Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to Photography, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/14/photography-chat

threw my name in again. Hope we have some more interest from others this time around. As much as I'd love to do it, I'd hate for the community to not have choices

@AJHenderson thanks for the quick answers. I don't even know and not seeing if its been said - is this election for 1 new moderator or 2?

(depending on who runs and how many spots I may throw my name in)

@Ryan 1 currently

was 1 in 2015 too. Photography is pretty low maintenance overall

which is actually part of the problem

queues stay pretty low and mostly it's well reported, there are some slightly aggressive close groups that could use some coaching possibly, but it's overall not too bad and that leads to single site moderators not checking in as much when there is never anything to do

I'd honestly probably run in to the same issue myself if I wasn't moderating 3 sites. I try to make passes 2-3 times a day atleast as long as I'm at my computer and if I didn't have mulltiple sites, I'd not have anything needing my attention probably 4/5 times if I only had one site

but with multiple, it means there is something to do most of the time, so it makes it actually easier to keep up

But I know jrista was super active when he started and then John started and was gung ho and jrista started being less involved as there was never anything to do, then MikeW started and was super gung ho and John started having less to do and eventually got frustrated with the issues he encountered on other sites where he had more trouble. I'm hoping that if I get the spot I can break that cycle

cause it's hard to mod when you only have one mod that knows what's up

I'm fortunate enough to have Rory with me on two of the other sites and that's a huge help and then Andy is super active on CB

but Rory does things similar to me with doing overall passes, so he doesn't suffer from the "nothing to do" apathy issue either

← 12 messages moved from Photography Chat

hmm

and I am guessing a bit on the reason for the pattern of people going inactive, but it's certainly been a pattern

I'm just hoping to see this place improve.

@Ryan in which regard specifically? The somewhat aggressive close nature towards new people or something else?

I think it was you who had somewhat of a rough initial experience right?

consistency and maintenance for sure

things open in one instance, closed in another, upvoted on one, downvoted on another. No rhyme or reason to much of it from anything I've seen

@Ryan yeah, I think that's kind of related. Some of the harder areas to judge are often not really thought all the way through and how the op phrases something can end up getting gut reactions vs looking deeper in to what is the core of what's being asked

which in part comes from the number of really bad questions we get, but also some from just not understanding the way of thinking

it's an interesting mix of people who come from other SE sites that don't understand how to evaluate a question and those from other SE sites that don't understand good subjective

but most of the time it seems like if I put a comment on it or edit the question or answer, people then see what I was seeing in it as the underlying point that makes it fit

@AJHenderson thats part of it but I think there's probably more underlying issues that have gone unnoticed by current moderators

@Ryan that's possible. I've not noticed any really concerted effort to try to be more active in giving feedback on reviews

doing that's probably a first step and seeing what kind of resistance that encounters will show if there are other issues that need to be worked through as a community

the one thing I'm not sure about is how active people are at moderataor flagging anything where it is questionable

I'm here in case anyone wants to boost my self esteem

Question to any current / former mods (including on other SE's): related to the diamond status and "power", are you aware of any effort by SE to possibly de-escalate the moderation powers, or perhaps turn the mod powers into "sudo" powers? That is, because mod votes to close are immediately binding, it seems being a mod has a natural pressure to actually not participate as much in the day-to-day community guidance that occurs via close voting.

Of course, I understand there is additional work to make up for that (dealing with flagging, etc.). But in your experience, does it seem like you've taken your "voice" out of the day-to-day actions and "guidance" of the site, to some degree?

(and I also understand that when mods do speak, it is of course louder and more definitive, as it were, by the very nature of the diamond)