Being active on Andreas fault gets you laid.

I somewhat remember more candidates after the first 12 hours last year, let's hope we don't have an Evan Carol victory by default :D... @EduardFlorinescu Definitely a Trump parody. Or... homage, it's hard to tell what with Trump being very nearly a parody of himself, himself...

Maybe the squirrel on top of Trump's head is controlling everything

I wonder what's driving people like Evan Carroll (or Donald Trump for that matter) to put all the effort into an election campaign (even repeatedly) just for raising dust.

@the-wabbit The guy that writes the dilbert comics has a great blog in which he dissects a lot of what Donald Trump says. It's made me believe that he actually might get elected because of sheer cunning and guile masqueraded behind an "all-american buffoon" facade. Evan on the other hand is probably just enjoying himself.

@the-wabbit When a moderator asks us to step down, a few different things happen. First, we figure out a replacement scenario - has it been soon enough since the last election, and that the vote remainder hasn't drawn far enough, that we can pull up a runner up? If not, does the moderator team think an election should be held? Or do all involved think that the team can continue with the current set of members without needing new blood?

In the case of the former two, unless asked by the moderator not to say anything, we'll always bundle the announcement of them stepping down with the announcements for the event - if we just pull a runner up, we make a "change of office" type announcement, while in an election scenario we will include a farewell to the moderator in the winners announcement.

In the case of the latter, we leave it to the moderator to make the decision of how public and how explained their stepping down is - we typically recommend a meta post.

@GraceNote thank you for explaining the process. Since the moderators in question are relieved of their duties even before the pre-considerations are done, I would expect to see the farewell message at an earlier stage. Having "community" moderators removed without giving a notice to the community for weeks is way too imperial for what is intended to be a mostly self-gouverned place. A short section in the election announcement post would be fine.

Pre-considerations?

I'm slightly confused by what you're saying here.

The way I understood your description, the diamond would be removed just between "when a moderator asks us to step down" and "we figure out a replacement scenario". So after the scenario has been figured out and an announcement is due to be made anyway, a short farewell section in this very announcement would provide some information about which moderators have left. This also would answer any questions about why the election is taking place and why it has X moderator positions available.

The generic "Community Moderator Election" posting in Meta is not doing any of those, leaving it to each of us individually to figure out.

Alright.

So the key point here is that in all of the situations, the moderator has the final say on the publicness of their departure.

I feel that he shouldn't. At least the fact that he had his moderator status removed should be actively announced. This is not any different for any elected function elsewhere, so why here?

Because it's a volunteer position that we advertise consistently as "You can come and go as you need", and we strongly believe in the user's decision to whether or not they want to put themselves on the spotlight.

It's not a kept secret or anything, the list of moderators is consistently visible after all and we won't stop people from talking about it on their own. But sometimes a user wants to go quietly into the night rather than making a big bang.

I think I'm at about twelve paragraphs I've written up and then subsequently deleted, haha.

Grace, sorry to read that. I do not mean to create work, I just would love some additional information in the open. At least where I live, the vast majority of the municipal council members are volunteer (honorary) positions too. Just as is any office in a registered society. Yet, every change is announced immediately. I know this is not directly comparable since laws and regulations might dictate immediate disclosure, but people also mostly expect it as it helps maintain trust.

Also, it's the community's votes in the end, so the community should know when they are voided.

Don't think of it as creating work, it's my job to write and communicate with folks. It's just a matter that at times I like to write a little too much. And sometimes I actually catch myself.

I think the first thing to do is stop thinking of it as nyxing the community voice, though. If we make a decision from on-high that goes against the community consensus, that would definitely warrant us making an announcement.

Moderators are appointed by the community to serve as exception handlers, but one of the wonkier points of our process is that we don't have defined "terms" during which they serve. They basically serve until they feel they wish to step down, unless exceptional circumstances occur which would be, as noted, announced. Recently had to do one of those for SO I believe.

But these aren't exceptional circumstances. These are members of the community who were appointed and then after several years of service, felt they needed to go in a different direction. It's time-consuming work, after all.

I don't disagree that it's less-than-helpful to the community to be silent on the matter if they do depart. But I do not think it's counter to the community's voice for them to step down.

Because what the community elected is someone to actually continue to do the job. And most every time a moderator chooses to step down, it's because they can't continue to do the job. Most commonly it's time constraints. Sometimes it's a conflict of interest. Sometimes they found a brilliant opportunity.

If you make the barrier to entry too high you'll have fewer people applying for volunteer positions.

Most moderators who ask us to step down, say things like "I don't want to take up a slot that someone else could better use to serve the community". I like to think that's a stronger dedication to the community's support behind the moderator, rather than voiding it.

I am not saying that mods should keep their status indefinitely, even against their will. I am just trying to make a case for an earlier announcement - before or along with the election's

I feel like the events earlier this year have left a gloomy cloud over the election process and the roles of moderators in general.

Most likely

Was the very first entry we got from the election Q&A, even.

@Hyppy this is managed democracy here, after all. Just trust in the people managing it and you'll be fine.

Are there moderators with reputations below 10k or 1k?

The current moderator team has no one below 47k reputation

For Server Fault, at least