2016 Physics Stack Exchange Election

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John Rennie

10:03

I find it really hard to make unilateral decisions. As it is I have only one vote of the five needed to close a question, so I have the comfort blanket of the four other people. I'd find it stressful to be working through the flags and have to make sole decisions about closing and/or deleting posts.

At the moment the only mod level power I have is the dupehammer, which I'm nervous of using so it has actually made me less active when it comes to moderating. Even so a fair few of my dupehammers have been questioned severely enough to make me withdraw the close vote.

user128101

10:17

@tpg2114 you can easily do that subtracting the costituent badges to the CAUCUS (physics.stackexchange.com/help/badges/94/caucus). When the debate here took place 90% voters had already voted!!

user128101

it's roughly 50%

user128101

you got most votes, congrats!

John Rennie

Cor, 538 votes cast so far. It's reassuring to know we have that many members who care enough to vote.

user128101

there'll hardly be more than 600 votes, out of 8 000 eligible and 135 000 ever registered

John Rennie

Hmm, that's out of 1225 caucus badges awarded so far this election ...

user128101

10:32

yes , less than 50% cared to vote, they couldn't find a palatable candidate

user128101

calling an election with 20-day notice means excluding a lot of desultory visitors

user128101

The vast majority.

user128101

a small minority of 200 aficionados, worthy or not , can rule the whole site

tpg2114

14:38

@user104372 I wouldn't jump to the conclusion they couldn't find somebody palatable. Maybe they feel they don't use the site enough to feel educated about who to choose properly. I know I don't vote in moderator elections in the dozen other sites I have used for that reason

It's better to not vote than to elect somebody who will do damage

2 hours later…

David Z

17:09

@user104372 that would be the sort of thing we consider inappropriate, unfounded speculation

Walter

17:26

Has anybody here discussed the ratio of down- to up-votes cast by the candidates? Notably three of the candidates have cast more than 1 downvote for every 2 upvotes. I think this is a sign of poor support for both good and bad post. IMHO, a downvote is not constructive and does not necessarily encourage better posts and should be used with great care.

vzn

@Walter wow, agreed that sounds high. but its not nec the case that all downvotes are "not constructive". its a local vs global aka microcosm vs macrocosm thing. the question or answer might get downvoted but those with high downvotes will say they are preserving/ protecting overall site quality.

@user1043 those #s are presumably not all that different site-wide. this election does not have anomalous participation by SE-wide stds. yes increasing overall site participation/ engagement in all ways, incl elections, is of general interest & mods can sometimes help with that in general. but note elections are rare.

Alfred Centauri

17:59

All, Alfred and family are in the path of Hurricane Matthew and so my attention is demanded elsewhere for a while. Best,

Jim

@AlfredCentauri Farewell Alfred, I do not hope you die.

tpg2114

18:34

@annav To answer your previous line of questioning -- I am working in computational fluids; right now mostly in numerical methods but my previous work focused on condensed phase detonations