Programmers 2013 Moderator Elections

Jimmy Hoffa

12:03 AM

That only makes the knife hurt more.. you insensitive clod.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa regarding Lisp or the downvotes?

user20683

or both somehow?

psr

@WorldEngineer - A more sensitive clod would know the answer already.

Dynamic

12:28 AM

@JimmyHoffa Ha I guess you're right. Sorry if I offended you ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:25 AM

I see a tab for "Primary" on the election page thingy... is there really going to be a primary? does that even make sense?

there's not parties or anything to be caucussing in..

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Primary only triggers if there are more than 10 candidates

Jimmy Hoffa

2:40 AM

man you know all about this election, you win the preparedness portion of the pageant

this feels like miss programmer SE

Jim G.

12:34 PM

Just curious - Why are we having a moderator election? Did one of the moderators step down?

maple_shaft

1:29 PM

@JimG. No... but one is sporadic at best

on a good month he handles a couple flags

We are handling the load fine, but i think this is a good thing, because this will free up more of our time to help guide, instruct and coach new users, meta involvement, and less time being a janitor

We don't have the time to give good reasons to people when we close things, and that is one of the reasons for new user frustration

Yannis Rizos

@JimG. We haven't had a chance to torture someone in a while, so we asked for a new guy.

maple_shaft

@YannisRizos I am happy that I will no longer be the rookie

Yannis Rizos

← 7 messages moved from The Whiteboard

maple_shaft

@YannisRizos Please tell me how you just did that?

Yannis Rizos

4

Q: Does the community think we should have another Moderator Election this year?

Are we going to have another Community Moderator Election for 2013? It seems like we have one around this time every year. Does the community/mods think we need another mod? I, personally, think that (most) mods are doing an outstanding job at what they have to do, but all of our mods should be...

maple_shaft

1:40 PM

@YannisRizos :)

test

← 1 message moved from The Whiteboard

friggin sweet

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa btw, since this is your first election, you get three votes.

Rachel

2:09 PM

@WorldEngineer For the record, I think it's fine that you don't downvote. Many top users have a very low downvote ratio, and I'm personally of the opinion that downvotes without explanations are destructive, not constructive. I think Programmers is too downvote-happy as it is without my help, so I don't downvote unless something is actually incorrect or spam. I'll vote up good posts, but bad or mediocre ones can stay at 0

Downvotes (or lack of) doesn't make you a good or bad moderator

2

Jimmy Hoffa

2:39 PM

@Rachel not gonna run?

@Yannis is that a lot or not much?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it's in the middle, you pick your top three choices and then things get very entertaining. The voting system used is really quite fascinating.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Depends. Who cares?

@WorldEngineer The source of the fascination of course being that no one actually understands how it works.

user20683

75

Q: How are moderator election votes counted, in plain English?

The election page sidebar states that Stack Exchange elections use the Meek STV vote-counting method: After 4 days, the final voting results will be freely downloadable from this page forever, and we will calculate the 3 winners using OpenSTV with the Meek STV method. How does it work? I su...

support election

Yannis Rizos

8

Q: How does Single Transferable Vote work?

I've heard that some elections use single transferable vote. What is this and how does it work? How does it differ from a standard majority vote election?

voting-systems electoral

user20683

@YannisRizos there's some truth to that

Manishearth

2:57 PM

yay moar election!

The first two nominations seem to be from rather young candidates. I shall leave this link here for future reference (the question is crap, the answers are gems):

-88

Q: Evaluating the risks of allowing teen moderators on the SE network

I have a David vs Goliath case here involving a teen moderator on Stack Overflow. His display name is BoltClock. I'm a low reputation SO user (less than 150 points) who was recently suspended for Voting Irregularities by BoltClock. Eventually the mistake was corrected by another non-teen moderat...

discussion moderation account-suspension

Rachel

@JimmyHoffa No

@RobertHarvey No. I meant what I said in my profile about being done with this site because of it's current direction and moderation style. A moderator is elected to help with exceptions the community can't handle, not to make big sweeping changes to the site or to push their point of view of the site onto the community. Why on earth would I want to be moderator here if I disagree with the site's direction? Besides, I'd probably get kicked off the mod team fairly fast if I had the ability to undelete and reopen with a single vote. :) — Rachel 1 hour ago

gnat

For the reference, here is the prior elections page: programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2

maple_shaft

@Rachel If you hate the direction of the site so much, why do you continue to contribute?

You can't on one hand say that you are giving up on the site, and on the other continue to keep trying to make it something that the community doesn't want it to be

Rachel

@maple_shaft I may hang out on meta and keep on eye on if things change or not, or to try and support users who want to try and change the site, but I don't contribute to the main site anymore

I loved the original Programmers, and if a move was ever made to go back to that then I'd fully support it

As I said in my profile, "I'm done with this site unless something changes"

maple_shaft

@Rachel Fair enough... you know, Reddit Programming is probably more up your alley

Rachel

3:12 PM

@maple_shaft Meh, it's not the same.

maple_shaft

it is filled with non constructive and opinionated garbage just like this site was when it first opened

The accepted answer there is by the one who shouts the loudest

Rachel

Besides, I know Pierre and DeveloperArt are still working on their own Q&A site to be what Programmers once was, and I want my profile here to advertise when it launches :)

@maple_shaft I liked what it first was. It was a place to get answers from programmers about things not related to programming. It was focused on the community, and not really a topic

I would hardly call the stuff I learned in the early days of Programmers "garbage", as it taught me a lot about how other Programmers do or view things

maple_shaft

Communities occur naturally, but when you support them you inevitably form cliques

and you are right... not all of it is garbage

but you get a lot of garbage answers

Rachel

@maple_shaft What I meant by that was that the scope of the site was the community, not the topic. A question was on-topic if it was seeking an answer from a programmer (and not code-focused like SO is), and I liked that aspect of it.

I realize that SE wants to remain focused on a topic, and that's OK. But that style of site for subjective topics is not for me :)

user41796

3:30 PM

@Rachel - I think you provide a good counterbalance with the site, and you've dug up a number of apropos reminders. Specifically, I'm thinking about the meta discussion on terminology origins. I also agree with your decision on not running for moderator. I actually think you would be less effective as a counterbalance while being a mod since people could simply gripe about the diamond instead of thinking through the point you're making.

Yannis Rizos

5:28 PM

→ 22 messages moved to The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

speaking of SE, it's election time! I expect every one of you who so wish to be a moderator, to kiss a baby!

@YannisRizos thanks, and sorry about that. :)

Yannis Rizos

Hey all, let's keep this room focused on election talk. For everything else, we have the Whiteboard.

@JimmyHoffa No worries, just cleaning up.

Jimmy Hoffa

Let ye who wish to be a mod take note, @YannisRizos spends his time basically cleaning up after us. Whoever wins the election, have fun sucker

2

user20683

7:02 PM

@Manishearth for the record, I'm in my late 20s. I don't list my age because I don't see it as a relevant factor.

Manishearth

7:14 PM

@WorldEngineer oh oops. You were listed as "undergraduate", in my book that means that you're 18-22

sorry :s

user20683

@Manishearth I'm a non-traditional student and it's my second baccalaureate . It's a common mistake as I also look much younger than I am. No worries, just felt I needed to clarify.

Manishearth

ah

Yannis Rizos

8:12 PM

@WorldEngineer Install this and start downvoting. Trust me, you'll love it.

Transcript for

Programmers 2013 Moderator Elections