2016 Physics Stack Exchange Election

anna v

03:57

scanned through this and the "ineligible..". I do not take closure as so negative a state as it seems in the discussion with ACuriousmind . Closed questions are still there and the existing answers can be useful. Since this site is open to search engines it is good if there are some upvoted answers even to vague and badly defined questions.

So I view the "close" label as part of the grading level together with the voting system. BUT I would like a grace period in closure. Sometimes I am in the middle of writing and have to stop and put it in comments . It is good to have clarifications of misunderstood concepts, since the question can come up in a search

anna v

05:53

I am trying to find what type of physics the candidates have been working on, and cannot find it. The user profiles do not say for some of them ( have not looked at all of them) . It would be good if a short list of main physics interests is given with the information.

IMO there are two kinds of physicists ( not sharply separated, think of gaussians with overlaps). The ones who come from a mathematical frame, who really are platonists, they believe that mathematics creates reality. The other set is the ones who believe that nature/reality exists, and mathematics models reality.

I find the site is top heavy with the first set of people, both answering and questioning. As an experimentalist I belong to the second set, which finds mathematical models as beautiful and enlightening, but still models of reality and not molds for reality.

It would be good to get a second experimentalist on the moderator team is what I am driving at, to keep a balanced eye, but cannot find the information.

Jim

13:15

@annav I'm a theorist from the second set. I come from an engineering background, which is kind of like the opposite of coming from mathematics. So you can be sure I see nature as existing and math as modelling it

Dendi Suhubdy

Any thoughts on the Nobel Prize winners of 2016?

Jim

For what it's worth, it's good to see rob throw his hat into the ring. I think he would make an excellent mod. My only hesitation in electing him comes from the fact that he regularly contributes excellent quality material to the site. I don't want to see the added responsibilities of being a mod interfere with that, either through time or by restraining him from saying what may or may not need to be said.

@DendiSuhubdy not really. Also, that's a question you should pose in the hbar

Dendi Suhubdy

Sorry Jim. My bad

Jim

don't worry about it

anyway, back to what I was saying. I'm pretty sure my worries are unjustified and that rob can manage being a mod and contributing top-quality material, but if I had to choose (if it was an XOR), I'd prefer to keep someone writing great answers than to turn them into a great mod.

rob

13:33

I'm an experimentalist, with an interest in using symmetry violations to answer high-energy questions in low-energy experiments. The two answers which are probably closest to my research area are this bounty-awarded answer about the weak interaction contribution to nuclear binding and this answer about the weak charge.

Here's another answer about why my favorite trick wouldn't work to measure atom-atom gravity.

Note that these answers contain enough information for an internet sleuth to figure out my last name, if that kind of thing arouses you.

@Jim My contribution frequency has fallen off recently for other reasons. (That gravity answer, from 2014, is something that I might not manage to make time to write today.)

Jim

@rob which makes my concerns even more unnecessary

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating myself over you. I just simply would hate to lose good contributions over good moderation

The same argument might work against me as mod (although I'm hardly qualified to judge that)

Qmechanic

15:04

@annav : FWIW, most theoretical physicists that I know (including myself) view Nature and experiments as the ultimative arbiter/test of whether a given model (such as, e.g., string theory) is true or false, not, say, its mathematical beauty (whatever that means).

ACuriousMind

@annav I don't think mathematics shapes reality, but I am mathematically-minded in the sense that I can find models interesting even if they do not correspond to reality. That is, only part of my interest in theoretical physics comes from the actual physics.

anna v

@ACuriousMind I guess I am thinking of the large number of times when lay person questions are answered with QFT, of the type, "everything is fields and disturbances on these fields" as if it the the ultimate reality

ACuriousMind

15:21

Ah, well, I think whether that is appropriate or not depends on the question. There are some "lay" questions where the asker implicitly or explicitly uses QFT notions (like virtual particles), then such answers are necessary, but there are also some where the answers perhaps go unnecessarily complicated in their explanation

David Z

@GraceNote oh, just him? I thought he did it in cooperation with the SE team.

user128101

15:42

@annav, it is not only that, do you think anybody can be more explicit that **world is moulded by theorems** ? : "*More or less by definition, energy is that which is conserved unter time translations **by Noether's theorem**. If what you call "mechanical energy" has changed, then there is another term in the Noetherian energy that has changed correspondingly, such that the total energy is conserved.
Questions like "Has the kinetic energy been destroyed?" are, from the Noetherian viewpoint, essentially meaningless,...*"

Sir Cumference

15:56

Huh?

Danu

@Qmechanic The real question is whether someone cares about truth/falsehood :D

(I sure don't)

David Z

Hi all, time for our chat session with the moderator candidates!

Danu

@DavidZ So during this chat session, are we allowed to talk at all except questions/follow-ups?

David Z

This is a chance for people to ask any questions of the candidates, going beyond those on the questionnaire on meta

@Danu I would strongly suggest avoiding any discussion that doesn't involve the candidates

Danu

First of all, are all candidates here?

ACuriousMind

16:03

I'm here

tpg2114

I'm here

user116211

At least their gravatars are.

Alfred Centauri

I'm here

user116211

@Jim, @Rob...

David Z

I think rob said somewhere that he couldn't make it at this time

ACuriousMind

16:04

18 hours ago, by rob

Greetings, all. I'm not available during the scheduled chat on Tuesday, but I'll keep an eye on this room for a few days at other times.

Danu

OK.

David Z

Again, here is the questionnaire with the candidates' answers to some questions:

16

Q: 2016 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Not every question was compiled - as noted, we o...

Danu

So, are we starting?

0celo7

Hello everyone.

David Z

I'm not sure how much more than that people will want to ask, but we'll see.

A few procedural things first:

Please post questions in bold, and candidates, when you are answering a question, reply to the message in which the question was asked.

2

If things get too crazy I may put the room on hold for a moment, but other than that, I think we can just go ahead.

anna v

16:07

for the grandmother , how do you get bold here?

Danu

Use ** [text] **

i.e. double asterisks around your text

user116211

@annav __ text __

David Z

@annav click "help" at the lower right to see formatting commands. As Danu said, double asterisks or double underscores give you bold.

Danu

@Jim, @AlfredCentauri What do you specifically have to add, as a moderator, over what the other candidates have to offer? (I'd also ask @rob but he's not here)

David Z

Oh yes, for the record, rob will get a chance to catch up later, and also it is fine to direct questions at specific candidates.

Alfred Centauri

16:11

@Danu I may have been on the site longer though I'm not sure that's relevant. I'm probably the oldest of the bunch though I'm not sure that's relevant either.

David Z

...hm, it's oddly quiet for the moment. I'm thinking of some questions.

Emilio Pisanty

OK, given the quiet, I'll kick off with something general:

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

2

Undo

As a moderator, you will see some... questionable stuff. Is this compatible with you and your workplace?

2

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty Subject themselves to a lot of abuse for little if any reward.

Danu

@ACuriousMind We've all seen over the past week that your nomination has had a strong polarizing effect: There are some people very loudly voicing objections against you. Do you think this poses a problem for you being a moderator? Do you think it's important for you to represent everybody on the site, or not?

tpg2114

16:17

@EmilioPisanty My general view is that moderators are the "janitors" of the site. Not to be demeaning about it, but their biggest responsibility is to handle all of the work that regular (even power) users cannot handle. I think most of the "moderation" should be done by the community itself and the moderators only deal with the dirty work to be done

Emilio Pisanty

@AlfredCentauri With respect, that's not a particularly useful answer. To be clear: What is your view of the duties and responsibilities of a moderator? What role do they play on the site (and what roles don't they play), and what actions do they typically take?

2

tpg2114

@Undo Not an issue for me and I use my personal computer at work for the site/social media/reading news/etc anyway

Alfred Centauri

@Undo That's a good question. I would say that moderating from my workplace is probably not such a good idea then.

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty They handle the aspects of running this site which are unsuited (or at least simply not made available) for moderation by the community at large. This includes mostly handling custom flags, investigating "suspicious" behaviour (e.g. targeted voting, sockpuppets, etc.) and deescalating/cleaning up comment threads that went off the rails.

Danu

@AlfredCentauri (also @rob) You don't seem to have been very active on the meta site. Do you think this needs to change for you to make a good moderator, or will you remain largely inactive on meta?

ACuriousMind

16:20

@Undo Yes. I've seen enough...questionable posts already, either before they were deleted or through the 10k privilege to see deleted posts.

Jim

I'm here now

Emilio Pisanty

Kicking off of this one: Are there specific site policies that you disagree with personally, or that you're uncomfortable with?

2

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty To intervene when appropriate to keep the machine running well. Typical actions would be to respond to flags, delete abusive comments, occasionally remind participants to act like adults, occasionally send a participant to time out, keen an eye out for irregular voting, etc. etc.

Emilio Pisanty

and, if so, will you be able to leave those views aside, or to clearly differentiate between your moderator-hat persona and your personal views? As a harder expansion, Can you point to instances in the past where you have already done this?

2

Danu

A question for all: How do you feel about the role moderators have to play in the chat room? The "h bar" is one of the most active chat rooms on the network, and a lot of things go down there. That includes a lot of fun, but also a lot of bad stuff. Do you think you need to actively participate/moderate the chat room, or will you refrain from doing so whenever possible (I can guess @ACuriousMind's answer already, of course :P).

Jim

16:24

@Danu I can't say I have anything specifically the others don't have. Mostly because I don't know them well enough to be able to say "Haha! I'm better than you at this!". But I do feel that I usually bring a bit more fairness and level-headedness to situations than most around. Although, I certainly bring a lot more humour and bad puns to what I do, and I think adding puns to moderating makes everyone happier (if not more tortured)

tpg2114

@EmilioPisanty I'm probably forgetting a few of them but my history on Meta is pretty clear on what I like and don't like. Specifically, I am not a fan of the way we deal with resource-recommendations or homework-and-exercises. I don't like list questions, nor do I like meta tags

Emilio Pisanty

@Jim How would you react to a user that got offended at one of said bad puns?

2

ACuriousMind

@Danu Most of the objections appear to me to be a) widly hyperbolic and b) not related to my ability to moderate at all. I've clearly said that I will not use my unilateral close votes as liberally as I use my ordinary close votes right now in my questionnaire answers. What I do with my up- and downvotes is entirely my personal choice since no one will ever know whether a vote on their post was cast by a moderator or not.

3

@Danu I'm not sure what to say about "representation", since I don't think it is the moderators' purpose to represent the site or a subset of its members.

Jim

@EmilioPisanty Moderators act as intermediaries in a disagreement, police when enforcing policy, and a knowledgebank of acceptable practices for those looking to know them. Also, janitors, etc

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind This is why I think you'll be a good mod \(^^)/

Alfred Centauri

16:26

@Danu There's plenty for a moderator to do besides participate in meta and besides, too many cooks can spoil the broth.

Jim

@EmilioPisanty Apologize, explain myself, learn from mistakes

tpg2114

@EmilioPisanty And likewise, I think my records show that I will still clarify and defend policies when people ask for clarifications. I think the community decides what works and what doesn't and until there is a shift in mood or policy, I would support the community's wishes

Jim

@Undo Yes, my workplace is extremely relaxed and flexible

Undo

If you could choose one competitor to be elected, not yourself, who would it be and why?

3

David Z

Oh, let's get at least a couple people to star each question, too

@Undo what, you want the candidates to reveal their top votes?

Danu

16:28

@AlfredCentauri So you don't see a problem with not being active in meta, if I read that correctly. Do you feel that it's important to contribute to policy decisions? Do you want to be active in this respect? If not, how will you react if policies are implemented that you think are very bad... Implement them anyways?

2

Jim

@EmilioPisanty There are some common practices that kind of grate against me, but not really any outright policies. Furthermore, it doesn't really matter if there are. The community decides on policies. I can add my opinion, but if they decide on policies I dislike, it's still my responsibility to enforce those policies

tpg2114

@Danu I'm not sure that active participation as such is required, although being aware of who the regular actors are and their interactions together is important (which is true for all areas of the site, not just the chat). That can be done by reviewing the logs or trusting the room owners to help out with the moderation. There is a fine line to walk there though because flags are sent network wide and not handled specifically by moderators here, so there is some care that needs to be taken

Undo

@DavidZ Usually gets asked on SO. It tends to help see what folks value.

Alfred Centauri

@Danu I am active in meta, I'm just not very active in meta

tpg2114

@Undo My first choice is @ACuriousMind and I've already voted accordingly. His participation on the site is top notch and more comprehensive than the others (myself very much included).

ACuriousMind

16:29

@EmilioPisanty I think no one is entirely comfortable with the exact way the homework-and-exercises policy is currently phrased. I support its intent, but it's become clear over the last few iterations of the discussion on meta that there is no consensus as to what it actually should mean in practice. But I wouldn't say that I disagree with any current site policy.

David Z

@Undo gotcha... well, it's a fair question but I wouldn't fault somebody for declining to answer that one

Jim

@EmilioPisanty I think there's a few times where I've answered meta posts by saying I dislike a policy but stand by it because that's what the community decided. Other times I've answered twice on both sides of a discussion. Just recently, I disagreed with the dis-nominating of barrycarter by Shog9, but, as I said, I recognize the reasoning of the site policy, and wouldn't act against it regardless my feelings

Emilio Pisanty

@Jim Even if 'learn from mistakes' means 'not make any bad puns at all'? Puns that are viewed as offensive (by, say, a newcomer to the site from a different cultural background than you) carry a lot of weight if they come from someone with formal authority, and could drive such users immediately away from the site. With that in mind, can you comment further?

ACuriousMind

@Undo tpg2114, closely followed by Jim.

Danu

@AlfredCentauri Could you please answer the other parts of that question? :)

Jim

16:32

@EmilioPisanty I will never completely eliminate my sense of humour. Much of it makes fun of myself anyway. Puns are funny. There are occasionally misunderstandings, but I'm very good at clarifying them. If it comes down to removing puns, at least I have other sources of humour to fall back on (like using scientific demonstration meatballs in my explanations)

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty I already said in my questionnaire answers that I might be more cautious in my comments to distinguish site policy from my personal opinion. I can't give you any evidence to show that I can do that since I've never had a comparable position before, but I'm confident that this won't be a problem.

Jim

@Danu Occasionally, it's necessary to moderate the chat room. Moving things to different rooms and the like. Serious situations need to be addressed too. But mostly, it is much more self moderated than the main site. I guess my answer is that only the future will tell how much t needs to be moderated. My guess is very little

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty Disagree with? No. Uncomfortable with? I think the policy towards 'homework' is a work in progress and I'm not against a more lenient approach.

Jim

@Undo ACM would be my vote. He's one of the top reviewers on the site, he is very active on both meta and chat, he's been around long enough to know the score. Actually, there's a lot of reasons. It's why I made him my #1 when I actually voted

Emilio Pisanty

OK, since we're on homework, maybe (I hope) this can help provide useful insights. From the list of homework-like questions voted on earlier this year, are there specific examples that were heavily downvoted that you think shouldn't be, or vice-versa?

2

ACuriousMind

16:37

@Danu Since I am already very active in the chat room, it will of course be my responsibility to a) be mindful of providing exemplary behaviour on my part and b) moderate the chat room when necessary. Since consistency of moderation is important, however, I would defer to the moderator consensus (if one can be reached) as to what constitutes "necessary".

DanielSank

@EmilioPisanty For whatever it's worth, I think this is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of being a moderator. I am very interested in the homework policy and fixing it up, but I didn't nominate for mod because anyone on this site can post on meta and work on policy.

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty My views are pretty well aligned with the sites I think.

David Z

@ACuriousMind In that response, are you taking account the fact that chat moves much faster than the main site and thus it's often necessary to act more quickly when moderator action is warranted?

Jim

@EmilioPisanty I've gotta be honest. I didn't go through that list carefully myself. I wanted to see how the community acted about it. From their reactions, and from what followed after, I made my own suggestions about how to approach this topic. We seem to be following those suggestions currently

Danu

@Jim I'm not sure how much you have been in the chat room over the past weeks, but I assure you that I've taken action on a semi-daily basis (and I'm just one moderator---not even a PSE moderator!)

ACuriousMind

16:40

@DavidZ I meant that I ideally would know about the consensus before starting to moderate. It's clear to me that chat moderation must be swift, so that unilateral action is often required - but that unilateral action should not wildly vary depending on the moderator who administers it.

tpg2114

@EmilioPisanty Well... looking at my voting on that post, I downvoted essentially every question. Even the ones highly upvoted. For various reasons -- for the first one, the questions boil down to "check my work" and "how do I solve this integral"; for the second one, it showed no prior research effort even though it isn't homework. Having said that, I didn't go and make an effort to close the questions or even downvote them -- the community spoke and I didn't object

David Z

@ACuriousMind gotcha, makes sense

Jim

@Danu This is what I meant. I wouldn't have to do much moderation specifically as a PSE moderator. Flags are handled by even high-rep users for instance. Much of chat is moderated without the need for site-specific moderators

Danu

@Jim OK.

Jim

I still address flags now, and I assume I'd do more chat moderation, but not much extra specifically as a PSE moderator

Emilio Pisanty

16:42

@tpg2114 Given that, how likely are you to unilaterally close a question that you judge as purely check-my-work?

3

DanielSank

@Jim It seemed that your answer to that meta post sort of ignored the question and was more of general description of your opinions. I think a one way in which this site can improve is with better, more focused meta questions and answers. Do you think you can contribute to that area specifically?

2

Danu

→ 10 messages moved to Trash

@SirCumference Please talk in the h bar.

tpg2114

@EmilioPisanty Not at all -- I'm hard pressed to think of a legitimate looking question that I would unilaterally take any action on. Unless it is so blatantly spam or trolling like "Does 2+2 = 5?", I much prefer to let the community take action and to be the 5th vote if I feel so inclined. So the only change I would make to my current activity is to ensure I only vote as the 5th -- and continue to use my downvotes like usual.

Danu

→ 3 messages moved to Trash

David Z

15 minutes to go

I think everything I'd wanted to ask has already been covered

Emilio Pisanty

16:46

Do you have any experience moderating other internet (or real-life) forums or platforms?

2

Alfred Centauri

@Danu It's bar isn't it? :) I haven't visited the chat room much but I understand it can get rowdy sometimes and those with thin enough skins will flag comments and such. I don't plan to hang around at the h-bar just to keep an eye on it.

tpg2114

@EmilioPisanty I was involved in student government as an undergrad and was president of a very large student organization with a 60+ member legislative body. So I've chaired over 200 legislative meetings, plus various committees and so on. That's why earlier in this room I drew the analogy of moderation to legislation -- mods are there to ensure the rules are followed, but the body determines the rules and helps to point out violations

Jim

@DanielSank Yes, I can contribute, absolutely. But that's independent of being a mod. I can (and intend to) contribute now. As a mod, it would be my responsibility to be impartial. I figure it looks better on my moderating abilities that I was capable of standing back and presenting a viable alternative to effectively allow the community itself to come to the answer to the problem

@EmilioPisanty No, I have no experience moderating other internet platforms nor professional experience with real-life platforms. I was involved with student government a lot in undergrad, however that isn't moderating. It's policy making. Moderators are more like judges than congressmen

Alfred Centauri

@Danu Being active in policy decisions is a separate question from being active (enough) in meta. Yes, it's important to contribute to policy decisions. Yes, I want to be active.

Danu

@AlfredCentauri OK, that's good to hear.

Emilio Pisanty

16:49

What, in your opinion, is the purpose of closing, as opposed to protection, locking, and deletion, or simple downvoting?

3

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty No.

David Z

Let's remember to star the questions

ManishEarth

While moderators don't get to set site policy, it's good to know where you stand since mods often drive discussion of it. If you had the power to reshape the homework policy, what changes would you make, if any?

3

DanielSank

@Jim According to SE resources, moderators are supposed to guide meta discussion. So, to me, a moderator is in a reasonable position to point out when meta discussions lack focus etc. This can be done independently of actually writing questions and answers.

Jim

@EmilioPisanty Downvoting shows a post is unhelpful or that you disagree with its content. Protection keeps a question from being filled with garbage answers from drive-by users. Deletion is for content that is definitely not appropriate for the site and has no hope of ever becoming appropriate. Closing is for a post that is not an adequate fit at present, but has potential to become an adequate fit in the future. It's not absolute

tpg2114

16:54

@EmilioPisanty The purpose to putting a question on hold is to give the poster a chance to fix errors in the question and make it fair for users who spend time answering it. It's not cool for the intent of a questions to change drastically after an extensive answer has been provided. The other techniques are useful for different things -- protection prevents drive-by's, locking is good for historical posts, deletion is for things that are off-topic and provide no substantial benefit

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty Both closing and downvoting are expressions that a question does not meet the standards we would like to impose on questions for the site. A downvote is an expression of that as a personal opinion, a close vote is the expression of that as site policy (whose application is also opinion-based, but ideally rooted in objectively assessable reasons).

@EmilioPisanty Questions can be very poor without meeting an easily abstractable reason as for why, and such an abstract reason is needed for closure/to make policy about such question, so both tools are necessary.

Jim

@DanielSank exactly. I wrote a post that attempted to guide the community and focus it appropriately

Emilio Pisanty

@Jim the question was mostly "why close at all?", as opposed to leaving open and commenting

Alfred Centauri

@Undo I don't look at them as competitors but rather as volunteers like myself. ACM seems to volunteer a lot and is very active in review so I'm certain he's up to the challenge.

David Z

4 minutes. Any last questions within the hour of the official chat session?

(anyone interested is welcome to stick around and keep discussing afterwards)

tpg2114

16:56

@ManishEarth I think the lack of consensus on it is a sign there is no clear answer. I think questions should do prior research, be very specific and clear about what conceptual problem exists, and then it should be okay. In many ways, I miss the old "too localized" close reason -- many of the "homework" like questions we don't like are just not likely to help anybody other than the OP and shouldn't be kept around in that form

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty I haven't taken a close look at those and alloted time for this chat is about out so I'll take a rain check on this question and get back with you later.

Jim

@EmilioPisanty When a user sees their post left open, they have very little incentive to update it and fix it to better fit with the site policy. Putting a question on hold indicates that it needs to be fixed to fit with the site. Additionally, closing questions give the community the opportunity to self-moderate. Deletion is too permanent for regular users, but they need a way to remove bad fit questions from the site. Closing is that viable means

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty No, none at all.

David Z

It is totally fine to post answers after the hour is up. Just remember to reply to the original question. There's no time limit on chat replies.

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty Protection has nothing to do with the question, it's there to prohibit spam and unuseful answers by drive-by users, and deletion is what happens to closed questions if they are not improved and downvoted. Locking is a moderator tool that is largely disjoint from closing and deleting, but I haven't seen it applied much at all on physics.SE.

Emilio Pisanty

16:59

@AlfredCentauri That's probably too much - if you've gone through them, great, if not, then I'm more interested in your response to Manishearth's question above.

Alfred Centauri

@EmilioPisanty That's a great question and one I've been thinking about recently.

Jim

@ManishEarth Excellent question. It's in too much flux to answer this with specifics, however. I personally kind of enjoy the way it was for the last few years. But I do see the points made by those advocating change. Basically, I think all problems could be solved if we could (unrealistically) get the reviewers to look at questions completely impartially and with due diligence

David Z

OK, that's the end of our hour! Thank you all for participating. Again, candidates, you can post replies at any time (in case there are questions you missed, things you want to think about before answering, etc.)

Alfred Centauri

@ManishEarth To answer that that, I would have to be convinced that I have a solution to the homework issue but I don't. Like many, I'm not sure what the best policy or if there is such a thing. It might be that a this sucks the least policy is all that there is.

ACuriousMind

@ManishEarth I've made several posts in the relevant threads on meta to that, and I can't retype everything I said there here. I don't have an easy solution to "the homework policy", and think it should probably be split up into several more explicit and narrower close reasons.

David Z

17:04

Feel free to keep the discussion going (though no need to bold and star questions anymore), but I have to take off soon.

Alfred Centauri

OK folks, my timer just went off and so that's all time I have today. This chat moves so fast that I'm sure I missed a few so I'll take a look back later.

Jim

I've got a lab to get back to. Equipment to fix still (darn thing broke the moment I walked into work today). If you have any follow up questions for me, point them at me and I'll answer when I get a moment

ACuriousMind

@DavidZ I can't stay much longer either, I have volunteered to show the freshmen around town (well, the bars, mostly...)

tpg2114

@DavidZ Thanks for pulling the session together @DavidZ

David Z

@ACuriousMind very important... go, go, experience some good beer

or whatever

@tpg2114 my pleasure

I don't know if it showed everyone but I bookmarked the chat session transcript in case you want to come back to it

user116211

17:10

@DavidZ: Wouldn't you turn it to a meta post?

David Z

I'd like to do that, but I don't have the tools (or the time to create them before the election ends). We should contact Tim Stone, who did the one for the last election. If someone else wants to try to get in touch with him, that would be great.

user116211

okay.

rob

18:57

Well, my availability was exactly orthogonal to this discussion. (I think I saw the official start as I left my desk.) So now I'll talk to myself for a while.

@Danu As I watched the nominations come in, one candidate seemed to be controversial and some other candidates didn't really seem to take the idea seriously. I figured that I could offer myself as another uncontroversial and level headed community member..

anna v

well, you could reply to the general questions . I came back to look if there are added stuff, and so will many others I am sure. The questions are in bold

rob

@annav That is my plan :)

anna v

my bedtime :). I will look in tomorrow. good night

rob

@EmilioPisanty Ideally, a moderator's job is to do as little as possible to keep the site running. There's a role to be played in keeping the patently undesirable stuff (spam etc) cleaned up, but mostly those things are identified by the community. The more nuanced role is to try to de-escalate conflicts and heated discussions, but a lot of that de-escalation is well-done by the users as well.

@Undo I don't have any issues with cleaning up questionable stuff. I don't have an issue with workplace shoulder-surfers who would be offended, either.

rob

19:37

@EmilioPisanty I can't immediately think of any site policies that I strongly disagree with. My instinct, in cases where a policy suggests some action for me that I don't feel comfortable about, would be to step back and leave moderating decisions up to the rest of the team, or to the community.

@Danu Here it's worth clarifying: I am relatively active in the policy discussions (as a reader, if not as a poster).

@Danu Synchronous chat is not a thing that I'm good at; I plan to touch the hbar lightly.

@Undo I'm going to politely decline to reveal how I'll vote.

Undo

@rob Understandable.

rob

@EmilioPisanty The list of homework-like questions is something I'll return to later.

@Danu You're right, I don't post often on meta. Most of the questions on meta (for example today: "is X on-topic" and "why were my quotation marks edited") aren't closely related to my interest in the site, and those that are frequently get answered by other folks before I see them. I can see this role changing if I'm involved more heavily in moderation.

heather

20:40

@rob @tpg2114 @ACuriousMind @AlfredCentauri @Jim this isn't an official question, or even one you'd have to respond too, but what exactly would you consider the most important thing you could do as a moderator? Sorry I didn't ask during the official chat time - I had study hall, but my school blocks chat-type sites, including this one.

To clarify the question further, what would you bring to the team, whether it be perspective, time, or whatever, that makes you valuable? Though of course there are other directions you could take this admittedly broad question, and I'd like to see what they are.

Transcript for

2016 Physics Stack Exchange Election