later @Stoney!

@StoneyB, have a nice day!

Hmm, should I comment and ask for other candidates to be active in chat?

I think it's up to the candidates.

It's kinda a should-must @Dam.

What if someone wants to ask them something?

Wouldn't that be part of the process already?

Those are just ten questions.

What if someone has other questions to ask?

I don't think you choose the president of your country with only knowing how they answer to 10 questions.

Yep. I just checked. There are ten questions.

Ideally, yes. I would want to know more about the candidates. Then again, everything is voluntary, I think, including chat.

Nominating is voluntary. If you nominated, you should be available though.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M But some candidates are in a completely different time Zone. Australia, for example. Would be hard to participate right now?

@Stephie I'm not expecting full time sitting on a sofa, waiting for someone to ask them something. They can just come in and drop out, so they'd be pingable.

And it's been two days now, so we're at least through one full circle.

Hey @Mith! Welcome!

Hehe found you ;)

@Mithoron Weren't you present in chem's election?

Mhm, I voted

K, I thought you don't know what election drama looks like.

@DamkerngT. As long as they're not code suppositories.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ... but learners have different needs. A lot of people seem to close those kind of specific things about learning.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think the reason is because a) they don't look like other ELL questions, b) they don't look like bad EL&U questions c) the most prolific posters here don't necessarily know about those questions.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think those questions are very good for a site like this. Unfortunately though, the regular posters feel that this kind of question is subjective. But normally these kinds of questions aren't. Just because people who normally answer questions don't know the answers to these questions doesn't mean that the people who do will be making it up!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Very often there's a lot of evidence and research about why a particular way of studying, or learning, or getting round a particular skill is very helpful or is likely to be successful. That isn't subjective.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So I'd be very interested, if you're potentially MODing, to know how you'll treat questions about learning English in general and how you'll influence other people in regard to this.

PS just realised that I'd @ed you each time, sorry.

Not used to being in chat ...

@Catija Hah! Nice one!

@Araucaria I hate to say this, but just for the sake of argument, and I know I can say this to you because you are you. I agree that having evidence and/or research results supported is the norm, academically, but are you sure that such evidence/research is not subjective, intentionally or unintentionally. In other words, how can we be sure? What if the argument turned into a debate similar to "Is Global Warming real?", or let's try something simpler and more relevant, "Does correction help?"

On the other hand, not all subjective answers are not useful. (I remember that SE elaborated this somewhere, probably on Meta.SE.)

@DamkerngT. Absolutely, and I guess part of the problem is distinguishing good subjective from bad subjective.