2019 Physics Moderator Election Chat

7:25 PM

Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to Physics, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71/the-h-bar

3

If you have questions about the election process itself, please ask your question on the Physics 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.

ACuriousMind

8:07 PM

@JonEricson Since commenting on the meta posts won't notify anyone as they're by Community, I'll say it here: The link on the election site under "For questions about the election process itself, visit Meta." goes to physics.meta.com

...which is probably not the intended target ;)

Jon Ericson

@ACuriousMind Ah. It's supposed to be specifically /tags/election according to the notes. (Grace Note or JNat normally does this. I'm filling in.)

ACuriousMind

@JonEricson No, it goes to tags/election. Just on the wrong domain.

Note the lack of "stackexchange" in there

DanielSank

Is it legitimate to run for moderatorship entirely to get a bit of traction in tweaking the homework policy, and then resign?

Jon Ericson

@ACuriousMind I uh, don't see that lack: chat.stackexchange.com/messages/50016103/history

@DanielSank What would you do differently as a moderator than as a regular user?

ACuriousMind

@JonEricson Sorry, I'm being confusing: The election page links to https://physics.meta.com/tags/election, not your chat message. Looking at it, all the past election pages have that defect, too, so it's not a new thing.

Jon Ericson

8:17 PM

@ACuriousMind Fixed. Thanks!

(My misunderstanding I see. I didn't read your message closely.)

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank The point of the election is to get moderators that will handle the day-to-day tasks of moderating. While no one can forbid you from resigning (or just not moderating), I would see that as abuse of the system and not look too kindly on it. I also think that you overestimate the power that moderators have on such policy discussions and would achieve little more than upsetting lots of users with such a move.

DanielSank

8:41 PM

@ACuriousMind k

I was mostly trying to make a joke.

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank Irony transmission through the internet will only become available next year ;P

DanielSank

Heh, I'll wait eagerly for that one.

Also, I think I was shooting more for sarcasm than irony.

To be clear for a moment though, I was pretty discouraged by the "approval needed by literally everyone but especially the one mod who seems to care" approach to improving the homework policy.

I should take this discussion out of this chat room. Apologies.

rob

10:22 PM

In all fairness: a pretty large fraction of our custom mod flags point out complete answers to homework-like questions. A person who wanted to shift the boundary between what homework-like content stays and what goes would be much more effective with access to the diamond tools.

Emilio Pisanty

@rob can you put a rough estimate on that fraction? 5%? 15%? 40%?

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty I'll say 20%-40% (varies a lot over time), but note that that's custom mod flags. Most flags (at least in my impression) are standard flags, or auto-flags raised by Community for too many comments or many answers.

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind ok, thanks =)

Jon Ericson

11:20 PM

@rob We've had a moderators run (and win) on this sort of issue. It's probably gratifying to just delete a lot of objectionable content, but it doesn't solve the real problem: new users don't understand what sort of question the community is interested in. Or rather, topics naturally attract people with certain types of problems that can get boring real quick.

In the end, it seems to be pretty discouraging for these mods.

peterh

@JonEricson Sites with similar topics are not unheard, like MO-MSE, or ELL-EL. Maybe you could support the creation of a more broad, possibly not only physics-related site on the A51. After that, the homework problem could be solved easily by community migrations.

@JonEricson There were many initiatives for that, they were closed and deleted until now, typically because it would attract visitors from the PSE, or in the lack of interest. This could change.

@JonEricson Furthermore, there is no science educators site. There is Math Educators, there is CS Educators, but no Science Educators. Probably it wouldn't be really bigger than the MathEdu, but at least it would exist.

ACuriousMind

@JonEricson Maybe you should take into account that we do delete a lot of these flagged answers. Running on "delete complete HW answers" wouldn't be any sort of change. Daniel is - as I understand it, see also discussion in the h bar starting here - mostly talking about changing the wording of the policy itself, not about changing the way moderators take action on these questions or answers.

Jon Ericson

11:37 PM

@ACuriousMind My point is that a "single issue" moderator might not be as productive as "best for the community" moderators.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind Correct.

@JonEricson Well I was mostly invoking sarcasm when I suggested running on a single issue. If I did get the job I'd certainly take the janitorial work seriously!

ACuriousMind

@JonEricson Ah, yes, I agree with that. Just wanted to make clear what the status quo here was.

DanielSank

That said, I'm a rather big fan of saving myself manual labor by making the workflow easier to understand and follow. If that means clearing up the "homework" policy, then so be it.

I was not joking about resigning moderatorship after some time. It's hard to imagine wanting to continue in that role indefinitely.

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank Not to discourage you from nominating, but I feel the most "manual labour" is spent on the real janitorial work like tracking down sockpuppets and handling routine standard flags.

DanielSank

Indeed. What do you spend your mod cycles doing?

Is there much sock-puppeeting (aside from my own shadow empire, of course)?

ACuriousMind

11:44 PM

@DanielSank Certainly much more than is visible to the ordinary user. There's also a lot of comment cleanup, custom flags from users who didn't understand the system and dealing with other standard flags.

DanielSank

That being the case, any idea why mods keep that position for so long? Sounds boring.

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank I can't speak for the others, but I derive great satisfaction from being the oil that keeps this site's gears grinding. A bit of attention from me every day is a little price to pay to keep this place alive.

DanielSank

Interesting.

But doesn't oil prevent grinding? :-P

ACuriousMind

My metaphor game is not at its peak today :)

Transcript for

2019 Physics Moderator Election Chat