Question for the candidates: Is there any special attention you would take when dealing with a high rep user of the site?

@MisterPositive I tend to adjust how I talk to someone depending of the past interaction I had with them (being extra careful if they didn't like a previous intervention of mine). I also tend to be more careful/welcoming with new users. But no, I don't really use special attention for high rep users

@MisterPositive In general no. It doesn't matter whether the user has 1 rep or is the Jon Skeet of IPS, the rules apply the same to all of us. If content is high quality, I will upvote it. If the post needs work, I will leave a nice comment explaining the areas that I see for improvement in the post.

The one thing that might differ in how I interact with a high rep user vs a low rep user is that typically with new users, I'll add commentary in my comments about the workings of the site (for example telling them how to get a post reopened or undeleted). A high rep user will already know these things, so I won't feel compelled to give them the extra information.

I have a general discussion question :) So as a mod, I sometimes see posts with flags and even delete votes but no comments. What are your thoughts about that, and I guess generally how we're doing on guiding users to improve posts (and would anything change about your approach if you were a mod)?

@EmC I have a few thoughts on this that I'd be happy to share

@EmC I often do that myself, mostly in the afternoon, when I'm too tired to live a (good) comment. I do it because I know I can count on my fellow community mod to write a comment. I also sometimes check on those post later if I have finally found the energy to leave a comment

And I also sometime post the link in chat if I feel it needs a quick comment

I addressed this in point 5 of my questionnaire: As a moderator, I would comment more. SE as a whole has a reputation of being unwelcoming to new users, and IPS specifically has a bad reputation within the network of being a very difficult place for new users. I myself am guilty of occasionally voting to close or delete without leaving a comment, but I've been trying to get better about always leaving a comment to explain why I'm voting the way I am.

My goal is to never take an action to close or delete content without leaving a comment explaining why. As a moderator, I promise that I will make this goal a reality.

This is something I've been actively working on changing in my own moderation style

I've found myself refraining from voting to close or delete unless there's an existing comment that I've upvoted or I've posted a comment myself

@Rainbacon I'm not so sure that's a good thing, though

However, I do agree that, if a question is closed or an answer deleted without any comment explaining what's wrong with it, this is definitively a bad thing

I do sometimes find myself in the same boat as Ælis where I will drop a vote without commenting because I know someone else will, but if I'm elected as a mod, I absolutely would not do that

@Rainbacon But your vote would be binding, it's not the same situation. If I know I have the last vote to cast before an answer is deleted/a question is closed, than I will definitively leave a comment before voting (or not vote at all)

Being a mod means having binding close/delete power, I would never use that kind of power without leaving a comment for the user explaining how to improve the post

The one exception to that would be obvious spam

Well then, we do agree (about spam and not casting a binding vote without leaving a comment)

thanks for answering! (sorry I dropped this in here and then immediately got invited for a coffee break :P)

@EmC You evil monster! :p

I have to say I'm more on @Rainbacon's side of making sure everything has comments, though I do occasionally only flag things that I feel confident the community will leave comments on (like, short low-quality answers that I don't want to singlehandedly delete). also, the system auto-flags if a question is closed and doesn't have a comment, so we'll get nagged ;)

but sometimes I'm not always sure why someone else flagged a thing though, which can make it hard to come up with a good comment

do you think you'd comment differently on new user posts vs. people who've been around for a while?

(or was this on the questionnaire >.>)

@EmC Wasn't that the question of Mister Positive that we just answered?

ahhh sorry I missed that. I don't mean high-rep necessarily, but like, you know they've been pointed to citation guidelines a few times before

I guess that's kind of similar, though

so nvm, your answers basically cover what I was wondering about :)

@EmC I do agree that it's a lot better if you leave a comment when flagging. It's just that, technicaly, I don't always have the energy to do that (sometimes, I do decide to read something latter because I believe that there is a 50% chance that the post will need commenting and flagging)

I would love to be able to promess that "I will comment more" but that's not something that I can promiss. So, if you people feel that I don't comment enough, you should definitively vote for Rainb or ava

@MisterPositive my answer will be close to Rain's, in the sense that I won't ignore a bad answer if it comes from a high rep user. However, I wouldn't say high rep users necessarily know (and care about) the rules better. First and foremost, we do have IPS HR users who won most of their rep before we adopted a more strict standard on backing up answers and justifying frame challenges, and I saw some of them in the past not wanting to edit an answer of theirs because,

"We didn't have to provide that much information in the past and my answer is enough as it is". Should i encounter such a situation now, I would (as I do today) politely provide a link to the guidelines updates and clearly point out what could be edited in their answer.

If they do edit their answer accordingly, then everything's perfect. If they still disagree, depending on the frequency of such situation to happen I would either ask the other mods for advice or delete the answer.

@EmC I do comment on most posts I flag (like 98% of the time), unless its something I find fishy but can't really point out what's wrong. In that case, I'd rather flag than asking about it in chat (we used to do that quite often and it would disrupt the conversational flow)

@EmC linking meta posts or the help center definitely helps/seems to beat the best thing to do to help new users. Now, I also remind them that they can ask us for help, and sometimes they do and I help them understand what's missing from their post. Its nice to see what we can build together.

Sorry about the wall of text haha

@avazula haha no worries! it's great to hear everyone's thoughts in such detail :D