2016 Science Fiction & Fantasy Moderator Election - 2016-01-28

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12:02 AM

Looking on MSE and MSO, I can't find anything one way or the other

12:15 AM

@Ixrec the vote counts matter, not what you see

thanks

If you'd voted for either candidate, you'd see +1 or -1

that “hide negative score” thing is a bit bizarre

4 hours later…

4:23 AM

@Shog9 - Without getting into private stuff and details, is it common for suspensions to increase around election time?

This is my first election, so it's all new to me.

I'm trying to figure out if we're normal or if we are uniquely in need of babysitting.

Well... intervention, not babysitting.

@WadCheber On this site it is. For some reason.

On the bright side, no one who is actually running has been suspended just yet. Which has happened in the past.

So there's that.

← 7 messages moved from Mos Eisley

So this isn't the norm elsewhere?

but it is here?

8 hours ago, by Shog9

@JackBNimble there's been a distinct lack of... I'll say "comradery" for lack of a better word... Among some of the most active members here lately, and I fear this election has made it more apparent. Folks seem unusually terrified of the wrong people getting their hands on a diamond.

@Shog9 I can attest to that.

Hell, I was terrified of what I would do with a diamond, which is why I didn't run.

@WadCheber it has been before. I hesitate to call it a norm, because I don't remember the first election being particularly disruptive, but... Then again, memory tends toward the pleasant.

4:33 AM

I wonder why that's the case - flags/past chat issues aside, we tend to get along pretty well most of the time.

Or maybe I'm fooling myself.

Or creating false correlations - we tend to have at least one suspended user at any time, so it isn't unusual for us to have 3 or whatever right now.

One of the nice things about elections though is that they can be great tools for exorcising problems that've lurked beneath the skin. That sense of urgency can motivate folks to speak up when they would otherwise be silent. Which can and often does lead to drama, but ideally lets it be dealt with, in the open, and lets folks move on.

True

I'm happy that the most level headed, active candidates are currently leading the race.

Not to disparage the others, of course, but Null and Jason are exemplary users.

If we actually employ the "leading by example" idea with them leading, we'll be in good stead.

Remember, the primary voting is a bit like normal-season football. It gives you a rough idea of how folks will do in the playoffs, but... Anything's possible.

But yeah, the only downside of having Null and Jason as mods is that y'all will still have to put up with Mike in chat.

2

@Shog9 As long as the guys who are most akin to myself don't win, I'll be pleased.

@WadCheber quite honestly, you would probably do fine as a mod.

4:39 AM

fair warning: if my time is not being taken up by clearing flags, you will be hearing about retagging constantly

I might, but I want a longer streak of positive contributions before I am willing to run.

I was a problem too recently for comfort.

You'd just have to do what I do as an employee: every time you wonder what to do in a particular situation, ask yourself "what would stop me from being a complete ass in this situation if I wasn't the one having to settle it?"

Then, when you're done buying yourself gin, you settle it.

Maybe if we have an election more than three months separated from my most recent suspension, I'll toss my hat in the ring. Running for mod weeks after playing a major part in nuking the primary chat room is unacceptable to me.

I can't ask people to trust me when I don't trust myself yet.

yup. Also, you need to earn that 40/40 candidate score, otherwise why bother.

how many people on our site actually have 40/40?

you know how long it's going to take for me to get steward?

4:54 AM

DVK did.

I would assume that Richard does.

@MikeEdenfield here

I made that query work with multiple IDs for a reason...

(the list is everyone with >= 20K on the site)

huh. gnovice. Haven't seen him in a while.

@WadCheber I'm sure I'll get it eventually, but it's gonna take months. I typically see maybe 15 review tasks on a good day, spread out across first posts/low quality/close reasons.

@Shog9 thankee!

Step 1: encourage lots of low-rep users to retag stuff
Step 2: they generate loads of suggested edits that you can now approve
Step 3: STINKIN' BADGES!
Step 4: real ultimate power

I tried that!

yeah, but you made it too complicated

5:06 AM

every time I go into the Tavern I'm amazed at how little spam we get.

9 items in this list. NINE ITEMS. And that's after like a page worth of prose.

@MikeEdenfield Harry Potter just isn't as cool as Drupal

Spammers know what's up.

@Shog9 that 9-item list is literally the only time we've all looked at a post about tagging and said "Yeah, sounds about right."

Anyway, you want like a page worth of instructions, of which folks need only read the first paragraph or two before clicking the link and doing stuff.

I mean, look at review itself. For all the miles of instructions I've dumped onto meta sites, there's only a scant paragraph of instruction per queue and - let's be honest - you've never read it, have you.

but really, I was hoping to come up with a couple of tags we could boil down to "ok, go through all these questions and change a to b or c as appropriate" and set everyone on it.

Nothing wrong with having a big long discussion, mind you - but you gotta come away with something short, or... folks just get bored.

5:11 AM

yeah, the short part was going to be the follow-up post. until keen was all like 'I got this'

i think at least a few people got the tag-wiki-editor badge out of it, tho

KHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

we created about two dozen new tags to get rid of plot

well, that's something at least. Can't have too many tags.

well, when you have exactly question about a book, it needs a tag.

that is an issue i don't have a good solution for yet. if you're a new user asking the first question about a new book, you're kinda stuck.

yeah. Which reminds me, y'all should revisit whether or not you still need that exception to the 6-month-1-use deletion rule. If you're good about adding tag wikis now, it should be considerably less necessary.

5:15 AM

what happens to questions where that's the only tag?

do they go untagged ?

yup

We had this idea once about prompting new users to create a tag wiki if they wanted to use a tag that didn't exist. If the wiki was approved, the tag got created. That... Got really complicated really fast and we dropped the idea like a hot potato. But I wonder if it wouldn't still help in some areas.

Anyway, problems for whoever gets elected. Good luck, everyone! DRUDGERY AND THANKLESS ARGUMENTS AWAIT!

We have 17 pages of 1-question tags and lots of them need tag wikis.

does having a tag wiki mean it's not auto-purged?

yup

NONE of them get auto-purged here, because we disabled that rule

well, give me a year to get them all wikified and we'll come back to it.

right.

But on most sites, they'd be on the chopping block.

5:19 AM

I didn't realize that getting a proper wiki would exempt it.

but we have a legitimate case where 1-question tags make sense.

e.g. we only have one question about X-Men 2 (oddly enough)

yeah. We didn't add the wiki exemption until long after we'd disabled the rule here.

We're... short-sighted and lazy sometimes.

Gaming has the same predicament.

Actually, they had it first. Along with the "crazy chatroom full of flags" thing. You folks should stop accepting hand-me-downs from them.

we don't have nearly as many absurd question titles.

only a few

True. Meaningless spoiler-paranoid titles, but not so much linkbaity ones.

Small mercies

eeep, after midnight.

bedtime!

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

7:02 AM

Hi @ruakh

4 hours later…

10:39 AM

@Shog9 +1

@WadCheber No, but this site is creepy.

So far, hmm, I've been in actively participating (commenting, nominating etc.) in Chem, ELL.SE and SO's last election.

They went all so peaceful.

Except certain events happening in ELL's election, but let's just forget it.

You guys, I dunno, just somehow manage to make every single damn meta post look like there's going to be some dramatic flame war, even when you post on meta.SE.

And all of this gives me (and better people than me) headaches.

I want to say none of "us" are making those MSE posts, but judging who is or isn't in what informal virtual group is no less confusing

I'm still not really sure why there's so much drama here myself, thus far it doesn't seem like any of the candidates have actually done anything (recently) to cause it and it's just people offended in the past taking the opportunity to speak up

Well, yeah, people not growing up has been the biggest problem of humankind.

I didn't follow the SO election but I have a hard time believing there are no angry users turning up at those events, if only because of the size; do they just nuke such posts much faster over there or something?

2 hours later…

12:50 PM

Meta Q: Is it common or acceptable for moderators to go into other site's chat rooms and talk about elections?

hides

Napoleon Wilson

The value of being a moderator somewhat eludes me. Same for participating in elections to become one. I mean, it's the Internet, not the real life (TM). — Deer Hunter 2 hours ago

There you have it, you're all doing it wrong! Elections cancelled!

his argument also eludes me, it seems to be implying that real life needs moderators and the internet doesn't, whereas most of us would be inclined to assert the opposite

1 hour later…

2:28 PM

@randal'thor Actually, I was curious to know whether I could vote if I achieve the required rep after the election has already started.

2:51 PM

@Loong I just assumed you can.

Was I right?

@randal'thor yes

If I upvoted your question, does that mean you have to vote for me? ;-)

scifi.stackexchange.com/help/badges/88/caucus?userid=35609

@randal'thor maybe. ;-)

Shameless.

I'll give you 50 rep for your vote.

@JackBNimble You can't award bounties to questions.

... oh, wait, Loong has an answer too.

2:54 PM

It's all under the table.

didn't say anything about what site the rep had to be on

@randal'thor actually, I have two answers; but I had to delete one as off topic.

@Loong Ah. Linky?

@randal'thor scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/71209/…

Interesting.

There was some discussion of the whole religious-texts-as-fantasy debate yesterday, either here or in Mos.

2:57 PM

that question feels like it has less to do with wand usage and more to do with when stories started trying to explain how their magicks worked

@DVK: I object to your response to @ Loong which caused him to delete. It's not off topic because: Obviously his answer doesn't fit the criteria of 'an SFF work', but this was a remarkably good -- and I consider to be correct -- answer! You can reasonably conclude that the notion of using a wand (rod) is so ancient that the OP's question doesn't really make sense. Nice job! — ThePopMachine Jan 13 at 21:59

@randal'thor it was mentioned once or twice, but not really "discussed", just thrown out as an example of unwritten rules related to how we define fantasy here

I found it interesting that an on-topic question can have an off-topic (but technically correct) answer.

Makes sense when (finite, scoped) list questions are allowed.

how can an answer be both correct and off-topic?

that would just mean the question was either off-topic from the start, or based on some flawed premise.

3:04 PM

"The answer is time dilation, which is this thing from real world physics where..."

I assume is the kind of answer we're talking about

@Loong ah, i see.

the question asked for a SF/F work and we don't consider the Bible one of those. Which makes the answer "technically wrong" :)

@MikeEdenfield yes, and I accepted that. That's why I removed my answer.

Q: "What's the first SF/F example of X?" - on topic.

A: "It appears in ~~Watership Down~~ James Bond" - off topic.

@Loong I still think it's a good answer if you were to preface it with "this concept actually pre-dates SF/F, as it can be found in The Bible

true, though it'd probably have to be on top of an early SFF work

3:11 PM

@MikeEdenfield but I think, DVK saw some additional problems with that answer.

true. I still wouldn't have deleted it, it's very useful information for someone else who stumbles on that question later.

those are old comments.

possibly even from before the name change.

@MikeEdenfield yes, you can see the @ DVK reply comments.

@Loong That still works though, as it's still the first three characters of his username.

in my official position as moderator runner-up I encourage you to undelete that answer :)

We've strayed a bit off-topic. Let's get back to bribing @Loong for votes ;-)

@MikeEdenfield ah, ninja'd.

3:17 PM

2 hours ago, by Mike Edenfield

Meta Q: Is it common or acceptable for moderators to go into other site's chat rooms and talk about elections?

I made three upvotes in the primary to simulate my intended votes for the actual election.

Flag on the play. Poll interference. 10 rep penalty.

@Loong And no downvotes?

I don't really get the point of enabling downvotes in the primary.

user132126

People get to clearly express that they don't want someone as a moderator. Seeing those final tallies might help move someone in the final election to not vote for them.

It means people can say "don't elect that jerk" rather than just "this one might make a good mod". Which they can't do in the actual election, so ...

user132126

3:32 PM

"If such a big group of people don't think this person is a good fit, perhaps I need to rethink things"

Are the primary votes visible during the final election?

user132126

But in the final you get limited voting power, you can't vote on every candidate.

@randal'thor that's kinda the point of the primary. Identify the people you do and don't want to have a chance to be elected.

@MikeEdenfield Well, this particular primary is more like "who do we least want to be elected?"

true.

Actually, this primary was really about "that one guy we all knew wouldn't win."

3:36 PM

@randal'thor the downvotes make it difficult to predict the actual election results from the primary votes. If you want to do that, you should probably only look at the primary *up*votes; and I guess that looks quite nice for you.

which is why I kinda hoped we wouldn't have a primary

@MikeEdenfield I wouldn't say it was certain beforehand who'd lose. Arvin has taken the 'rebel' platform, which won't get him elected but might get him upvotes from some sector of the voters. Whereas, as others have said, Mithrandir doesn't seem to have a clear platform that distinguishes him from the other candidates.

TBF, none of the platforms are really that different.

@Loong Now how many of those 260 upvoters would put me as their first choice ... ?

I don't think anyone distinguished themselves in terms of platform at all

other than maybe Arvin, but I'd prefer to call that not having a platform

user132126

3:42 PM

@phantom42 Perhaps we needed more insightful questions?

@CreationEdge /nods

Umm, I have a clearly defined platform.

The abolition of all social issues, just the discussion, the actual issues will remain.

asking when a mod might be available shouldn't have been one of the 8. that should just be required info to provide

which isn't that different from everyone else's general statements about not being biased and not being a dick

@Ixrec Jack has the blog/humour platform. Mike has the tagging/meta platform. Arvin has the rebel platform. SSumner has the review-queue platform.

3:44 PM

ah right

@phantom42 Agreed. I even put that in my nomination.

I think I was less aware of those things after reading the questionnaires than I was before

Do you want to laugh, or spent the rest of your life approving edits?

user132126

I could probably spice mine up a little bit, but I think people stopped reading them already.

yeah, I can't even remember if I read yours

user132126

3:45 PM

I could take the feminist platform :O

@JackBNimble I suspect I'm not alone in wishing you were higher up in the polls :-)

I'm gonna guess maybe 10%, total, of the voters will even read them.

user132126

Himarm's has no votes, IIRC, so I doubt it's really been read much.

(no offence to anyone above you, of course)

user132126

This is my first major election I've been involved in (even as a voter), so I'm really interested in seeing how the whole process works.

3:47 PM

@randal'thor should lose votes because he didn't like the song I wrote to answer an HP question.

@MikeEdenfield Probably less. There were 500-odd voters last time, and will probably be even more this time.

user132126

I remember last year and not having anything to go by other than their rep and reading what they wrote.

@randal'thor should lose votes for never having seen Star Wars and being named after a character who's series he hasn't even finished reading.

@CreationEdge Which is probably why Richard and Thaddeus won.

!!

3:49 PM

@CreationEdge Last year I wasn't as much involved in the site, and voted (IIRC) by having seen their activity and liked them personally.

brb, editing my blurb to include "I've seen Star Wars and finished The Wheel of Time; can other candidates say the same?"

Not by rep: I didn't vote for Thaddeus, as at that time I'd never seen any of his posts.

@MikeEdenfield Maybe @CreationEdge can?

can we look up who we voted for last time?

user132126

@JackBNimble I think I voted for both of them, just can't remember in the order. I remember going back and forth. I don't know whe my 3rd cohice was.

user132126

@randal'thor Hells yeah!

3:50 PM

@CreationEdge I'm guessing Phantom.

@Jack @Mike These claims that I should lose votes would probably be taken more seriously if they didn't come from my competitors ;-)

isn't that always where claims you should lose votes come from?

user132126

"Like Mike, I've also seen all the Star Wars movies and read all the Wheel of Time books. Elect me vice-Moderator!"

Apparently @CreationEdge is the demograph to win over.

@Ixrec Yes, go to the election tab for last year's election: scifi.stackexchange.com/election/3?tab=election

user132126

3:51 PM

@JackBNimble I honestly don't remember, but I do remember trying to put thought into it and making more than a drive-by vote.

> 3,039 voters were eligible, 1,442 visited the site during the election, 866 visited the election page, and 505 voted

1st choice - Thaddeus Howze
2nd choice - Richard
3rd choice - phantom42

I am happy with my past choices

user132126

Thad > Phantom > Alex

@Ixrec ... and dead to Jack.

again, there were many good options

3:52 PM

i now like CE better than ixrec

=(

Thad > Jack > phantom

user132126

@phantom42 "Widely endorsed by other candidates!"

user132126

Man, I'd make a great journalist!

I think I remember having Richard as 4th but he was "too new"

3:54 PM

i thought we could only vote for 3

I don't think I'd ever seen him answer a question at that point.

user132126

@MikeEdenfield I think that may have been part of my criteria. I figured the long-time guys knew how the place was run better.

@phantom42 technically, you only vote for one... But you get three options for that one.

really? I'm pretty sure I voted for Richard because he was one of the most prolific answerers on the site

no i mean it was between him and you for 3rd but I'd seen your posts more and you had been a member longer.

3:54 PM

I didn't know any of these guys personally back then

@Ixrec I had hp and sw and story-id on ignore.

oh, that might do it

@MikeEdenfield gotcha

i'd seen phantom and thaddeus on a lot of comics questions, IIRC.

user132126

@Ixrec Same. I didn't get a "feel" for their personalities until afterwards, and then moreso even later when I started using chat.

3:55 PM

@CreationEdge Other candidates? phantom isn't a candidate this year.

i started using chat because of the election.

@MikeEdenfield so you had what? like 5 questions on the site per week showing up?

user132126

@randal'thor This year!

i noticed that a lot of them kept mentioning it in their Q&A?

@phantom42 it was pretty dull, yes.

@randal'thor I'm still trying to figure out something clear to replace the Lights / Lumos Maxima line with anyways.

3:57 PM

@JackBNimble Also, what do kestrels have to do with anything?

@randal'thor You can travel by Kestrel.

4:08 PM

Anyway, that's not really why I'm here

→ 34 messages moved to Mos Eisley

3 hours later…

7:27 PM

well, that's about all the campaigning I can stomach today.

i'm voting for whomever has the best hairpiece.

Well... crap. I have thick lush natural hair.

7:54 PM

@JackBNimble Just style it in a combover.

3 hours later…

11:18 PM

Primary closes in 20 hours, then things start to get real.

Question for the current mods: do you feel that being a highly prolific answerer can fit well with being a mod? (not trying to be critical of anyone, just wondering)

Part of the reason I nominated myself was that I've already decided to step down my answering activity and spend more time on moderating the site, but apparently @JasonBaker plans to continue at his current rate even if he's elected.

trivia: when appointing mods, we try to avoid the top answerers because... Answering is really quite important. Not always possible, but still worth the effort to let folks do what they do best.

@randal'thor To be more clear (and less joking, which I mainly was), I intend to keep answering as much as possible

Modding would come first, though

11:34 PM

I assume it's inevitable that mods tend to be the prolific answerers because those are usually the people most devoted to the site in a constructive way that builds (real) reputation with the community

@JasonBaker I'm not doubting that. Just wondering if the norm for a mod (excluding a certain former mod) is to stop posting as much after they're elected.

@Ixrec When was the last time Keen or Kevin or ASR posted an answer?

Even Thaddeus has stepped down his answering in the last year or so.

I've definitely seen them post multiple times, can't remember when the last ones were

everyone looks inactive compared to Richard and DVK

They post less, but it still happens

They all have answered at least one question in this month.

Thaddeus has answered 4 questions so far this year.

Kevin appears to have only answered 1 question in 2015. He is definitely the least active in terms of answering questions.

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