How do I nominate others?

@GraceNote ^^?

@Pandya You can't, not directly. You can certainly encourage someone to run (preferably by finding them in chat or inviting them to chat, or maybe commenting on meta), but a mod has to nominate themselves for the election and write up a good description to show their willingness.

@DEAD I'm still active on Meta SE, actually. I just spend most of my time there reviewing.

I have to admit I'm somewhat puzzled that we apparently need not just one but two moderators. Is one of the existing mods retiring? (Maybe even two!)

@Pandya That's a FAQ, but, fact is, you can't nominate others.

It's a volunteer position, which starts with you nominating yourself.

@NathanTuggy I thought we were going to elect one. That's what I was told awhile back.

I'm not sure why that got bumped up to two, but I have a few theories:

a) that's what the rest of the mod team recommended

b) we have someone stepping down

c) the SE team looked at our traffic, and thought it would be better to elect two

@J.R. Yeah, if there was already going to be a new mod, but it got bumped to two, I'd expect it's probably because someone decided to retire.

d) with all the elections going on, they inadvertently said two instead of one

@GraceNote I'm hoping someone will solve the mystery for me soon, but maybe I'll be left wondering like everyone else

Anyway, I don't think any harm will be done either way. We have at least two qualified candidates.

At least I know if a mod is stepping down, it's not you.

I have no plans to step down. I hope they're not planning to remove me!

(I'm planning on writing up my nomination tomorrow, but I should have been in bed already. So I should probably get off now!)

Well, goodnight then. I'm glad to hear you're throwing your hat into the ring.

:)

Night!

@J.R. Esto

@J.R. That said, in light of this, I'll leave this choice open for the rest of the day - I can either set the seat count back down to the intended 1, or we can bring 2 into the fold instead to help just keep a stronger grip on the workload. No one has to step down.

Plans to remove @J.R.

@NathanTuggy You planning on running?

Woohoo, Jay nominated!

@DEAD (single-word request): Is that a coup, insurrection, mutiny, or rebellion?

:-)

@J.R. He's a good boy, he is... ;)

@GraceNote I'm wondering if anyone in the community has any feelings about this, one way or the other. The plan was to initially add one moderator; the announcement erroneously said two. Can anyone think of a reason why one would be better than two, or vice-versa?

(That said "@Grace" but it's really an open-ended question to anyone in the room)

@J.R. For me, it's a question of why having five would be an issue. The fact that we're having an election so soon tells me that you all need help... seems like having two new mods helping could only make things easier. Seems like the only potential downside is that it would be longer between now and the next election... but I don't really know if that matters much. If you end up with not enough to do, that's not really much of a complaint. :P

I am, of course, assuming that no one is planning to step down... but even if that's the case, the argument stands for 3 vs 4 just as much as it does for 4 vs 5.

No mods are stepping down

I think that having two slots will make it more likely that more people will nominate themselves. It's definitely made it more tempting for me. Considering my imminent parenthood, I'd never consider nominating myself if there were only one spot because I'd hate to take that spot, commit to helping out the site and then... because parenthood is more time consuming than I'm expecting, be unable to actually do what I've committed to... with two spots, I'm actually considering it...

Though, I've pretty much decided not to anyway...

I think I have too much ire towards the ELU question migration to trust myself with a close hammer.

Well, that's an interesting take. If two mods are elected to do the job of one, perhaps the commitment won't seem so overwhelming.

I can't think of any downside, either, but I wondered of any SE regulars knew of any instances where "too many" mods were elected, and what the negative effects might have been.

But it sounds like you have a lot of moderating to do in your future, whether you choose to run or not.

The only site that I use regularly that has lots of mods is ELU... and the downside there is that it seems like they look like they have a lot of mods but most of them are practically retired...

@J.R. Oh, sure. :D Different kind of moderation, though :P And I've got Arts and Crafts. Which is a good site. It will be good to see it grow.

Ugh... hit the wrong button... meant to reject and edit an edit suggestion and just rejected it instead and now it's stuck waiting for someone else to review.

When is the child due?

Friday :D

I raised four kids... became an empty nester last year. Come to think of it, that's probably where I learned 80% of my moderation skills.

The timing would make getting through the election itself difficult... can you imagine writing question responses to the mod questionnaire... it would be comedic.

@J.R. Awww, are you enjoying the free time or feeling lonely?

Two still live in the local area. If that weren't true, I think I would be feeling lonely.

That's nice :) Did the last of them go off to school or are they all past that?

The last one is about to start her junior year in college.

Hey, StoneyB. One mod or two?

(sorry to make you scroll up to get the full context)

@J.R. You could always pin the question if you want... or ask it on Meta. :D

@J.R. 'sOK -- First thing I do when I come on Chat is find out wtf people are talking about . . .

I suppose I could, but then why bother to have this nifty chat room? Given the name of this room, it seems like the ideal place to get a few initial thoughts.

I don't see how you can have too many moderators -- let's you all take vacations. I always worry about you guys checking in when you've got better things to do just to make sure the emergencies are covered.

Well, that's why I mentioned pinning it, first. :D

@StoneyB Ah, I see. Too many cooks spoil the broth, but more than enough moderators keeps them all sane.

Is it indiscreet to ask who's stepping down? --or are we expected to figure it out from veiled hints, like IDing trolls?

@J.R. You gotta have somebody stirring the stewpot to make sure it doesn't burn!

No one is stepping down.

We initially asked for one new moderator, but, with so many elections going on, the SE crew set the parameter to 2 instead of 1.

Now we have the option to ask them to change it back, or consider it a serendipitous typo.

Ah, I misread something above . . .

@StoneyB Also, the masses want you to run :P You still going to decline?

I've been thinking about it off-and-on for awhile now, but sat on the fence all day. Finally I decided to bring it up in this room and see what other folks thought.

@Catija Ayup. I know me better than most -- I'm given to fits of annoyance that would undermine mod decorum. They only keep me on at work because I write the most scathing snarky letters.

@StoneyB But scathing snarky letters are the best!

@DEAD I am indeed. Expect my nomination from the east at dawn… or something.

@Catija That's what I think, too, but it's hardly a recommendation for a post demanding patience and good humor.

@NathanTuggy YAY! Looks like (even without Stoney) we'll have a nice pack of nominations.

@Catija Yeah, I think you're right that two openings is more encouraging. Maybe we'll even get to 11 nominees!

Is "pack" the collective noun for moderation candidates?

@StoneyB Not all mods are patient and have good humor... trust me... I've talked to them... heck, even the CMs don't all fit that.

@NathanTuggy Hurrah! I was actually moved by the election over on ELU to run some of the numbers -- as far as I can tell, you single-handedly handle about an eighth of the reviews around here.

@J.R. It is now!

@StoneyB Wow, that's impressive.

@StoneyB I may be slightly obsessive ^^;

(Ironically, becoming a mod may actually bring balance to the force, in that I'd be backing off of several of the queues and only taking action in blatant cases.)

Ah, the magic number of 11. I've always thought that was set a little high.

(The 10, that is.)

@NathanTuggy Oh, so you mean more of us may get a shot? :P

@NathanTuggy "The force is strong with this one."

I'm bad with the queues, really... and I'm disappointed that only the votes in the queues count for anything. I vote to close a lot of stuff from the questions directly and they never show up in my queue to start with. It's weird... I try to go to the queue if I see a question that already has votes to close and it's not there, usually.

@Catija Yup!

Nathan, you want to weigh in on the 1 vs 2 question?

@J.R. I don't know why I'm making so many references today.

@J.R. Well, Catija already mentioned the main point, that it can draw out a better crowd, and I think someone also mentioned that it gives us better padding.

You don't have a counterpoint to their excellent points?

No, I agree with those, and think 2 is a nice number to have. Serendipity can be the single-word-request of the day!

@Catija I think there's a time limit on several queues. I know LQP won't show auto-flagged posts for a while, and I think CV won't show flagged/voted posts at all until they're a certain age.

(15 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that.)

@NathanTuggy Ah, I guess that makes sense. I just feel like I get penalized for acting quickly on bad content. :P

@GraceNote Let's consider it providence and leave it at 2. That's my vote.

Thanks everyone for being a sounding board.

@Catija Yeah, I know the feeling. I tend to take extra steps (opening in tabs) to make sure that if someone else grabs it quickly enough and gets it into the queue, I'll do my bit there, but otherwise I'll fall back on putting it in myself.

@Catija Good luck with your impending contractual obligations! ;^)

:D Thanks!

@J.R. One more thing: STV's main benefit is proportional representation, which you can't get with just one seat. So even the voting method works better with 2+.

@NathanTuggy Huh... interesting. Not something I'd thought of.

Howdy y'all, and congrats @Catija on impending parenthood! You are a braver person than I :)

@ColleenV Aww, thanks... now you've shown you have no excuse to not run... and clearly we think you should... so???

I came by to threaten y'all with me posting a question about every meta post I have marked as a favorite is someone doesn't actually start adding some candidate questions.

I'm on the fence - having a lot of drama at work. We just moved into these new crappy "open" offices, and we're having an enterprise-wide forced transition to "agile"

but the folks trying to force the migration don't really understand it lol

@ColleenV It's barely been 24 hours... we've still got time ... task master.

So there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I've got from primarily working on technical stuff to talking people down off of ledges

Bah, that's temporary. It will be over in a month... the election will take two weeks... that's half of a month. :P

But what if I'm potentially looking for a new job soon ? :) I'm still thinking about it. I see it as kind of a big commitment but maybe I'm making it bigger than it is

J.R. would be the best judge of that but I think the powers that be are pretty understanding when it comes to mod workload. Remember, it'd be five of you, so don't think you'll be on your own. If you need a break, you've got other people to help. :D

Now that you've shamed me by making me compare my silly work stuff with being responsible for shaping the mind of a little person ;)

@ColleenV You're another of our Hero Reviewers -- you're already doing a lot of the work already.

:) I worry about having power at the same time I have a "cranky day". Y'all might need a safe word

But on the other hand, nothing done here can't be undone

and I've had enough cranky days that I'm a pretty good apologizer

Except the tagging system.

ugh, I've been willfully blind about that lately

I can't believe "English" hasn't been blacklisted

Well, this is where I disagree with @DEAD -- he thinks it can be fixed, I think it has to be blown up.

But I've always been 'way out on the left tail of the curve.

Oh I'm done trying to fix it. I say burn it to the ground and start over.

@ColleenV HA HA HA... yeah... Seems that should have been one of the ones blacklisted from the start of the site.

I put in a good faith effort but at this point it's more work than it's worth to try to tweak it. We know what kind of questions we get and what tags learners are attracted to, let's make a new leaner set.

Honestly, I'm not sure we can really burn it to the ground, either, without even more work.

Unless we're willing to leave all the old questions untagged for a while while we figure it out, which doesn't seem like a good compromise.

Oh, look, it's Rand :P

We'd need help for certain. We make the tags we want, map the existing tags there (or delete them) and then run a script.

I think I've missed something. Is there an existing meta discussion I can review?

Yeahhhhhh.

Not so simple as that. The worst tags (grammar, meaning, &c) have so little meaning they can't be mapped without reading the question.

@Catija I don't think there is one discussion about the tagging, just an on-going series of "why do we have THIS tag" questions

@Catija Other than the discussions about grammar, meaning, etc? Not really.

Mods can do most of that themselves, from what I understand... We create synonyms and then merge the tags... then, when someone uses a tag, it gets auto-converted into the preferable one.

I think some would just have to be deleted, not mapped

@Catija @DEAD can prolly point you to the chat discussions; he was pretty much the retag champion.

then we'd have to do a pass to fix untagged

The only thing the mods can't do is blacklist... but if the site supports the blacklist with a meta discussion, the mods can point the CMs in that direction and they will ban the tag.

... but that's why the meta question is important. We need to be able to show broad support for it.

@J.R. I don't see how there could be any negative effects, honestly. The biggest drawback of overemployment usually is probably having to pay more wages, and that doesn't apply here.

@Randal'Thor You don't get paid?

@Catija If we could get every candidate to put it in her platform ... ?

@Catija No, but the best mods do :-) At least IMO.

I've got to run, but I'll be popping back in every so often. Have a good one y'all

Sorta like the Trans-Pacific agreement ...

@Randal'Thor If by "best" you mean "Community Manager", I guess? :P

@NathanTuggy oh yay! Then I can withdraw my nomination without worrying

@StoneyB oh well, I don't disagree anymore

Hullo all

@DEAD Oh now! You should still consider running!

@ColleenV Cya!

@StoneyB I mean this meta question... If someone could answer it with a good argument for why this should be blacklisted and it gets a lot of upvotes... then the CMs may blacklist it. Honestly, shouldn't be too much of a struggle.

@Catija Which is why when I see (for instance) a question that has some VTCs I'd like to add to, I often go to /review to add my VTC from there rather than doing it directly.

BTW will any of you guys nominate @Stone @Colleen?

@DEAD Don't! You're the Chat Delegate!

@J.R. Cosurrection or mubellion

And when it comes to First Posts, often I've already seen and considered it by the time I find it in the review queue. Which can lead to very quick reviews, which may have got me into trouble in the past ...

@StoneyB Grump grump fine

@Randal'Thor Right... but that's my point... it doesn't show up in review.

@DEAD Nomme. It conflicts with my personality disorder.

@DEAD Colleen said maybe. :D

Yeah yeah authoritarian crab and blah blah blah

@Catija Oh, that's a yes alright \o/

@Catija ? :-o

@Randal'Thor I posted that when you entered the room. :D

@NathanTuggy No, I meant best among mods. CM is a very different job in many ways.

@DEAD Noooo!

@Randal'Thor :P

@Catija Did she say "maybe", or "we'll see"?

I get paid in the love of my site minions.

He means me. I'm too good at my job my name isn't even blue

@NathanTuggy She put up a lot of work excuses that I tried to shush by saying she wasn't expected to do all the work herself.

Anyway, kinda weird that NVZ is running on ELL.

I mean, the two sites are of opposite culture in many ways

@DEAD I don't 'know' NVZ very well -- is he more active elsewhere?

@DEAD Indeed! With a candidate score of precisely 0.

@StoneyB Very active on ELU, like it says in his nomination. (He's also running in the current mod election there, as is DogLover.)

@StoneyB on ELU. He's a recent contributor though.

Also suspectedly one of whom dead rat calls CPVPV

He's also an active flagger across the network.

*deadrat

As is @DEAD, I think.

@Randal'Thor he's not dead :o

ELU seems to be going through one of its testy periods right now.

I'm only a cross-site flagger thanks to Smokey.

@StoneyB Those come in waves? I've never been there and had ELU not feel somewhat...unwelcoming.

@StoneyB Well, dunno how much you've missed, but there's this vocal group that favors very strict moderation.

@StoneyB I think ELU is too close-happy, and I'm going to vote accordingly in their election.

Their intentions are mostly noble, but I can't endorse their methods.

@Catija There are times when the testiness surges over the banks of decorum.

They've also caused quite some quarrels on meta.ELU

Their leader, Rathony, is suspended right now.

@StoneyB Well, you call yourself testy but I think you're nowhere near as testy as hot licks... I don't think I've ever seen a comment from him that's not mean.

@DEAD Yah, that's mostly what I'm thinking of.

@DEAD leader??

@Randal'Thor They came over to M&TV recently... meh.

@DEAD Every time I turn around, Rathony is suspended again. :(

@Randal'Thor this one holds torches, doesn't negotiate.

@DEAD I hadn't spotted that. But I can't follow either site right now as closely as I used to.

@NathanTuggy he doesn't care about anything other than the rules, not even people.

He's more robotic than our Dam in that regard.

@DEAD Well, let him be a cautionary tale then.

He's basically the user people want to complain about on the meta.

Eh, shrug

@Catija I saw.

At least he's moderating.

Still, I'm sure he's better than one or two other people I could mention whose usernames begin with the same letter.

@NathanTuggy well, I haven't seen anyone quite like him

Well, he's done a lot for ELU, for sure.

Anyway, I don't know that we really want our Election chat room to turn into a "complain about users room".

@DEAD Metas tend to have quarrels ... it's just a fact of life.

He's the vigilante if not the hero.

@Catija Hey, elections are the only time we get to "vote for the person, not the post" and make ad-hominem comments! :-P

@Randal'Thor you should consider reading meta.ELU from May 2016 to Jun 2016 and you'd admit it's unlike any other meta you've seen.

@Randal'Thor But we're not even talking about people on our site... mostly... There's some crossover... there's already some animosity between ELU and ELL... no need to make it worse. Any of those users could come in here and take issue with what's been said.

It's like cats fighting in the street deciding who to claw. Trump or Clinton

Clump or Trinton

@Catija OK. Let's complain about mods.

@Catija Yeah, really.

y did mod delete my questions

Although surprisingly, I don't see people on ELL do that.

@DEAD Vote to close as duplicate

@Catija Yeah, I agree with you really. But hey, I got myself on the starboard! :-)

@StoneyB now, this is oligarchy against forum-wide assessment.

@DEAD MOD ABUSE!

@DEAD Damn right. I'm a Fabian Socialist: I stoutly uphold oligarchy.

@Randal'Thor Well... technically, you were already on the starboard... But I see you have your priorities straight :P

@Randal'Thor goes to rant on meta.SE

makes rant as inflammatory as possible

@Catija I don't even have an ELL account (don't ask what the hell I'm doing in here :-P ), but I wonder if I'd get auto-awarded the "get starred in chat" badge if I set one up now?

As well as the 50-odd rep from an answer of mine which got migrated here a year ago.

@Randal'Thor you will, if the star remains

@Randal'Thor Is there ever a reason to not create an account? It increases your network rep count :P

The scripts watch what everyone does in a creepy way, so once they stumble upon you, they'll award the badge with extreme prejudice.

@Catija <table flip>

BTW, Cat, you running?

Here, I mean.

You possibly can't in real life right now.

@Catija Yes: I like to keep my accounts list uncluttered. I keep meaning to delete my PPCG account, and probably my MO and Lifehacks accounts too.

@DEAD I think no.

@DEAD :/

^^^ What happens when you join all sites.

@Randal'Thor OK, well... there's a difference between having 10-20 accounts and having all the accounts...

@Catija p_p

@DEAD I want to but I don't think it's in the best interest of the site. I have this weird hangup with the migrations from ELU that doesn't match with how J.R. sees them and I don't think it's something I could leave alone. As a plebe, me having this migration ire doesn't matter... as a mod, it would.

Anyway I'm not sure if I really want to participate on ELL ... it'd be easy to get rep here, but I'd keep wanting to close all the questions for being too trivial ...

ELU has migrated 212 questions here in the last 90 days and 13% have been rejected and very few of them have even met the minimum quality requirement of having been edited and made to at least look nice before being sent here.

@Randal'Thor ELL is pretty weird. You can see that you're able to answer almost everything, but then decide to answer none.

Esp. if you have high standards for an answer.

@Catija This will sound harsh, but ... from ELU's point of view, many of ELL's questions are crap.

Well, that's common knowledge.

When VTCing on ELU, I tend to prefer the migration option to simply closing outright as insufficiently researched, since at least the poor OP is more likely to get an answer to their question that way.

I, as an ELLer, think we should do much more editing than we do.

We don't edit much for obvious reasons: We can't get an edit right.

What tags should I choose?

Should I edit the asker's grammatical errors or not?

@Randal'Thor That's sorta the attitude the ELU panjandra had when they ran ELL up the flagpole. John Lawler was about the only person over there who realized that the problem with those questions wasn't that they were too trivial but that they were so fundamental that most native speakers couldn't see what the question was.

etc etc.

Questions that metals usually adequately address.

But not on ELL.

*metas

Stupid autocorrect

@Randal'Thor Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they look like crap. They send shit here like we're a toilet... they don't even bother to format anything before they send it.

How does migration actually work? Does a question get auto-migrated and reposted when it gets enough source votes, or does it get reviewed by mods?

@StoneyB Auto-migrated if at least 4/5 close votes are for migration.

@StoneyB Sure, they're not necessarily trivial for non-native speakers. But I'd just be so tempted to answer many of those questions with "go and learn English properly" :-P

@DEAD Seems pretty apropos for you though!

@StoneyB None of the above. ELU has a migration path to ELL. All it takes is three out of five close votes to be for migration for something to be migrated here and it appears on the site immediately.

@NathanTuggy It's actually only three.

@Catija Really? When did that get changed?

@StoneyB It's like closure, but the tossing is aimed at another site, rather than the waste basket.

@NathanTuggy Pretty sure it's been like that for a while.

@Catija Unfortunately, most people don't bother to edit a post before migrating it. Even when they're mod-migrated, a lot of the time, let alone migrated by five different voters.

@NathanTuggy Which is exactly what they're trying to do.

@Randal'Thor That goes against the RULES of migration. The very basic rule is DON'T MIGRATE CRAP.

@DEAD This makes me want to go back to talking about Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn.

You know that rule.

Hmm ... we need an ELLis Island.

@Catija Oh I see what the deal is. It's 4 on SO, 3 elsewhere.

sadface.

@Catija To be fair, though, most migrated questions (or at least mod-migrated ones) don't get edited because they're already non-crap, not because the migrater doesn't bother decrappifying them first. If they were crap, they wouldn't get migrated at all.

@Catija I know that rule, yes. How many non-mods do?

@Randal'Thor It's been raised repeatedly on ELU meta.

@Randal'Thor currently the top voted question on ELU meta is from snailvehicle telling them not to send garbage to ELL

@NathanTuggy Ah, yeah, that makes sense.

It's always been a fundamental problem with ELU.

Even then one of the answers argued that it's not their job to take care of trash themselves.

@StoneyB And how many casual close-voters on ELU actually read ELU meta?

@Randal'Thor The problem is that half of the voters on ELU have no clue what the scope on ELL is... I've told many of them "Hey, this is actually off topic on ELL, too" and they've been "oh, hey, thanks... I didn't know that". Then WTF are you saying it's on topic on ELL if you don't know what's on topic here?

@Catija Yeah ... I'm probably guilty of that at times, when VTCing on ELU ...

@Randal'Thor all of them

A very large proportion of the core users over there are wannabe English professors, who feel themselves 'above' teaching learners -- they promoted ELL as a trashcan. (And TPTB almost shut ELL down before it reached Beta because they didn't like the idea of having a trashcan site.)

There's a sort of unspoken assumption on ELU that any old crap is fine on ELL :-P

Our problem, on the other hand (meaning me, too), is that we're all wannabe English schoolteachers without having any qualifications for the position.

@StoneyB I wonder if in a couple of years from now, ELL is going to have the same problems as Programmers ...

Alright, I gotta sleep. Night all o/

@StoneyB Amusing since there's another site that's constantly complaining about being SO's trash can.

@Randal'Thor ELL already looks like the front page of SO in many ways.

@Randal'Thor Yeah, that's the one.

@DEAD Sweet dreams, guy.

@DEAD Night!

@DEAD Good night, don't let the chemical elements bite.

@Catija Programmers is still trying to reinvent itself even now. They've been pushing for a name change for a long time, and I think there's a lot of friction between the userbase (including mods) and SE. Several active users have upped and left over it.

@DEAD Night!

Anyway, we've veered way off topic by now ...

@Randal'Thor There's been some progress on that front, though.

Maybe not... Perhaps a candidate question is in order in regards to this relationship with ELU.

I would be interested in such a question's answer @Catija

I console myself about the migration of bad stuff with statistics though. Statistically, we get more usable questions that not migrated. It's just that the bad ones are soooo obviously bad :(

@ColleenV Yeah, although the statistics have drifted over time; at first it was like 6% rejections

True... but I feel that sometimes we're a bit nice about keeping the questions here...

Leaving it at 2 then

Ah, Hey Grace Note! :D Any thoughts on our "blacklist english"?