// Welcome here, have a virtual seat, a virtual drink and relax :-)

// 3 of you went through interviews for the blog, so you have an idea how it goes

// Both questions and answers will be compiled to the blog post as they appear here (with possibly some typo/language corrections, links, etc.)

// Since it is sometimes useful to make a meta comment, we will be using C++-like style, meaning...

// Everything following a double slash '//' will be taken as a meta comment.

// For comments in the middle of text, /* they should be surrounded by slash-stars, like this */

// I prepared a few questions. But seeing that we are 5, I think some rules can be set

// For one, since some of you will be at work or otherwise busy, we won't wait necessarily until everyone answered each question

// After a time that I'll judge reasonable, I'll ask the next one :)

// But to avoid confusion, each of my questions will be numbered. So I ask you to always include the number at the beginning of your comments. You can choose the style you prefer. That way, you could add some details at a later stage. And if you are busy some minutes, you can still answer previous points

// As an example, we get the following: /*

1. How do you view the social life of ducks of Laponia?

1) I think it's great

1- meh, they talk about fish all the time

// */ Done. I hope it is clear?

// Are you there? Ready? Do you have any question?

// Seems reasonable

My very real non-virtual water is with me.

very good. I have a tea as well, and I'm sitting on my sofa. So for me those are non-virtual at all... ;-)

//I'm here

//Giant coffee mug at the ready

// Is that alright to wait until 21:00?

I might be out of the office by then -- at a training right now, done w/ all the exercises, but I can see if I can wait here

//waiting is fine tho

I'm here all evening

I guess it's easier for Tim and me, back at home... :)

// Format works for me. Also, I see now that Serban might have to leave early, so we could start and then suspend when HDE needs his 15 minutes off if that works better. Whatever. :-)

// @HDE226868 ^^^ ?

// Yeah, I just noticed he's not currently in the other chat room. Oops.

// Never mind, saw he was in the room then left so he knows about it

// As I said, I am at home, watching some TV, sitting on a sofa drinking a tea. So whatever works for you

//I'm still here

//ok, can we start please @bilbo_pingouin

// Fine for me... @HDE226868 (not yet back?) @MonicaCellio @TimB ?

// ok by me

@bilbo_pingouin // ok.

// ok, as Serban is leaving soon (as I understand?) and HDE should be back shortly (as I understood), I think we will start, and he may be able to catch up...

// 3... 2... 1...

1. First of all, congratulations on the election and thanks for agreeing to that group interview.

// Okay, I'm here.

1. Thank you. I'm glad to see so much interest in our community.

// Great :) so now, whenever you want :)

1. Thanks. This should be fun.

1. Thanks! Looking forward to it

2. Three of you were already interviewed for the blog, but maybe to keep things together, you would write one or two sentences about yourselves?

// You can link those interviews in the final post if you like.

// starting from now, I'll have the questions in bold :) @TimB

//ohboy

// yes, that was my plan... but maybe some people are more interested in the mods... and having it together would be nice

2. I'm Monica, one of the pro-tempore moderators who served during the beta. I'm an experienced Stack Exchange moderator and an inquisitive worldbuilder. I've written some fiction and played in some RPGs, and I love learning.

2. I'm Serban, I live in DC, but I'm originally from Romania. My sister has a summer cottage a few miles from Dracula's castle and I visit the place religiously. Professionally, I'm a former methods-oriented political scientist now working in the private sector, but I think I never managed to grow up so part of me is still a teenager that grows giddy thinking of Robots and Dwarves.

2. I'm HDE 226868, a student at a STEM high school in the Northeastern US, going into astrophysics in college. I'm mainly interested in science, as many of my answers on Worldbuilding have shown, but I also like a range of other topics, which is why I like Worldbuilding so much.

// Tim went away it seems... ^^"

@SerbanTanasa ooh, robots and dwarves and Dracula -- just sayin'. :-)

3. Before we get to your new responsabilities, I think it would be interesting to know more about you as a Worlbuilding users. Curious or Worldbuilders?

// As Monica showed, feel free to interact whenever you want... :)

// @SerbanTanasa, Are you on Worldbuilding because you are actively building a world, or is it just because you like the question and challenges... ?

3. I started out as just being curious, but over the past year or so, since I joined Worldbuilding, I've become a worldbuilder, creating a couple small worlds, mainly medieval fantasies.

3. Both! I've been writing short stories and sketches since I was a teenager. Never published anything since I came to the United States, but never stopped worldbuilding. Finding this community a year ago was a great boon to me. I've gotten a lot of feedback on important details of my worlds from the community...

3. Like HDE 226868, I started out mostly curious but have found myself using the site more and more to actually build worlds. Maybe there were problems that I just never thought I could solve before, but now I have people to ask.

4. Can you name your 3 favourite tags?

4. That's easy for me. I would say astronomy, stars, and hard-science.

4. science-based, magic & alternate-history. I was tempted to say hard-science but I think it intimidates regular users

4: society (sometimes I can answer those), planets (I ask about those), religion (general interest).

@SerbanTanasa Yeah, that's a good assessment of hard-science's first impressions.

But it's hard to pick just 3.

@MonicaCellio yes, that is part of the exercise. My first idea was only one, though ;-)

5. Can you tell us which are your most active online communities outside of Worldbuilding.SE (in or out the SE Network)?

5. Definitely History of Science and Mathematics, and Mythology, both of which I'm a pro tom mod on. I'm also active on Astronomy, Physics, and Meta Stack Exchange. Outside of SE, I'm not too active, which I find helps productivity. :-)

//sorry, I'm replying a bit late but will catch up now

1. Thanks for organizing it, fun idea :)

5. I go to a lot of data-science meetups in the DC area. They get pretty big and time-intensive. I've done talks in front of hundreds of people on Python and R as well as data integration tools, both open-source and commercial. It takes time to prepare, since if you're wrong you're likely to get called out on it. Other than that, I'm a huge fan of Escape Rooms.

5. Several SE sites led by Mi Yodeya (the Judaism site). Outside of SE: Livejournal, Dreamwidth, and I've been getting to know Medium in recent months because of our blog.

//How many questions do you have :)

2. I'm Tim B. I mostly make my living as a programmer but I'm also a freelance writer on the side. I've always had an interest in worldbuilding so when I saw this site in the Beta I jumped right in and haven't looked back since.

(In person: my congregation, and the SCA.)

// 10+1 :)

3. I use the site to explore ideas, some have gone straight into short stories but others just bubble away in my mind until I need them.

// Tim, I go on, just for Serban... but you will be able to catch up I think...

6. After a bit more than a year in beta, Worldbuilding.SE graduated to become a full-fledge site (within the SE Network). This lead to the first moderator election of the site. Some details of the election have already been shared on the blog. Can you tell us if it was your first election on stack exchange? As candidate?

4. I don't really do favorites, not in anything. I don't even have a favorite color. I'm most active in science-based but that's also the most active tag we have so doesn't mean anything. Really I'm just after interesting ideas no matter what tag they are in.

6. This was my third election as a candidate. I'd have to count badges to figure out how many I've voted in.

6. Yup. And not by accident. World Building has become my highest rep stack. On other stacks, usually others have already asked or answered the questions I care about. In Worldbuilding, the possibilities are endless, and often a great single question or answer can send me on an hour-long reverie.

5. I've got a fair reputation on Stack Exchange but other than that I don't really get involved in many internet communities. I'm in a lot of Skype groups where we talk about stuff and run RPG games and suchlike but they are all less than ten people.

6. Yeah, this was my first election on Stack Exchange, as a candidate, which was pretty cool. It was also the first election I've seen held on one of the sites I'm most active on.

7. Why did you choose to be candidate for that election?

5. I've been active in Open Source Software Development in the past, projects like jME3 which is a Java 3d games engine. Recently I've not had time to do much but I am still on the contributor groups for that.

6. This is the first time I've stood, assuming you don't count being nominated for pro-tempore moderator!

// you tell me if the pace is too high... I only have to copy-paste my questions...

//If you want side chatter you will need to slow down :p

7. That's a good question. In my nomination spiel, and maybe in the candidate Q+A questions on meta, I think I wrote about how I think the site needs to get a better image out on other Stack Exchange sites (and the Internet at large). I felt (and feel) like I can do that really well; I have experience on a lot of sites that are related to our scope.

7. Partly it was for continuity - we had a good moderator team and I wanted to try and help make sure a decent number of us were in the next team. Partly it was because I've been so involved in the site from the start that I feel attached to it and want to help it continue to grow.

// Yeah, I guess, it's just that Serban mentioned he had to leave, I did not want to slow things too much :)

@HDE226868 Your election results were remarkable, is there anything in particular you'd attribute that too or do you think it's just your overall well regarded profile across Stack Exchange?

@TimB I have absolutely no idea. I was just as surprised as anyone else that I did so well.

7. Worldbuilding is a cool community full of bright people. I can't answer nearly as many questions as others, but I found moderating the site to be a comfortable and fun niche too, a way that I can do good things and stay connected with all the people and activity here. Tim's comment about feeling attached to the community resonates for me.

7. Haha, partly because I'm a data hound, and mods get access to more and fresher data, and partly because I decided I wanted to have more influence in the direction in which the community was moving.

8. How did you live that election? And what are your feelings about it?

// I sometimes find frustrating not knowing if others are currently typing... it was the same when we tried some RPG on chat back then... ;)

// not sure what you mean by "how did you live"?

// Note that it's ok for me to continue the discussion on a previous question, even if I asked a new one, that's also why numbers can be used

// @MonicaCellio hm... I guess... the translation does not work... hmm... how was the election for you, how did you go through it, etc...?

8. I thought it was fun, I particularly loved the primary stage. Here in the US we are also going through a political season, and I'm a political scientist ... I admit I may have used a teensy bit of game theory to calculate my odds before and after the primary. The low proportion of downvotes I got compared to the other candidates, in particular, was a good sign.

8. Well, it was my first time through, so it was exciting. I had no idea - even after the primaries - how it would end. Besides the election chat room, and the processes of voting and writing the nomination and answers to questions on meta, I put it out of my head for the most part.

// can anyon remember the name of the guy who was compiling stats at the start of the election?

// Hohmannfan

8. It was exciting. I never expected to see so many strong candidates. I knew I had some fans and being a pro-tem gave me an edge, but I was not at all confident that I would win a seat in the end.

8. There was a real buzz about the election, lots of people talking about it and comparing stats and writing javascript to scrape live stats out of the site. There was even Hohmannfan compiling stats by hand for the first day of the primaries!

@bilbo_pingouin //Thanks

@TimB yes, it was fascinating to watch the election chat room during the primary.

@MonicaCellio Yeah, when I saw the results of the primaries I was reasonably confident but really we had no way to be sure those results would carry through into the final results.

@TimB the voting schemes are so different between the primary and the election that I didn't know what to expect. This was my third election but my first primary.

My main worry was that you, HDE and myself were so far ahead that everyone would tactically vote for the 4th spot and we'd lose a lot of votes that way. Fortunately STV seems to have prevented that as we still got a good number of votes. Nearly 2/3rds of the voters voted for two of us along with someone not in the top three but there's no way to know if that was tactical or their actual preference.

@SerbanTanasa /* Since it seems no one else does it, I have to ask: */ and did the calculated odds turn correct?

@TimB, I'm very grateful to all of you tactical voters out there :)

@TimB That was why I didn't know how things would turn out.

@TimB I wonder how different the race would have been if the election had allowed choosing four. @SerbanTanasa, any speculation?

8. But really as was said many times the pool of candidates was so strong that anyone would have been a good choice. I do think it's a shame that Michael (our other Pro Tem mod who stood) didn't make it through as he did do a lot of good work for the site but equally having fresh insights is valuable and Serban and HDE are both excellent additions to the team.

// Just if you don't remember, yes, almost 2/3 of the voters (183) voted for 2 of you... I don't know their reasons though

@bilbo_pingouin, it was a Bayesian range of probabilities, updated through new relevant information. It was a range and the result was within the updated post-primary range, so, short answer, yes.

9. One week ago, you learned of your election. I suppose that was a great moment. Can you tell us how were your first days? Two of you continued from pro-tem, so it is business as usual? One of you started as a moderator on WB, but has previous experience on other sites, how do you view the difference? And for one, it is a jump in the moderation bath, if I'm not mistaken. How was it to discover all those new buttons?

@MonicaCellio, STV often has similar results to a normal n-past-the-post election, especially when the 3 of you were so far ahead of the pack, and I had a big lead in 1st votes compared to other candidates

9. As you say really it was business as usual. I said hi to the new moderators but they don't really seem to have needed any help settling in.

9. From my point of view the main thing is working on the site scope discussions that took a back seat during the election.

9. I was, um, not very productive at work that day, exploring all the new tools and features. I have been doing, if anything, less moderation, since my close and flag votes are now binding...

9. Monica and Tim made it pretty easy for me (and Serban, I think). Worldbuilding is a step up from HSM and Mythology in terms of all the stuff to do (higher flag counts, for one!). But I was familiar with the tools, so it wasn't too hard. It was better than when I started out on HSM!

@SerbanTanasa Yes, in general moderator policy on Worldbuilding has been to not do anything that the community can do unless it's something really clear cut like a blatantly off topic question or spam that needs destroying with a vengeance.

9. Mostly business as usual. I tried to keep an eye out in case our new team members needed any tips (particularly Serban, who wasn't already familiar with the tools), but they figured things out pretty quickly on their own. I also tried to leave a couple easy flags for them to handle, just to get settled and all.

@SerbanTanasa Yeah, the tools are pretty cool.

@MonicaCellio Hah, I did that too. We had a lot of flags come in one day and I cleared half of them and left half active.

@TimB it sometimes seems like you get to most of what are, for us, the overnight flags before the rest of us even wake up and see them. I blame time zones.

@MonicaCellio Yeah, quite possibly. I think I'm active a good few hours before most of you and it makes a difference on flag count.

@bilbo_pingouin, Worldbuilding has a great number of active hi-rep users who help with moderation, and a rather polite culture. Aside from the occasional bot/spam spill, not much to clean up, really.

10. We now want to look ahead. What is the future of Worldbuilding.SE?

10. Well, now that I'm a moderator...

@SerbanTanasa comments, sometimes. When you read a post and are greeted with "read 39 more comments", it's usually time to move it to chat.

10. Well, that's both hard and easy to answer. Easy because we carry on as before, and hopefully continue to grow. Hard because that's not really a very interesting answer.

@SerbanTanasa LOL. You should have had that as your campaign speech. You'd have got in no problem with how Worldbuilders love blowing stuff up.

10. Worldbuilding has been through an active beta and has about doubled its daily question count since graduating. We're bumping into questions about scope and trying to work that out now. Our challenge is to resolve the biggest questions, keep up the activity, and keep everybody happy about the outcome. (That's a broad "our" -- the community, not just the mod team.)

10. I think it depends not so much on us but strongly on the ongoing scope discussions. I'm glad we're having them; they seem to be a strong positive shift for the site, and I think they'll lead to great things. But there's a bumpy road ahead before we can sort it all out.

10. On a more serious note, as more and more questions accumulate, there will likely be more duplicates. As more users arrive, outside of a small dedicated community of those who actively created and sought out this place, we'll likely have a lower average quality of first posts. So more work, possibly more mods...

I look forward to more wiki posts, I'm already mulling over a list of possible candidate questions...

@MonicaCellio Yes, I think one of the big reasons for the success of Worldbuilding is that so much of it is driven by the community as a whole, Moderators most of the time are acting in a guiding role and letting the community get on with making the site great.

11. Finally do you have some comments you would like to make?

@TimB yup. The moderation job sometimes involves being the disciplinarian, which isn't fun, but there's less need for that than on some other sites. It's great that the community self-moderates so well.

// We're all deep in thought, it looks like.

11. Looking forward to serving the World Building community!

11. Worldbuilding is graduating, we've had elections. We're getting a new site design. The site is busier than ever, I can't wait to see where we've got to a year from now if the past year is any indication.

//ok guys, i gotta run

12. Thank you for agreeing to that interview. I am sure our readers join me to wish you and the site all the best.

@SerbanTanasa // thanks for being here!

// ^^^ That was my last, so that Serban can see it before leaving :)

11. I'm really looking forward to seeing where our awesome people take this site from here.

12. Thanks for organising this @bilbo_pingouin . It's not something we've done before but I think it worked well.

// "awesome people" should link to that SE blog post that I'll find later.

// and anyone can take their time to answer the last two :)

12. @bilbo_pingouin, thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

11. I'm looking forward to an awesome future for Worldbuilding Stack Exchange.

12. Thanks for having us; it's been great to be here.

12. @bilbo_pingouin thank you for organizing this. It was a lot of fun.

@MonicaCellio I have it in a recent meta post :)

@bilbo_pingouin // oh ok, then I'll let you get it. :-)

// and I guess we're done :)

// good timing, cos I've gotta run too :)

// That worked out well. And I trust HDE didn't have to do it on his phone.

// Nope, fortunately!

// was nice, thanks a lot... I'll compile it tomorrow into a medium post

// Sounds good. I don't think the threads got too tangled, so with luck it won't be a hard editing job for you.

// Yeah, the format definitely works. :)

and being able to reply to specific messages should make the threads easier to track

// and I'll send you the link so that you can check... I'll submit it to the blog queue immediately so that HDE and Monica can edit it as well...

// Now I know a liiittle bit of C++ formatting. It's quite helpful.

// It was kind of like the town-hall chats they used to do for elections before the questionnaire, but less chaotic.

right, goodnight all

@TimB good time zone!

@HDE226868 works for Java, javascript, and several others ;)

// should be alright to put it back. I think. Going to bed as well, nice evening/night :)

@bilbo_pingouin // yeah, I was writing comments like this long before C++. :-)

actually C originally had // only

and C is from the 70s... ;)

Oh, I didn't know that /* ... */ was a later addition. But I wasn't writing C in the 70s, either.

later with C++ the multiline /* */ was introduced. Most C compilers accept them though

were you really writing code long before C++ ?

as info, C++ appeared for the first time in 1983... ;-)

Not counting stuff used only in university, my progression was: Lisp, C, C++, Java. (Yes, I actually got paid to write in Lisp. Loved that language!)