@MichaelGreinecker Comments are still there, at the nomination tab. The primary tab differs from nomination by having vote arrows and not having comments.
@MichaelGreinecker quoting from the referenced comment: "Many textbooks include problems following the statement of a definition with elementary questions designed to help clarify the definition to the reader. These are the problems I am referring to - not necessarily 'low difficulty' questions. I feel answering definition reinforcing questions is detrimental to the user in that
it enables to the user to never crack their textbook. Above this level, perhaps the user didn't see the 'trick', or simply needs a canonical solution to illustrate the general method. I do not support closing the latter type of question."
so, i do support closing these types of PSQs, but I do not support PSQs with any real, mathematical content. my stance is perhaps slightly more conservative on this than other candidates. to me not all PSQs are created equal.
@AlexanderGruber Thank you. Personally, I think closing PSQ should be done more with the interest of the community in mind than the interest of OP alone. But if elected, I would excuse myself from voting to close for this reason.
I would keep in mind that I as a new user would take it much more serious if a moderator closes my question nearly instantaneous than when some community members close it
"Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page." (Source) It's quite possible that some candidates will not bother to answer, seeing their standing in the primary. Not clear how long SE team will wait.
Yes, moderators are pretty limited in their power to identify people. Basically the only way they can (within the rules) identify a user to someone is if the user reveals their identity themselves.
@AlexBecker As it should be, IMO. The ubiquity of information-storing automatons on the internet makes it desirable to have the choice of residing on internet communities under a nickname.
@DominicMichaelis Moderators (and for that matter, other MSE users) are no police force. It is not our job to identify cheaters with full names (rather, only to make the observation $\exists \text{cheater}$). Efforts to limit facilitating cheating behaviour should be enough IMO.
(@75064 Forgive me the OT remark but I'd like to say that your comment on the bar for editing another's answer at MSE being too high caught on. I'll experiment with it, see how it turns out. Thanks for opening my eyes.)
I think triple voting is a bit too much: users vote on primary page, then vote on questionnaire responses, then vote in the actual election. With the first two stages being public, I'm afraid the whole process may be too harsh on losing candidates.
@75064 I don't expect a lot of downvoting (which is the only thing that can really be harsh on losing candidates IMO) on the questionnaire thread. But I can see what you mean.
There's a technical difference: Election page exists on the main site, QA is a meta post. Most MSE users (about 2/3) don't even have an account on meta; of those who do, most don't vote there. There are 2287 users with Supporter badge on meta, compared to 17849 on main.
But the bigger factor may be that QA responses are such a wall of text that tl;dr is a natural response. Also, after reading responses to 10 questions, a user may agree with some and disagree with others, hence hesitate to vote either way.
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It would be better to group the responses by question, so that for each topic users could upvote the responses that they agree with. This would make it a lot easier to decide how to vote, and also easier to interpret the results.
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Unfortunately the QA thread is constrained by the standard Q&A interface of the site.
Mathematics 2013 Moderator Election
Mathematics 2013 Moderator Election