We sitting mods aren't going to chip in too much in the election, but I do want to say this - given that the diamond is really only the tip of a large scope of mod activity that any high rep user can take, IMO the best candidates are the ones you already see moderating the site. I'm not super enthused by candidates that are not already actively engaged with moderation activities but that "are sure they'll do great."

In general the diamond should be validating that someone's doing what the community wants already, it's not an aspirational goal.

For what it's worth.

yeah -- I think that's why the mod score includes such things as review badges and whatnot

@Shalvenay Of course. But I didn't want to just say "trust the score," but yes the score does a decent job of showing who has been active. It's possible someone's active but shows poor judgement (though I don't think we have any of that), so you want to vote on more than the score. But we're voting to replace one absent mod, if a candidate isn't already active then likely they'll just be the next absent mod.

@mxyzplk aye

Goodness, already 10 nominees! We're spoilt for choice. Just one more nominee in the next five days and it'll be the first time RPG.se has had a primary phase in an election.

@SevenSidedDie Hypothetically, if we carefully give every nominee in the primary the same score, like we did with their questionnaire answers, what would happen?

Ah, here it is. FGITW is everywhere.

@Miniman That is a strange way to break ties from an elections perspective. Perfectly sensible solution from a programming perspective though…

@SevenSidedDie I mean, this is a case that's edgier than Watchmen, so it's probably not something anyone spent a lot of time on.

@Miniman And if we actually managed to trigger by having identical scores for the entire field of candidates, I expect we'd break many brains on MSE.

@SevenSidedDie Yes...if such a crazy and purely hypothetical scenario occurred.

starts gathering conspirators

I'm not sure whether I should be intrigued or scared that you guys are going to be treating the election like just another game :)

I think what would actually happen is that we'd invoke the wrath of Grace Note and end up with some sort of CM intervention. Probably best not to commit election fraud, even if it's fun.

Every time I am on, the review sections are at 0. Which is honestly a good problem to have for the site, but bad if you're trying to get a badge :)

@Michael That doesn't mean "do no moderation", and a diamond moderator needs to know what to do whenever they do need to take action. A user who's been actively moderating for a while has had a chance to get to know what's appropriate.

@MarshallTigerus There are reasons I'm missing the badge for a thousand reviews and that is all of them, haha

@MarshallTigerus The reviews toggle only shows up if there's 3 or more active reviews; you can click through to the review page to see if there are ones you're missing because they haven't piled up enough yet to be worth front-page notice.

@doppelgreener I agree, just pointing out that there is a flaw in just relying on score. Particularly if the general sentiment is less moderator intervention rather than more

@MarshallTigerus I agree; Korvin's score of 34 doesn't make them inherently a superior choice to Erik's score of 29, but it's a factor I could consider as I weigh up who I'd vote for. I consider both of those scores to be "enough" though, such that at that point I'm going to be focusing on other differences.

I think score would be among the factors I'd consider, but not a primary one. I know a lot of people on the SO exchange who could have really high election scores who would be terrible mods

Right, definitely.

@MarshallTigerus I'm pretty slow at accumulating review badges because I "Skip" so often. I remember reading a pretty-convincing meta.SE post a while back that extolled the virtues of Skip. Basically: if you don't have a strong reaction, maybe trust that others with better knowledge/perspective will come along soon enough. I probably vote on less than half of the review flags I see at this point.

The only thing wrong with this election is that @Miniman isn't running/nominated.

@doppelgreener Korvin's score of 34 doesn't make them inherently a superior choice to Erik's score of 29 ... doppel, how you sussed out that the nine of us all inhabit one alt on RPG.SE speaks to you having some ESP. 8^D

@KorvinStarmast doppel used those 39/40 skills

@A_S00 shhh! if you don't point it out nobody will notice

@mxyzplk This actually speaks to a question I have been unable to find a answer to on my own. If only there was a place I could go to ask questions and get answers..... :) Anyway, what do elected moderators here do that can't be done with sufficient reputation already?

@Longspeak Behold, a resource.

(Scroll down to second bullet list.)

@BESW Awesome. Thank you.

No problem. The Stack's got a lot of reference resources about itself, but they're ironically scattered and poorly indexed.

@BESW This is why we can't have nice things, like game rec and tool rec questions ... The Stack's got a lot of reference resources about itself, but they're ironically scattered and poorly indexed

hehe. Can of worms. Status: opened.

But still. Very informative.

@Longspeak Although actually some of that isn't up to date, high rep users can protect posts now for example. they try to erode that list over time

and it omits "delete comments"

boy I wish that would go through the review queue. flag a comment, get a couple that agree to delete, gone

Hmm. That'd have to come with a way for high-rep users to see deleted comments, which might be Dwarf Fortress kinds of fun.

@BESW Why would these two things (ability to delete via review queue and ability to view deleted) have to go together? So that incorrectly deleted comments could be restored?

@A_S00 Some of the same reasoning you see here seems like it should apply.

@BESW That seems like it argues that comment-reviewers should be able to see the comments they reviewed, but not specifically high-rep users. That said, I can see how ANY additional persistence for deleted comments could change comment behavior.

High-rep users can already see deleted questions and answers, and it seems reasonable on first pass that comments, if incorporated into rep-based moderation like questions and answers are, would get a similar treatment.

@KorvinStarmast well I just assume you're part of BESW's hive mind

(in reality though I've grown a habit of using Singular They when I don't have clear signals on which pronouns to use.)

@BESW Yeah, the 10k rep privilege simultaneously gives you the ability to cast delete votes on questions and answers and view deleted questions and answers.

However, the ability to see deleted comments would give high-rep users a form of private messaging which would be... both awkward and undesirable.

Among various other problems.

I'd consider deleted comments to be among the most sensitive pieces of information on the site, really, considering what goes on with them & how people treat them as transient or delete & repost them as a form of editing after the 5 minute mark.

Aye.

@doppelgreener I'd rather the deleted comments stay gone, particularly when the user deletes own comment.

@KorvinStarmast i think there's good reason to keep them around for someone to access (permadeletion means I can insult and harass anyone to the ends of the earth without leaving a trace), but moderators also can never un-delete a comment a user deleted themselves.

(I asked a Stack Exchange staff member & moderator to undelete a comment I deleted once on Meta SE. They told me it couldn't be done.)

@doppelgreener If someone posts a snide remark in a comment, and then thinks better of it, I'd rather the site let them flush it down the loo.

@KorvinStarmast Consider snide remarks that we could deliberately leave while you're online, and are sure you'll see, on a regular basis, pinging you personally to make sure you get notifications, and then deleting them once we're confident you've probably seen them.

Speaking from experience on other sites, permadeletion creates major obstacles in moderators properly protecting the community & means they can only verify what they see themselves.

(Is that person really harassing you constantly via comments, or is this comment the only one & you're making up stories to get them banned? Moderators have no way to tell unless they can look up deleted content.)

@doppelgreener If need be, a screen shot or a flag should get the comment the attention it deserves.

@doppelgreener I may understand this incorrectly, but a flagged comment goes into a particular queue and can't be deleted by anyone other than a mod. I may be wrong about that.

Given the nature of what we can do on the internet, keeping evidence available -- meaning no permadeletion -- is pretty critical to enabling site moderators to get an accurate understanding of what's going on. The diamond moderators need to be people the community can trust, and are under contractual obligation with Stack Exchange to never give up the privileged information only they can see.

There's another community I'm active in which has permadeletion built into the site tools, and it's created a big enough problem with moderators being able to actually verify what's going on that the community has been pushing for various features, such as keeping deleted content for at least a week after it was deleted. This is a community with equal if not greater sensitivity for its deleted content.

@doppelgreener The other site I am a mod on, a forum, archives everything ... no perma deletion. It also has to occasionally resort to lawyers.

@KorvinStarmast Oof. I wonder if that's happened much in Stack Exchange's history....

It probably helps that Stack Exchange is an actual company with a legal department.

@doppelgreener yes -- having full-time lawyers helps I'm sure

hey there @KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay Hey Shalvenay, I am sorta hit and miss ... we appreciate your support on the "not critical to flight safety" line.

@KorvinStarmast yeah, definitely. I do wonder why such stern tones come up in RPG discourse online though

@Shalvenay Folks are passionate about things, that's my explanation. (And any of us is at risk for tying our egos into our posts/positions ...)

@KorvinStarmast Give me unambiguous acknowledgement that the Domain Generalist trick works! OR GIVE ME DEATH!

@KorvinStarmast [suspicion of hive mind grows]

@A_S00 How about a death saving throw?

@KorvinStarmast imgur.com/dVDJiez

Heh, looks like I am pulling the plug, catch y'all later.