2016 Puzzling Moderator Election

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Peanut

01:46

Hello.

Doorknob

7 hours later…

CodeNewbie

09:08

We have 11 nominees and only a little more than half have positive votes at the moment. Will we still have 10 nominees in the election phase?

Kalissar

09:45

Hello everyone

I was wondering, why does a moderator participate in a mod election ?

Deusovi

10:14

@Kalissar: When the election is over, the only moderators will be the three with the most votes. If a current mod doesn't get enough votes, then they do not stay as a mod.

ᴊᴀᴠʏ

10:40

Hi,
how number of moderator positions is determined? why are we electing exactly 3 mods?

2 hours later…

Lord of dark

12:29

I think it's determined by SE staff, they talk with current mods to evaluate the need of the site

A: Make the number of free moderator positions in an election semi-flexible

One option I think would work well would be to put the decision to increase the number of slots when the election is finished to the existing moderators. We already consult the existing moderators when determining the number of available slots. Electing a rogue moderator isn't really a con...

Sid

12:45

Where do we ask questions to would be-moderators??

Deusovi

13:03

@Sid: There was a question thread here, but the questions have been posted already:

Q: 2016 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary. The purpose of this thread was to collect...

I'd be happy to answer any questions if you want my take on things though c:

2 hours later…

Lord of dark

15:22

Let's look at some funny statistics about our candidates :

The number of upvote, downvotes and percentage of upvotes

Marius : 403 up - 18 down - 95.7% upvotes
GentlePurpleRain : 1495 up - 116 down - 92.8% upvotes
ABcDexter : 1263 up - 4 down - 99.7% upvotes
TheGreatDuck : 75 up - 3 down - 96.1% upvotes
Travis Kindred : 56 up - 14 down - 80% uptoves
Emrakul : 1659 up - 2045 down - 44.8% upvotes
Alconja : 648 up - 96 down - 87% upvotes
AeJey : 543 up - 34 down - 94% upvotes
Deusovi : 1340 up - 836 down - 61.5% upvotes
manshu : 972 up - 117 down - 89.2% upvotes
Peanut : 10 up - 5 down - 66.7% upvotes

user61230

15:45

@CodeNewbie This might be a question for @GraceNote?

Grace Note

16:21

@Emrakul Looking this up now - I remember it being one way (namely, it doesn't matter how low, the top 10 go on) but I remember it coming up as a discussion at one point due to community concern so I want to look up and be sure whether or not we actually changed anything.

@CodeNewbie Yes. It'll be 10 candidates always, we'll take the top 10 in a pure vote score sort, no exclusions. (had Shog help me look it up)

GentlePurpleRain

16:56

Wow, I totally misunderstood this phase of the election. I thought votes on the question responses determined who moved on to the election proper, when in fact it is the votes on the election page. It makes so much more sense now... :)

Grace Note

The questions are an entirely optional system that the votes are mostly not even needed, wahaha~

Some sites actually have people discourage voting on the answers so that there's no visible bias on the Q&A, but we don't really have a means to mechanically enforce that sort of thing.

Sid

So, we vote in the primary phase.So, we cast our vote again in the Election phase?? I mean, we have already cast our vote once, why do it again??

GentlePurpleRain

@Sid I know, eh? It seems a little redundant. It would make sense if the Election phase only allowed a single vote, but as far as I understand, it's basically a recap of the Primary phase, but with one less candidate...

CodeNewbie

17:40

@GentlePurpleRain: One less candidate in our case. On bigger sites, it can reduce the list of candidates 3 to 4 times, so it does make sense from an overall SE perspective.

GentlePurpleRain

@CodeNewbie I don't think it really makes a difference. If I'm casting a vote for someone in the primary, chances are pretty good I'm going to cast a vote for them in the election as well. If there are 50 candidates, why not just let people vote, and then pick the top 3 most-voted candidates?

CodeNewbie

17:52

@GentlePurpleRain Sure, you are almost certainly going to vote for the same candidate if he makes it past the primary. But if your favourite candidate is ousted at the primary phase, it gives you another chance to take your pick. (Which IMO is good)

GentlePurpleRain

@CodeNewbie Which totally makes sense if you only have one vote. But in a situation with 50 candidates here, I could vote for 33 of them in the primary, and then vote again for whatever subset of those make it through to the election (say 7). Those 7 people would be getting exactly the same votes from me in both the primary and the election.

Grace Note

@GentlePurpleRain Incorrect

In the election phase, you only have 1 vote

You can split this vote up between up to 3 people

GentlePurpleRain

@GraceNote Ah. I didn't realize that. That makes a lot more sense, then.

Grace Note

But it's only one vote, and only supportive.

GentlePurpleRain

@GraceNote While I have you here, can you comment on the number of moderators? Is there any chance of us having more than 3, especially if some of them say they have limited time available?

Grace Note

17:57

The goal of the primary phase is to cull down the candidate pool to a smaller amount - up to 30 people can nominate on a site, but you can only really vote amongst 10. Primary cuts that up-to-30 to 10 by having people just say "I think others should have the chance to support this person" or not. If there are 10 or fewer candidates in the first place, we just skip primaries.

@GentlePurpleRain We can assign additional moderators as necessary if the actual loads of the site aren't being met.

GentlePurpleRain

@GraceNote So we start with 3 and then see how things go? Makes sense.

Grace Note

If the election was recent, we can pull runner ups until about half the candidate pool (it varies a lot based on the size of the election and how voting actually went). After that point, or if the election is not recent, we just host a new election for as many new slots as needed.

5 hours later…

Alconja

23:01

For anyone interested in how votes are actually tallied in the final election phase

211

Q: How are moderator election votes counted, in plain English?

The election pages' sidebars state that Stack Exchange elections use the Meek STV vote-counting method: After m days, the final voting results will be freely downloadable from this page forever, and we will calculate the n winners using OpenSTV with the Meek STV method. How does that work? ...