2019 Unix & Linux Moderator Election Chat

3:24 AM

alright, the loins have been girded and my nomination and answers have been posted!

2

5:22 AM

Yay @JeffSchaller!

jimmij

8:29 AM

Judging from messages on the chat and from comments on the election page, new moderators have been already chosen. That's harsh for the other two guys, but truth hurts. The only way this election become interesting is if yet another high reputation user nominates him(/her?)self.

8:47 AM

@jimmij I really really hope that's not the case! I'd love to see at least five other nominations.

BTW, I've now posted my answers to those questions. If the darn URL hadn't been so long, I would have linked to it from my nomination: unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5245/…

@jimmij I'm not sure why people always say the truth hurts. The truth isn't necessarily a bad thing. Or a painful thing. Just standing up for truth here.

Generally a good thing, truth is.

I don't think those two are serious candidates

I see things are getting interesting on the Brexit front.

@FaheemMitha Wrong chat :-)

@Kusalananda Oops, sorry.

@MichaelHomer That seems like an unkind thing to say. They might be perfectly good mods.

8:50 AM

> I have no experience with the moderation of a community. No understanding of how things go around here and meet none of the basic "requirements" a moderator should have.

No serious candidate would start their statement with that.

@MichaelHomer Granted, he's not exactly selling himself.

@MichaelHomer Maybe he's just trying to be honest.

Maybe? I just don't think someone who starts out saying they have "No understanding of how things go around here" is making a genuine attempt to win votes

@Kusalananda What does "432 day "uptime"?

@MichaelHomer I don't think he's going to win, sure. And I certainly don't think that's a good way to get votes, either.

@FaheemMitha From my profile: "visited 1030 days, 432 consecutive"

@Kusalananda Ah, consecutive days. Got it.

9:00 AM

Really just that one, I shouldn't have lumped them both together

10:53 AM

@MichaelHomer you might be lumping in the sudo -i ex-candidate

and if we're comparing uptimes

> visited 1382 days, 1382 consecutive

11:07 AM

@JeffSchaller very glad to see you throw your hat in the ring!

@MichaelHomer Well, one measure of how serious a candidate is taking their nomination is whether they bothered to answer the election questionnaire, at least before the election starts. So far, only 2 out of 4 have done so.

12:34 PM

Thanks, @terdon; and thanks for the kind words on the election page.

@terdon I've considered nudging the other candidates with a pointer to the questionnaire. It seems like answering the questions would help their cause, if they're serious.

1:13 PM

@JeffSchaller That it would.

Granted, it's only been a couple of days, but they really should answer before we move to the voting period.

@JeffSchaller I took the liberty of doing so.

ahh! it looks like Tim has beaten me to it (" 28 mins ago ")

@FaheemMitha thanks, Faheem! I didn't want it to appear the wrong way, if I was to do it -- "I filled out the questionnaire, so you should too!"

@JeffSchaller Beaten you to what?

@FaheemMitha Do you mind if I delete your comments? You're just repeating what tim said above yours.

I mean, I suppose it's not strictly necessary, according to the election page (answering the Q's)

@FaheemMitha prompting the other candidates to respond to the Q's

1:22 PM

@terdon Oh, I didn't notice. Well, the bit about BSDs isn't a dupe, at any rate. And I think my comments are clearer. But whatever.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, they are. Never mind.

It seems a bit odd to me that he doesn't talk about his BSD work in any detail.

> I'm a BSD UNIX developer. I've been a committer with several BSD projects for a number of years, mostly doing kernel-level work.

Is BSD UNIX an OS that I don't know about? I'm familiar with Free, Open, Net, Dragonfly, and a bunch of derivatives of those.

No, no hits for BSD UNIX.

Well, familiar as in, I've not used them, but people talk about them. I think I did once install FreeBSD. But it was a long time ago.

Not really sure why their technical expertise is relevant, to be honest.

undercat

@FaheemMitha A lot of source code for BSD systems (kernel patches, drivers, etc) is not open source, so it's quite possible a full-time developer wouldn't be able to talk about their work at length due to NDAs they had to sign. Best to ask them personally though if you are interested.

But they'd given some more information in their nomination in the last election.

> @CristianCiupitu, in OpenBSD, mg(1) is part of the base system. mdoc.su/o/mg.1 bxr.su/o/usr.bin/mg It's actually very popular amongst the developers; I think even
Theo is (or at least was) a big emacs user. In prior life, I've used ee(1) (and pine/pico), coming from FreeBSD originally, but then I got tired from all the bugs and inconsistencies, and moved to mutt and emacs / mg. Most systems -- FreeBSD, Debian, MacPorts -- have a port of mg from OpenBSD, which is helpful on slower machines, since mg is very-very lightweight. – cnst Jun 16 '14 at 3:00

1:35 PM

@terdon Technical expertise is relevant on a technical site. But I wasn't questioning their expertise, or lack of it. I was just curious.

unix.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-136298

@FaheemMitha Not really. I mean, yes you need to have a basic understanding of the subject, but that should be reflected in your rep. You can moderate a site whose subject you aren't an expert on.

@terdon I don't think it's critical, but it is certainly helpful.

My own technical knowledge is rarely useful when moderating, for example. Those few times when it is and I don't actually know enough to make a call, I just leave it to another mod or ask in chat.

@terdon Oh? That's surprising.

Wow, that's an even shorter statement than this one.

And I thought this one was short.

@FaheemMitha Which bit? :)

1:38 PM

> My own technical knowledge is rarely useful when moderating

Wow, cnst isn't very chatty, is he?

It isn't. Most moderation tasks don't require much understanding of a posts' subject matter.

@FaheemMitha hmm?

@terdon Ok. I just find that surprising. I would have expected part of a moderator's task would be to make calls on things, and part of those calls would be technical in nature.

For example, whether a question is a reasonable question, or even answerable, or has enough information. And whether an answer is an answer. Stuff like that.

@terdon The 2014 election. He doesn't really say much, at all.

Ah, right

@FaheemMitha Usually, we try to let the community make the calls whenever possible. So yes, sometimes I do need to make it myself, but not all that often.

@terdon I see. You mean like close/delete votes and so forth?

There does seem to be a mob mentality prevailing sometimes. People get carried away.

Not really an issue here much, though.

Somehow I thought Caleb was a mod. I guess I misremembered.

> I'd also like to nominate myself for one of the two open janitorial positions.

That's funny.

@FaheemMitha he is, just not here.

@FaheemMitha That's what I was aiming for :)

1:57 PM

@undercat A reference for this?

Possibly in the ordinary chat, obviously.

6:46 PM

Psst, @JeffSchaller, Arcabard managed to follow the instructions that neither of us followed. They put their name at the top of the answered questions. I've fixed mine but I don't really dare editing yours :-)

7:08 PM

@Kusalananda another Stack Exchange thing I'll never get good at! Thanks for the nudge; edit incoming.

7:20 PM

@JeffSchaller Oh, is that what happened? I thought there was another different one

it appears the election page is unique; there's no viewing deleted posts there

I recall they filled in the minimum length, beyond sudo -i, with a couple copies of "Your submission must be at least X bytes" .

Right! That one was pretty clear-cut

@JamesAndino thanks for answering the questionnaire! Also, this is the election chat room, you might want to swing by.

@cnst This is the election chat room where users can ask questions of the candidates and the election is discussed. You might want to check it out.

@terdon I don't recognize James from this election; did you mean arcabard, instead? (based on seeing cnst in your next message)

7:35 PM

@JeffSchaller Yes. That was a "super ping" a mod-only tool that lets you ping users who aren't pingable in a room. It looks like arcabard's chat profile name is different which is why you see that name.

@terdon ahhhh, very good - thanks!

sourcejedi

9:10 PM

Thanks to the candidates standing so far. That was a long questionnaire for you to answer! I don't know if we needed quite so many questions, but I appreciated the detail in the answers. At least, it's a way to show that people are thinking seriously about moderation, show how familiar they are with the site, and show that they can communicate effectively :-).

9:29 PM

@JamesAndino @cnst @Kusalananda @JeffSchaller I am afraid the most important question from the last election wasn't asked again this year. Since this is possibly the single most important issue on any *nix site, I ask it here:

What is your favorite editor?

@sourcejedi Thanks! I did not answer your comment there, because I think it's more suited in a separate Meta discussion. I have a bit too much to think about right now to be able to organise that properly.

@terdon Is the "And why?" silent in that sentence?

@Kusalananda Oh, you think you could justify your ~~prejudice~~ choice?

@terdon If I can't justify it, then maybe it isn't my favourite after all?

Hey, I dunno. You're the candidate!

9:50 PM

@terdon Added text to my already submitted answers. Should I instead post it here maybe (just in case it disqualifies me)?

No comment.

cnst

@terdon as an OpenBSD developer — definitely mg. What else?!

10:07 PM

@terdon I use vim or vi. I haven't ever started mg as I've never been interested in any Emacs-like editor.

Oh wait, that's not true. I think the first ever proper editor I used was MicroEMACS on the Amiga 500, and then GNU Emacs 19 on SunOS and Solaris in the 90s. But I've never used Emacs since then for anything other than trying to track down other users' bugs or issues with the editor itself.

@cnst Sensor device drivers?

10:28 PM

@terdon of course, /dev/chat regulars would guess my favorite editor: ed, the standard text editor. Though to be honest, that's mainly for answering U&L questions; day-to-day, it's vi. I'm an emacs power user as well -- I know both commands: C-x, s and C-x, C-c!