Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to Roleplaying Games, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11/rpg-general-chat

If you have questions about the election process itself, please ask your question on the RPG Meta Site. Remember, folks stepping up to lead this community are committing a significant amount of their time, please keep all discourse civil and constructive.

ooooh this is going to be interesting

it's been what, three years? more?

I definitely have never seen an election here

@GraceNote if you don't mind, why has it been so ridiculously long since this site had an election?

Oooh.

Neat

Now we just need to find a sacrifice

I'm writing up my self-nomination as we speak

@JoshuaAslanSmith A SACRIFICE

@KRyan No one asked until now.

@Lord_Gareth indeed

@GraceNote ah. Should have done.

Elections are generally held because of three reasons.

One is that the flag load of the site has become too large for the current team to reasonably handle, either because short-handed or because of time issues (though actually fixing the latter isn't always successful, wahaha). We check in with moderators on a yearly basis for this to confirm what they feel about needing a new election or not.

@GraceNote well, in this case a... I'd guess minority, but a substantial one, feels very poorly-served by one moderator in particular, so the opportunity to make the case for a replacement is extremely welcome.

Two is that one or more moderators wish to step down, so elections for one or more slots (not necessarily identical in count) are held in order to replace them. In this case, C. Ross has informed us that he wished to step down as a moderator due to not having the time to do this community justice.

Three is that a moderator has vanished without a trace or has otherwise become unreachable. So in the same vein as two, just less coordination and more worry generated.

@GraceNote ah, that is good to know. C.Ross has been quiet, but always seemed to be fair.

It's very sad to see him go. He and I were among the first pro-tems on the network, I've always enjoyed working with him.

@GraceNote I note that it says there are 2 moderator positions available, where we previously had 3; are we reducing the number of moderators? or is one of the moderators not being required to secure re-election?

@KRyan current moderators don't have to run again, it's a for life appointment

so our final number will be 4

Brian, mxy and 2 new

@waxeagle I see. That is extremely disappointing.

That's a shame to hear

nom'd

@waxeagle nomz

woot.

@waxeagle I haven't commented on your nomination, because you do address it a bit already, but the comment I left on @JoshuaAslanSmith's nomination may also be worth considering for you as well

by the way, which are the moderation, editing, and participation badges?

@KRyan they are broken down into categories

on the badge page

are you asking which categories are which?

@JoshuaAslanSmith they don't match the election categories though

I think I found the list here

I know the two I'm missing are Marshall and Steward

@waxeagle hmm, then the list I found isn't right

it has you missing only Copy Editor

and yeah the editing one I'm missing is Copy Editor

@KRyan yeah, that's a cool page, but doesn't incorporate the recent updates

heh, no one on the site has Steward

Marshal and Copy Editor are nearly as rare

our review queue never has anything in it :(

very very true, max I think Ive seen was 8 total items and usually 1 or 2 of those are in 3 separate queues

@waxeagle indeed, I've noticed

@JoshuaAslanSmith Hah, just noticed your website URL; that's amusing

@KRyan I don't have enough characters left in my post to talk about current moderation. I'll answer as part of the townhall if it comes up (post a Q on the townhall post).

@waxeagle ah, didn't realize the limit was so tight on the nomination

@KRyan yeah, after an SO candidate posted a 10 page nom, they make you be positively terse now (which is good)

@waxeagle Our review queue is usually vote-to-close.

@waxeagle wow. Was that legit, or an abuse (hiding others below him or something?)

@KRyan he was elected and remains a mod to this day

@waxeagle well, I suppose that's impressive

stackoverflow.com/election/2#post-8042214

@waxeagle @KRyan yeah I had a word doc up, that I typed up all nice, paragraphs expanding for each of the bullet points, but the character limit is very short so that nobody drowns out anyone else with their real-estate

@JoshuaAslanSmith yup

@waxeagle ah, that's long but it's not ten pages long

I can see a point to having that much detail, even if I ultimately agree with limiting it

@KRyan slight exageration :)

as opposed to ten pages where I just, I cannot even. there doesn't seem to be any conceivable purpose to that, excepting possibly flood abuse

I remember my nomination from the first go round here, I think my first draft was twice the allowed length

@waxeagle I wish I had been around at the time; at least based on what I know now, you would have had my vote

as it is, there are two others I hope nominate themselves... or maybe I don't, since it will be difficult to pick between you four

(and that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others who would also give me difficulty)

well, you'll get 3 votes :)

@KRyan eh, I was OK with the outcome, came down to me and C.Ross for the last spot

@waxeagle ah, yes that would be difficult

@KRyan responded to your comment

@JoshuaAslanSmith sounds good

the one thing that really annoys me about the moderation on this site as a whole is the trigger-happiness re: comment-deletion

@KRyan comments are meant to be deleted, rather fast, especially so if there is an extended discussion or flame war going down

I dont know if youve seen sci-fi and fantasy where comment chains are longer than the answers themselves and last for all time.

@JoshuaAslanSmith yes, but I have seen the moderators delete comments in a matter of hours, without any flaming going on

@JoshuaAslanSmith I absolutely agree that there is an opposite extreme that's even worse

flamming isnt the only pre-req for comment deletion, just the most immediate

generally though if nothing in the comments is helping a Q or A than it has no reason to live, and if it is servicing to improve either, than it should be incorporated and once done so, deleted

@JoshuaAslanSmith yes, but sometimes it is necessary to discuss whether or not a proposed improvement has merit

sometimes that takes a little back-and-forth

@KRyan chat is really the place for that

drop 1 comment with your suggestion and a chat link to get them to talk to you over there

@JoshuaAslanSmith we really need better tools for creating chatrooms if that is to be the stance

because the only convenient way to use chat for that is the "move this conversation to chat" link, which only shows up after you've "been bad"

its really easy to make a chatroom, and any Q or A related discussions take priority in main chat over anything else happening

@KRyan yes

@JoshuaAslanSmith I do not agree in the slightest, I have to go to the main chat page, to the chat-creation page, fill it out, enter that chat room, get the link, and then type up a comment

One of the things I'd like to see from our moderators (whoever ends up elected), is more overall visibility and cache in the larger SE community.

or, ya know

that's how we get our wants, we need mods/users active on MSE campaiging for our issues

I could just use the site feature right in front of me and convenient for all involved

Not having been around for one before, how many candidates can we vote for? And what's the deal with nominating others?

Im not saying that the usability couldn't be improved, just that the barrier is not high for you, a power user.

@Miniman you can vote for 3(a first, second and third choice), votes are counted via Meek STV

Yah, why can't we nominate other people?

@JoshuaAslanSmith actually, I really disagree; I find tedious in the extreme and in no one's best interests

@thedarkwanderer because you actually have to want to be a mod :)

@miniman weird I cant ping you with auto complete, anyway I do not think you shoudl be able to nom others

@thedarkwanderer presumably the way to "nominate someone else" is to tell them you want them, encourage them to run, and so on

moderating is a really big commitment

@KRyan Yah, but without methods of contacting people that's hard. I suppose it makes sense though.

@thedarkwanderer you can always flag them down in chat or leave a comment on one of their posts...

Guess that's fair.

it's also just not something anyone can or should do; I am more than active enough, have most of the relevant badges, and so on, but I'm not sure I represent a broad enough slice of the site, and I don't agree with some fairly major site moderation philosophies (such as the stance on comments, discussed above)

Fair enough, I just thought I'd check. I'd quite like to see BESW in the race.

@Miniman I would as well, but I have no idea if he has the time or inclination

@Miniman he's said in the past that he didn't have interest in running were an election to come up.

(but that could have changed)

gotta commute, back after dinner/kids in bed folks.

@waxeagle later

Yeah, he hasn't been as active with his welcome to the site comments lately. I guess if he's interested he'll nominate.

I assure you, I am fully not qualified to moderate this site, but I am interested in seeing it remain functional, friendly, and above everything else, provide answers to specific RPG gaming questions.

I dont expect besw to run at all

@MadMAxJr I would like to see it improve in at least one of those categories, as I don't think it's doing all that well in one of them.

beyond him having a lot of family related time commitment, I think he prefers to be a helpful academic/professor type vs. beign involved in the administration of the site beyond what his rep grants him already

hey @BESW, you were just being talked about

That is my impression, what 'ere he decides to do I want him to do it lol

@KRyan Hey, I'd vote for you. I figure the election process would take care of whether you represent a big enough portion of the community or not.

As moderator, I would attack all problems directly at the source, by banning all users. </sarcasm>

hahaha

I will vote for any moderator who campaigns with the intent to put a giant note in the Ask Question help, "TRY TALKING TO YOUR PLAYERS." if any social-strife keywords are detected.

@thedarkwanderer my worry is that, even if I did win, I would be (unintentionally!) biased, or almost as bad, perceived as such. It's important that all users feel that all moderators have their best interests at heart. This is very, very important to me on a personal level, and I would not want to cause, even accidentally, anyone to feel the site itself was antagonistic towards them.

@MadMAxJr haha

@KRyan Half joking, half serious on that one. Those are some of our hot-button argument questions that pop up and turn into comment-warfare.

@MadMAxJr a lot of those can be duped out if they really are that similar to a previous question

@Miniman I cannot hold all these nopes.

@MadMAxJr I tend to avoid those unless the question-title reads to me as "ooh, I know this one!" and I have a particularly-relevant thing to say

usually though they need a deluge of answers telling them to do so and then they will still probably ignor that sound advice

@besw my intuition was proven correct

It's unfortunate that they occur with some degree of regularity.

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, there is definitely a problem where people come here for back-up rather than answers

Yes. "I have X rule situation. I am right under Y circumstances. Help me find other ways to say I am right."

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yeah, you've got the general gist of it. My personal life means I can't promise to consistently dedicate the time/energy it'd take, but beyond that I don't think I'd handle it well. I'd turn curmudgeonly.

I've thought about it carefully, and was very tempted for a while.

@MadMAxJr its perennial because the core fallacies behind it are epidemic to the type of people/cultural expectations of a lot of D&D style games which are also the most popular

@JoshuaAslanSmith And my kneejerk reactionary thought to that is, "Rocks fall, your question dies."

see, I don't feel like it pops up in rules questions nearly as often as in social questions

@Besw I could see what you mean in that last bit, let me say that I fully appreciate all your non-mod activity on the site, you are a wise sage and shall remain so in our chat rooms

Anyway, anybody looking to be moderator, be ready for the torches that will be waved at you over the drop of a hat, be they justified or unjustified.

"convince my DM to give me the thing" "convince my player he shouldn't have the thing"

@MadMAxJr Ah, but that would be the same problematic solution that the asker wanted, only exercised by us on a meta level, and we know better

@JoshuaAslanSmith I look forward to continuing to work alongside the moderator team as an active citizen of the site.

any and all questions about forced alignment-change in a D&D-esque game

I have moderated in other realms online. I'm not fit for the job. I'll try to do the right thing, and make one subset happy, and anger five more in the process. Best I could do is promise to make everyone equally unhappy.

hah, I mean the community as a whole, if it really wanted to, could push to move those out of scope, generally most of those fall out of scope anyway because of phrasing and opinion seeking or craft me X nature

I just realized that if they gave me the character limit I totally wouldve want off on a spiel about Athenian democracy so its probably for the best I didnt have the character count to make a speech

I would have liked nominations to have occurred on April 1st.

"As moderator, I will push to rescope the site as 4E focused."

hahaha

@MadMAxJr this site has some serious 4e-chops, and really opened my eyes to the things that 4e does really, really right

4 years too late, but honestly the trends should in some degree drive it, im not the biggest fan of 5e personally, but I think its workable and Ive certainly benefited repwise from 5e

I won't touch heavily on the subject. Each system has their pros and cons depending on the audience they're played in.

correct

4E was good for groups with 'new' tabletop gamers when I did pub games. It did not meet the needs/wants of veterans in my area.

I find the opposite problem now at my gameshop where everyone I know longs for the optimization and balance of 4e, but I find 5e is super easy to get newbs into quickly

Yeah, I found the opposite with my group. New players were put off by the rigid rule structures while my old players appreciated them.

Nah, we should've temporarily synonymed dungeons-and-dragons with system-agnostic. Would've been great. By which I mean awful.

The new people I had enjoying 4E were WoW gamers who were drawing analogies to the power cards like their skill-bar.

alright heading to a movie night (wont be lurking here for a few hours) just @ me if you guys have any specific questions regarding my views on policy or overall approach.

ttfn

@thedarkwanderer ahahaha, oh god we'd still be recovering from that prank years later

anyway, also gotta go

later folks

see yah

To bring the conversation back around: A good quality in a moderator will be to view every question purely on its structural and content merits, regardless of its tags.

And quietly fester and scream on the inside.

It can be hard to evaluate quality in subjects we're unfamiliar with--I often avoid voting on World of Darkness questions because I can't tell what's reasonable and what's not.

I try not to vote-to-close on WoD questions unless it's blatantly off topic.

A good moderator will need to learn to cut through that--and when looking at a moderation team it's useful to have folks with a wide variety of system experience so they can tag each other in.

Also, a good moderator has DR 10/fire at a minimum.

So, when choosing who to vote for, one of my secondary concerns will be looking at the tags of existing mods and of nominees. If all other considerations are equal, I'll go for the nominee with the most tags the other moderators don't have.

Of course, qualities like equanimity are more important.

Anyway, approaching end of day here. I look forward to nominee responses to topics that pop up. I hope this ends up being practical policy/future discussion and not moderator thunderdome.

And it'd be nice to get a spread of time zone activity if possible--for example, right now Brian handles stuff during Asia/Pacific daylight hours and then hands it off to Mxy when he goes to bed.

Oh, Brian is still actively doing moderator stuff? Nice.

Oh, he's been VERY active.

(And that list only includes things that aren't deleted.)

Nice. I recall his chat involvement early on, pre-doctoral.

Yes, well. One thing that any nominee should consider is that becoming a moderator makes everything you say get heard by the citizenry in a GREAT BOOMING VOICE FROM ON HIGH, in addition to taping a big "KICK ME" sign on your back.

That makes it hard to chat and comment normally.

Yes. Verbal molotov cocktails thrown at your moderator badge regularly.

Could be worse though. I'm glad you don't have to deal with one of gaming.SEs problems. "Minecraft doesn't work" 25 times a day.

I've seen uncountable iterations of "Well, a moderator made that edit, so I guess it's right now."

"A moderator made that edit and I will see this site burn to ash before I accept it." too.

Yup.

It's hard to have a normal conversation with the diamond.

Responses always skew to the extreme.

Appoint moderators in secret. Turn the entire site into a game of Salem/Witchhunt!

Roll perception.. You don't see any moderators here. Roll stealth and post your question.

The problem with that isn't the witchhunt aspect, its that you might actually have witches. I mean, right now we almost never have legitimate moderation problems, but anomynity would make it much easier for those problems to occur.

Well, much harder to fix them if they did

I've rarely seen it here, but other SE site sometimes get into witch-hunts over flagging.

right, but I don't think "I made that decision, here's why" actually helps with that

the people who initiate the hunts in those cases will initiate the hunts whether we're transparent or not

The people who don't will, by and large, not.

But, regardless, it's a bad idea and a decent joke so :P

Anyway, I've got to get going. Best of luck to those who nominate themselves. You'll need it. And asprin.

I would really like to see @doppelgreener or @SevenSidedDie nominate themselves for the election. They both are well-rounded, level-headed, and diplomatic.

I agree with that

Especially since SSD has a bunch of not-just-D&D tags and I agree with BESW about that being important

I'm not going to speak for or against any particular citizen as a nominee--I think it'd be more divisive than helpful--but those are qualities which I'd like to see in nominees.

Also, doppelgreener has gotten in arguments with me without losing his temper, and that’s like saintly or something.

@Emrakul [wave]

Hoping someone else nominates, just so there's a decision.

If you think you'd do a good job, go for it.

I'm trying to be careful not to say anything positive or negative and specific citizens in this context. I'll talk about the qualities a moderator should have, but it'd be divisive to talk about how any particular folk meet or don't meet them.

That's something voters should investigate and decide for themselves.

However, I do encourage anyone who thinks they could do the job well to nominate themselves.

(And I respect those, like @KRyan, who recuse themselves, as it shows good self-awareness.)

Personally I think I have more long-term value to the site as an active citizen.

You don't do much Q&A, but you vote and review consistently.

Don't thank me, thank your user log.

Can I nominate? I have really valued your @BESW support as a new and growing user, and that suggests good moderator material to me...

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Happily, users can only nominate themselves.

Otherwise I get the impression I'd be lock-stepped into a diamond.

That's the only way Plato would have it!

You have to be forced to rule...

Aye, and there is some merit to the method (it's roughly how my religion's administration is chosen).

But I'd be an awful moderator.

Why so?

I'm most valuable to the site as an active citizen working alongside the moderation team.

So how do these moderator elections work?

@harlandski My personal life circumstances make it impossible for me to commit the regular time and energy I would feel moderation requires. This would make me bitter and frustrated.

You don't want a bitter, frustrated mod.

Now that's true!

I got bitten by one of them!

@harlandski Overview here.

Users nominate themselves this week, then there's Q&A sessions, a primary, and an election.

Don't worry it wasn't you @Emrakul, and the bite was phantasmal anyway, as it was my British misunderstanding of an American idiom that wounded me...

...i had a long rest and recovered!

You can see our previous election too.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up @BESW, now I am an informed voter :-)

ttfn

Yey!