We'll get started in about 40 minutes.

Make that about 15 minutes. (:

sure sure, rush the clock rchern :p

hrmph

OK, I'm here. We can go ahead and start.

Kidding!

What if none of the candidates show up?

@Robusto but I did :( :p

As did I. Before @drachenstern. Hmph.

Well, there you go.

@Martha true true

Hello Martha, how's things?

Or here you come.

Where are all the balloons? The streamers? And no one is wearing a flag pin! How do you expect me to vote for someone who's not wearing a flag pin?

Never mind balloon pins, where's them kosmonauts?

@Robusto what flag would be on the pin?

a big curly ampersand?

I guess the flag of John Company.

a.k.a. The British East India Company

That antedates the U.S. Flag, btw.

That's not hard.

Everything's a copy of everything.

Change the canton and it is the U.S. flag.

But this way we can have Brits and Yanks and all that under one banner.

You other folks? S.O.L.

We don't want to leave out our English-speaking brethren in Canada and India

But it's OK to leave our sisteren there?

I was just gonna complain about Aussies being excluded, but I see you did it on purpose.

well the union jack is on the Australian and New Zealand flags, so they are kinda represented

Still no Canada, eh?

that's far more exclusionary

I won't repost my new gravatar...

I'm playing The Maple Leaf Rag on my piano as we speak.

@RegDwight better not to in here ;)

Hi all! (:

Hello.

'Allo

Greetings!

Hi there beyond the pond.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to the English Language & Usage Town Hall Chat

We're just here to get to know the candidates and ask questions regarding the candidates views on moderation that may help in voting.

A few notes about the format:

The format is open, feel free to ask your question(s) unprompted, however please be mindful of whether or not candidates have answered the previous questions so that they don't get behind and start missing questions.

Candidates, please use the reply feature so that questions and their answers are linked together.

When a question is asked, I'll star it - and you can too! Please save stars for the questions so that candidates can refer to the star list to make sure they haven't missed a question.

@Josh will be creating a digest version of the town hall chat after it is completed. This digest will take the form of a question on meta, containing all the questions asked as well as their answers for easier reading.

There's a system message up on the site, so we may get some stragglers joining us.

The candidates I see here are: @drachenstern, @RegDwight, @Martha, @nohat, @Kosmonaut, @waiwai933.

With that, I think I've got all my initial messages, so I open the floor to y'all. Who has a question to start us off? (:

read fast q:

I guess that would be me. So, I'll ask each candidate to start by giving a one-sentence description of his or her moderating philosophy: what is the one thing you'd like to be remembered for during your tenure here?

Go in alphabetical order, if that's easier for you.

@Robusto Nah, just let the candidates answer as they please.

Alphabetical order depends on the collation in use; please define

Somebody just answer.

@Robusto My moderation philosophy is that efficiency and not being afraid to take necessary action are key points, but I should still keep in mind that the community reigns supreme.

@Robusto My moderation philosophy is to reinforce the intent of the site and to help keep it a focused community.

This is more informal chat than having an order and such defined.

@Robusto it takes time to answer you know ;) @DanGrossman haha

@Robusto I think a good moderator is more or less invisible, or at least drama-free, so I would hope not to be remembered, at least not for my moderation. Just don't crack any puns in my presence.

@Robusto @Robusto: As a moderator, I think I'd like to be remembered as being fair.

@Robusto I would go with Joel's philosophy: good moderators should be running around moving the furniture out of the way, so that users can just enjoy the site without even noticing the mods' presence.

Please hover over the left of the question, click the down arrow, and click reply when answering that question. [And to edit a previous answer, highlight it and click the drop down on the left to get to the edit menu option ~ drachenstern]

@Kosmonaut fair? or just? (don't let me start quibbles now, just a matter of semantics I'm sure)

@RegDwight A doting, yet invisible, parent?

@RebeccaChernoff (oops, sorry.)

@drachenstern Doesn't "fair" mean, basically, that I was just in each person's eyes?

@Martha No worries. I'm ok editing a couple in, but it's easier if people just do it from the start. (:

@Kosmonaut perhaps.

Is there anything you would want to change about the way the site is being run at present?

sorry, too slow

We just did.

@Orbling Sure. There was actually a comment to that extent just a day ago or so. Someone said in chat that the site seems to moderate itself and was wondering what good are mods for. Robusto then replied that the site most certainly does not moderate itself. And that's kind of my point. Ideally, normal users should not even have to know mods exist.

@drachenstern I've got plenty ready as needed. q:

@RebeccaChernoff k

@RegDwight Indeed, it was the recent post that placed the concept in my mind.

@drachenstern I'll keep y'all busy if nobody else does. (;

@Robusto Moderation should be invisible as much as possible, and when it's visible, moderators should lead by example, showing users how they should use their own moderation privileges (where applicable). I would hope to be remembered most for setting the standard for good answers; that others would model their own answers after mine

@Robusto I imagine myself having to be less involved in closing questions as the community of power users matures and grows.

@Robusto I'm seeing three ways your question could be interpreted: Engine changes—yes, but that's really more of a MSO thing. Site policy—no, I generally identify with the policies that the community has put into place already. Moderation itself—some things have been sitting slow lately (off-topic questions not being closed quickly), and that could be improved, but as far as mod actions itself, no.

@Robusto I wish there were more moderators and high-rep users to share in the drudge work of closing inappropriate questions and dealing with problem users (which have fortunately been few so far)

@Robusto So far I have not seen any particular issues with the governing of the site. My only negative impression is the feeling that I got at first of an overly nanny-state downvoting from non-commenting passerby. Otherwise, I feel that so far the site has been pretty well self governing.

@Robusto I would actually like to see more activity by 3k and 10k users rather than mods. We're still lacking in that department. I still remember when we were in beta, off-topic questions would get closed within minutes. Then we went out of beta and lots of people lost their privileges, so nowadays things take a bit longer and mod intervention is required. But I think that will fix itself in the weeks ahead, as more and more people reach 3k.

@Robusto It's not exactly in anyone's power, but I wish the site had more 10K users. Not mods, just people with mod-like abilities. I also hope the site can mature to the point where more of us have an instinctive understanding of on-topic/off-topic, so that off-topic questions (no matter how interesting) don't get answers before a mod gets around to closing them.

@RegDwight Could the level not be reduced until sufficient members reach higher levels?

@Orbling that's a platform question and better answered on MSO or at least on meta.EL&U after the THC. But a good question.

@Orbling That request has been suggested and declined at MSO before.

@Orbling That is actually a question for the higher-ups.

I promise to use my close votes a lot when I reach 3k.

Yes, I'm aware it is an MSO question, but as mods, you will all have higher profile to ram it home.

Does EL&U have a "regulator headquarters" of sorts?

@Orbling Ha! I will shamelessly borrow a leaf from Rebecca on that one. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67054/…

@Orbling a-ha

@waiwai933 Why was it declined? (If you recall.)

@Orbling See RegDwight's link three up.

@RegDwight No sucking up to the THC organizer. (;

(I'll be very happy to do more once I reach the 10k level and I try to contribute at the 3k level too. :-) )

It would be absolutely welcomed by whoever the mods will be, for sure.

@RegDwight Well having read Rebecca's answer on that, I would say the solution is not to graduate sites till sufficient members are at the levels.

@Orbling Correct. This is what we do now.

@RebeccaChernoff Though apparently not in this case, according to senior feeling.

What do you plan to do to assist the site outside of responding to flags and standard close/delete maintenance (if anything?)

@Orbling I don't think we're drowning here; it's just in a slightly awkward "teenager" stage, but it will get there.

@Orbling They have changed the Area51 process accordingly. It used to be that a site needed 200 (?) active users Now it's more fine-grained, 150 users with 200 rep, 10 users with 2k and 5 users with 3k are needed to graduate

@Kosmonaut Agreed, I just have a general bug bear about relying on mods to hammer-down on community opinion issues.

@RebeccaChernoff I plan to listen to the members of the community to see if there are issues with the SE2.0 engine that can help it to work better for this community, and to relay that information to the SOIS team as best I can. I plan to help newer users feel welcome to the site and to understand the processes that are ongoing on the SE network, such as accepting answers. I plan to encourage users to vote and edit to make questions helpful to the world at large, not just to the asker, as appropriate.

@RegDwight Ah nice, very sensible.

@RebeccaChernoff I plan to encourage our community to grow larger—I've started a topic on Meta asking if anyone knows of any conferences (although I personally have doubts that any exist, but just in case) that we could promote ourselves at and I intend to continue to look for other ways to promote the site. I also intend to look into how we can ensure high quality of questions, but that's just a thought I'm working on.

@RebeccaChernoff I think leading discussions regarding decisions about administrative things like tags and FAQs is another important admin task that I intend to continue participating in. And of course, I intend to continue answering questions.

Do tools exist now for moderators to "Dutch uncle" someone offline if they are being a problem? If not, should they be available to mods?

@RebeccaChernoff I plan to continue to be involved in Meta discussions, asking questions and providing opinions, and I plan to continue to contribute a large number of quality answers to the main EL&U site. I also plan to continue to be a Chat regular, so that people can talk to me about site business, English questions, or just get to know me better.

@RebeccaChernoff I hope to keep answering (and to a lesser extent, asking) questions to the best of my ability, because that's the one way to ensure the quality of the site.

@RebeccaChernoff Oh, let's see. Tag hygiene. Approving edits. Hanging out on meta and in chat to quickly respond to any questions. Keeping an eye on the general quality of answers and gently pointing new users to features they might not be aware of.

@RebeccaChernoff I plan to become much more active on the meta, to participate in the discussions about the site's direction. I've lurked but not added much, seeing that the site already had a strong set of leaders, but as I'm looking to become such a leader, I would want to become more involved. ::edit:: and hang out in chat of course ;)

@Robusto what is "dutch uncle"? googled ~ Yes, there are tools like that in the system already

@drachenstern — To take someone aside privately and counsel them.

@Robusto Yes, such tools exist. Moderators can send mod messages (a newly implemented feature) to users who may need some explanation about what they're doing wrong and how they can fix it.

@RebeccaChernoff Oh, and of course hanging out in chat and interacting with new users.

@Martha I believe we here all already hang out / lurk in chat, no?

@drachenstern Well, yes, but I think it's a good idea for a mod to continue doing so. Accessibility and all that.

(If people have questions feel free to jump in, I don't want to take up time with my filler questions if there are questions from the community.)

@Robusto In the internet universe, I had hoped that would mean trace their connection and terminate. ;-)

I'm thinking of the recent vgv8 situation. Was he contacted offline before he got banned?

Should he have been?

@Robusto Was he actually doing anything wrong? [Other than being unintelligent...]

@Martha indeed. For that matter, I'm not a mod and I try to be accessible, on chats on SO, SE and MSO. I find that helps me be fluid with both interpersonal communications and with understanding the network ops as far as SE2.0 is concerned

@Robusto I'm not sure it's appropriate to comment about ongoing disciplinary actions

@Robusto I believe everyone who gets banned is communicated with. Also, see @nohat's answer.

@Robusto I think users behaving in a similar manner should receive a mod message (and conversation can continue between mod and user), which is technically still in the system, so not "offline". As for what actually took place, I'm not a pro tem and I have no idea what happened.

@nohat — Fair enough, but make it a hypothetical then.

@nohat as I understand it that is actively frowned upon

@nohat Why would it be inappropriate? Community environment, community involved.

What is your favorite word in the English language?

@Robusto Absolutely they should exist. I think if someone had written to our problem child (who shall remain nameless) with a detailed, question-by-question explanation of why his stuff was closed, maybe he would have believed it instead of dismissing it as supposition like he did with @psmears' answer.

@Robusto I think generally speaking, problem users are engaged off-line in an informal way before they are disciplined formally.

@RebeccaChernoff That's easy: thwack. :)

@Orbling I can only comment that the situation was discussed in chat. The mods did ask for "normal" users' opinions there.

@RebeccaChernoff superfluous. It just sounds so nice. :)

Also, this blog entry is relevant: blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box

@Robusto It's important to ascertain if problem behavior is due to misunderstanding, malice, or general incompetence—the appropriate disciplinary response depends on the reason for the behavior

@RebeccaChernoff Closed as subjective/argumentative.

@RebeccaChernoff That would be an off-topic question for this site, so I haven't given it any thought yet. Perhaps amaranthine. Or the.

@RegDwight This isn't the site. (;-

@RebeccaChernoff My favorite word in the English language by my usage, by what I think sounds coolest, or by what I am fascinated by? I have too many to pick just one. I may say 'Onomatopoeia' or I may say 'Indeed' or I may say 'Oy' (no not really on the last one, just a little meme humor injection) ... I like using "50 cent words" because they're all so expressive. So long as the word is expressive I love it.

@RebeccaChernoff Ask me tomorrow and I'm sure I'll have another word for you ;)

Do you think the EL&U community generally *gets" the SE engine? What is something you think the community still needs education on, and how can you help improve this?

@drachenstern — I thought 50 cent words could get you banned:

Sorry.

@Robusto Mentioning 50 cent should...

@RebeccaChernoff in the interest of blatantly seeking the sympathy vote, I will say that at my mother's funeral I used the word "gracious" to describe her and the way she led her life. I don't really have any other reason to like any word above all others, so I will choose that.

What's the most recent book you've read, and how long ago did you read it?

@RebeccaChernoff I think that (as I mentioned before) "downvoting means leaving a constructive comment" is my biggest complaint on the site. Otherwise I think that in general the usage of the engine is understood. I would encourage users to understand that editing questions to make them less localized is a good idea. I refer to Jeff's blogpost at blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/… as reference for what I intend with the editing.

@Robusto I'm really hoping everyone says today...

@RebeccaChernoff EL&U users have the common human failing of attachment, which leads to getting offended if their posts are edited or (gasp, horrors) closed. We need to reinforce the community-improved aspect of the site by encouraging editing and always commenting downvotes and close votes.

@RebeccaChernoff I think sometimes there is a lack of clarity (sometimes I'm not sure myself) as to whether a response to a question is an answer or a comment. Sometimes there is a quick link or bon mot that kind of answers the question but not really. I think we could use some formal guidance on how to handle those kinds of responses.

@RebeccaChernoff Generally, I think our community is somewhat familiar with the SE engine, considering how much voting takes place. However, I think that higher rep users aren't engaging in the close and delete actions that they should be working with, and we could work on that. There are two solutions I can think of: 1) The mods need to set an example, or 2) System messages. I'm not sure either of these solutions are optimal, but I haven't had time to give this a thorough level of thought.

Do you have any hopes, ideas or plans for improving, involving, or enlarging the EL&U community?

@RebeccaChernoff I don't think I could honestly give a single favorite, or even my top 10 — but I often like words that push up against the edges of grammaticality, like "forego": what's the simple past tense? (I know the dictionary might say "forewent"... but is anyone comfortable saying that? :)

@Robusto Native Son —I just finished it a few days ago

@Robusto it depends on how to define "book". These days one can encounter book-length quantities of written material on a single topic in many ways...

@RebeccaChernoff There's a lot of confusion going on about how to format questions. There's a lot of janitorial editing to be done on a daily basis. Lately, we started to be seeing more comments posted as answers, and even some spam. But all things considered, this site is exceptionally tidy, I would say, and as far as higher privileges go (editing, voting to close, re-tagging), the community is rather well educated.

@Robusto The most recent book I read is Foundation (for like the thirtieth time) and I finished it again around Halloween. I tend to read online more as I'm a programmer and a web addict, so I spend less time with dead trees and more time with growth and learning. The question was revised to include non-leisure reading, so I then change it to ASP.NET Unleashed for C# 3.5 and I refinished it sometime this month.

@nohat — Book-length writing, fiction or non-fiction. Textbooks even. Whatever.

@Robusto It was something with zombies. Christmas present. I'll never get those three hours back. Before that it was "Fevre Dream" by George R. R. Martin. Also a Christmas present, also time I will never get back. :/

@Hellion As I said earlier, I've started a topic on meta about conferences, and I may expand that (if there really are no responses) to a general "Who do you think would be interested?" SE has said that they're willing to fund community expansion, so I think that's the first step.

@Robusto I'm currently reading a Russian book titled "В ночь большого прилива". It's a children's book by an author whom I enjoyed reading as a child.

@RebeccaChernoff I don't think there has been a major problem with understanding how SE works. Aside from some comment/answer distinctions, I think things seem to work as they are.

A question: Recently, we are receiving an increasing number of "What does [this] mean?" questions, with various standard words, phrases, etc. Generally by various members who have English as a secondary language and have been stumped by some sentence they read. Are these to be encouraged, or do they detract from the more advanced content?

can we call a timeout on the questions, we've gotten them a little too quickly ... :\

@Robusto The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, about a month ago (then the school semester started back up).

@Robusto The last book I finished reading cover-to-cover is On Cooking by Harold McGee, which I finished last week. I do read The New Yorker every week, though, and there are often very long articles...

@Hellion Well, I hope to get my sister addicte[ahem, sorry] involved at some point - she's the one who minored in linguistics, after all. But other than that, this task smacks of marketing, at which I suck.

@Orbling This really depends on the question. "What does 'book' mean?"—not encouraged, as it's too simple. "What does [a particular convoluted or colloquial phrase] mean?"—This I don't have a problem with, as even some native English speakers have no idea. Generally, I agree with Jeff's blog post.

@Hellion I prefer the site to grow organically, so I don't push it. I just continue posting links to selected questions here and there, mostly on Reddit. I also "advertise" certain questions in my user profile on other sites of the network.

@waiwai933 I particularly mean the obvious entries. Not the obscure phrases.

@Hellion I have hopes for the EL&U community expanding, but really I would like to figure out how to get more engagement from the casual users. So some way to improve the conversion (to use sales terms IIRC) rate.

@Hellion I have posted a number of thoughts on Meta.EL&U about how to improve the way things work around here, as well as hone in on our community values and philosophy. I would be interested in attending an appropriate conference to speak about the website.

@Hellion I hope that more folks with good formal educations in how grammar works come to the site and provide authoritative answers to some of the trickier questions we get.

@waiwai933 With regard to Jeff's post, I think that the definition of "simple" can be refined via the sites "off-topic" scope.

@Orbling It really depends on what they're asking about. Sometimes those questions open up an interesting discussion about some nuance of meaning that is not covered by dictionary definitions. However, if a bare dictionary definition provides a complete answer to the question, with no additional commentary needed, then that is a low-quality question that doesn't really add much value to the site.

@Orbling It depends: some of the questions about the odd expressions used by journalists have definitely taught me things I didn't know, despite being a native speaker (or as close as makes no nevermind). If the question can be answered by a simple copy and paste from a single dictionary, though, then the new "too basic" close option is the appropriate response.

@Orbling I think it really comes down to the answers. Sometimes really poorly thought-out questions have led to brilliant answers.

@nohat Yes, I guess I could rephrase my question to "Should EL&U be used as a dictionary or thesaurus?"

@Orbling Unfortunately, it's hard to tell whether questions are the former or the latter until answers have been posted, so I don't really have a good solution.

@Orbling I think these are certainly encouraged, as the site is about the language and about usage, so we want to encourage people to increase the community knowledge in that regard. When it comes to "what does this book mean" or "what's the intent of this thesis-work" I don't know that that is the purpose of this site. It should be limited in scope to things which can be answered authoritatively. This includes regional interpretations.

@Orbling Neither. It should be used as a collective compendium of accumulated knowledge. A dictionary is that, in part, as is a thesaurus, as is an encyclopedia.

@Orbling I think there might be some value in putting links to dictionary/thesaurus sites in a front-and-center way on the question asking form

@nohat This is a very good idea.

@nohat Yeah, but which one(s)?

@Orbling Dictionary–no. Thesaurus–it depends exactly what the user is asking for. Is it "What is a synonym for 'book'?" or is it "What is a synonym for 'censor' that doesn't have government connotations?". The more unique the question is, the better a chance that I'm going to like it.

@nohat Most of the existing members who contribute good answers do this quite nicely.

@nohat that sounds like an SE change, is that what you're advocating? For that matter, google does that already if prefixed with "define:"

@drachenstern I was thinking that too, would be useful to have a define feature.

@Martha We could decide on meta

@Orbling That's a difficult question, actually. If you look at the questions on our meta right now, some people would like to put more stress on advanced questions for professional linguists and etymologists, while others would like to see more basic questions being allowed. A new close reason was introduced just recently, "too basic". I must say I am not a fan of it myself, I would like to see how it works out in practice first. So I will definitely leave the use of that one to the community.

@drachenstern I think there is already some SE code that detects questions that are likely to be closed. Perhaps we should advocate for some dictionary-request detection...

@drachenstern It doesn't hurt to nudge people that way, even if they should know themselves. You can never be overly redundant about such things.

@Martha do what google does? wiktionary and wikipedia and the "professional" sites?

This is, I think, what we're talking about with the dictionary questions:

@RegDwight now I think you raise an excellent point. Should we make that an official question for this THC? Or do we think that should be a meta only discussion?

@Robusto Personally I would say that was alright.

@RegDwight Scope as a close-vote reason being my primary motivation for the question, so yes, will be interesting to see the usage.

@Orbling — I would like to hear where the candidates come down on this question, actually. No offense.

@Orbling I agree. There are definitely nuances of meaning, or actually connotation, there which can be very hard to get at just from reading a dictionary.

@RegDwight I think the site does well with a mix of both. It's what made SO so popular for programming.

@drachenstern Yeah, I think as long as we can strike a balance, we should be fine. I mean, I do want to grow the site, but not at the cost of scaring off the actual linguists here.

@Robusto I think a really good answer to that question would look at collocates for "assess" and "evaluate" and would comment on generalizations about the types of situations each word is used in. In my opinion that would provide the greatest practical value to someone who is trying to figure out when to use each word.

@Orbling I don't think we can have a black-and-white policy about dictionary questions; each question needs to be judged on its own merits. Though perhaps a meta post about what makes a good dictionary question (context, for example) would be helpful.

@RegDwight When I first joined, it seemed to be mainly linguists about, answering complex questions. Now it seems that the linguists are around less, I wondered if it was the change in climate.

@Martha Yes, excellent idea. I hope someone makes a list of possible action items from this discussion to follow up on later

@Martha how it's phrased perhaps? There should be a definite bit of "required text" for a dictionary question, but what that bit is I'm not entirely sure. Just posting "Title: define this word please; body: word' is absolutely a no-go. But questions with context are definitely ok.

@nohat the discussion will be publicly available. I'm sure someone can fine-tooth-comb it later if desired.

@drachenstern And yeah, I'm not sure we can answer this question right here, right now. In fact, that balance must be striked every single day, over and over again.

@RegDwight I think so too

Another question (do say stop if you want someone else to speak): English vs American" - so many questions seem to have to be divided up along these lines, is this just inevitable, or can something be done to assist the process?

@Orbling Are you saying it is a problem to have to split between "English vs American"?

@Orbling Do you mean you want us to come up with ways to divide the site between English & American?

@Orbling As it turns out, the differences between AmE and BrE are not that great, a few dozen questions probably will cover most everything. Once they've all been asked, future questions will just be closed as duplicates.

@Kosmonaut Not necessarily, but frequently the answers are quite different - which obscures answers if not flagged up appropriately with the bias.

@Orbling Assuming you're talking about Br. Eng. vs. Am. Eng, I recently started working on the British English tag wiki and I plan to port some of that over to the American English tag wiki as well. But there's a limit to what can be done about it—Stack Overflow still sees questions routinely about parsing HTML with regex.

@Orbling I don't know that this can be prevented. I know that asking for context on the origination will help prevent some of this, but in this global society we must all understand that colloquialisms will come and go, and that intent is more important than specific words. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel that context is the key to this question.

@Orbling I'm not sure if that's actually true. I would have to dive into DataExplorer to check. IIRC, our first question ever was about the difference between can and could. I am personally responsible for posting quite a few "basic" questions, such as "what is the etymology of 'idiocracy'?". That was back when we struggled to get enough questions, but fast forward 6 months and I am still convinced that that "basic" question belongs on our site.

@Kosmonaut no, but definitions and usage vary. Consider: lift or chips.

Well it seems to crop up all the time, particularly in phraseology; where it exists in one and not in the other, or means something totally different.

@nohat or hopefully not asked at all but just read since they're already answered?

@Orbling Questioners who are unaware their question involves a British-American difference are not a problem. As for answerers who don't know that their answer is biased, I at least try to comment to point out that their answer is only right or sensible for some people.

@nohat Yes, judicious commenting is the current approach.

@nohat commenting or editing would be the best thing to do on those answers.

For example, my comment here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/13231/…

@Orbling In the places where UK and US English differ, I think it is quite valuable to have this distinction pointed out in answers. This is what is great about the SE approach; representatives from both sides of the pond can offer insight.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

@nohat If people could tag questions up quickly that would be handy, but answers have no tags.

@Kosmonaut Indeed, one of the things I like best about the site.

@RebeccaChernoff First, talk with the mod. If consensus cannot be found, post it on meta and see what the community thinks.

@RebeccaChernoff For closed questions, I would leave a comment asking why it was closed, and move forward from there

@Orbling I actually think that the opposite would be more damaging, if answers were not pointing out potential differences between AE and BE (and Indian, Canadian, Australian, NZ English, whatever).

@waiwai933 Do mods have private messaging with each other?

@RebeccaChernoff in the case that a mod closed it, I would take it up with that mod and the rest of the mod community on the site. I would look for consensus and I would aim to have an understanding. If that means emailing them directly, or just leaving questions via mod flags, whatever it takes. If it was for something community closed, I would go to meta and ask for community discussion and understanding.

@Orbling yes

@RegDwight Oh they definitely should be pointed out.

@Orbling No but we can/should have a private chat room...

@Orbling I believe that there is a private chatroom, but email is always an option.

@RegDwight that's a good point.

@nohat there is already, they just may not always be online when you are

@RebeccaChernoff I would probably try to ping the mod in chat or some other semi-offline place and ask about their reasoning. Could be that one or the other of us is misinterpreting something. I would only take some sort of "undo" action if the site users were up in arms (e.g. comments or a plethora of meta threads).

@RebeccaChernoff Hopefully the mod uses chat, because I would prefer to discuss it with him or her there. I would probably otherwise leave a comment. If it raised an important general question about how things should be done, I would bring it up in Meta.

We're almost at the hour mark, so if anyone has a final question, now's your chance. (:

I'm all set.

This dealio still going on?

For a few more minutes, got a final question for us?

@DanGrossman Briefly.

I actually have a question: What is your native language? (Some people answered this in their blurbs, but some of us were more, um, succinct.)

I can't think of anything to ask, did anybody miss any questions?

@RebeccaChernoff I would talk to that mod first. Probably "behind the scenes" (chat), as openly posting a comment on the site "What gives, I wouldn't have closed this!" doesn't feel right to me. If we cannot reach a compromise behind the scenes, we would take the issue to meta.

@Martha I suggest this include the type of English. ;-)

@Hellion (I wanted to add something more to this question) I do hope that more users start answering questions using data. I think those are best kinds of answers because they add new information to the world

@Martha English. I have lived in the Northeast, Northern California, and the Midwest, so I have been exposed to a lot of US varieties.

@Martha (see my profile :-)

@nohat That's not a very good start with including data in answers. ;-)

@Martha Technically Cantonese (I use it at home), but I've lived my whole life in California, so for all intents and purposes, English. (I'm not even fluent in Cantonese).

@Martha I'm a Southerner by birth, and so speak mostly broken English and procedural C-like languages. But to be serious: I speak English natively, I have some fluency in Spanish and German (so understand other cultures modes of sentence formulation and conjugation), and am a programmer so speak with a certain logic-oriented nature which comes off at times stilted. Like Spock.

Once the candidates have answered everything they want...

Final thoughts?

It is time for @RegDwight to finally get to sleep! :)

It's late over there!

@Kosmonaut It's only 2am here...

Thanks @RebeccaChernoff for setting this up.

@Martha (To answer my own question, my first language was Hungarian; I learned English starting in kindergarten, in southern California. My mother's attitude was, why should she teach us [that is, my twin sister and I] her badly-mangled version of English when there are schools for that?)

@Martha Sensible mother.

@RebeccaChernoff Yes, thanks for setting up this chat.

@RebeccaChernoff I enjoyed this opportunity to talk to some of the other mod-candidates, and want to wish everyone great luck. I'm proud to be on this panel, and glad for the opportunity to stand with these other fine candidates. Thanks @RebeccaChernoff for setting this up, and @Josh for tabulating this afterwards ;)

@RebeccaChernoff I think all the candidates here today would make excellent moderators. In my ideal world there would be 6 slots for all of us. I am confident the site will continue to flourish regardless of the outcome of the election.

@Orbling Trust me, I'm reminded almost daily how thankful I am that my parents taught me Hungarian.

@Martha Both my parents are native speakers of Russian, so strictly speaking, my mother tongue is Russian, and so is my father tongue. My step-father tongue is something different, but I am not going to disclose it here. Instead, I encourage people to join me in chat, where I'm giving away my second native language on a daily basis.

@RebeccaChernoff Thanks for coordinating not only this, but all the THCs. Good luck to everyone!

@Martha Well, it's certainly different.

@RebeccaChernoff I hope everybody who is running for a moderator job is going to keep being involved here (and those who are not of course). I think non-mods can do a lot to shape this site and keep the mods on track. I definitely have had valuable input as well as constructive criticism while I've been a mod.

@RebeccaChernoff I hope I haven't missed any questions, and I wish everybody good luck. Do vote! And yeah, do stick around whether or not the candidates of your choice get elected!

Thanks everyone for participating!

@Kosmonaut I look forward to criticising the elected members on a regular basis.

@RebeccaChernoff Final thought: vote early, vote often. And no, I don't mean in the election (it's enough to vote there once), but on questions and answers. Use up those votes!

Good luck to the candidates. (:

@RebeccaChernoff thanks for having us!

so concludes the Town Hall Chat (:

Huzzah

@RebeccaChernoff Thanks for hosting this chat. It was more valuable than I imagined it would be. I hope that it was not too much of a chore working outside your normal working hours

|: (;

@nohat my work hours are a bit...unusual...perhaps.

@RebeccaChernoff Oh yeah, I do promise to install your chat extensions some time. I really do. I'm serious!

@RebeccaChernoff :p I'm only teasing of course ;)

I thought that was the most well written hustings I've yet seen on SE.

@drachenstern you're just trying to save yourself now (;

@RebeccaChernoff never, if I were I would've deleted other commentary as well ;)

and yeah, I know you wield power .. POWER!!

@Orbling: hustings?

Ok, I'm leaving the THC now (or at least only lurking)

@Martha Do you mean "What does hustings mean?" - I'll answer over yonder... ;-)

@Orbling Yes, please, and thank you.

@Martha Quicker: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husting [It is what we call these sort of proceedings in the UK, prior to an election, where all candidates are asked questions. An alternative to the archaic folkmoot, a lovely word.]

Hah. Learn something new every day.

@Martha And that, dear lady, is the reason for getting up of a morning. ;-)

@Orbling "folkmoot" that sounds like something from the Uncleftish Beholding

@nohat It feels that way. Though it is OE, rather than Germanic.

@nohat Contrast with Tolkien's use of Entmoot.

@Orbling Entmoot is the first thing that sprung to my mind as well.

@Martha Alan Garner uses Svartmoot in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, very popular with your fantasy author these moots.

Yeah, they all try to ape Tolkien.

@Martha Well he was a man of words first, a storyweaver second.

But all of this is entirely off-topic for the election, so maybe we ought to take it to the regular chatroom?

@Martha Aye, quite right.