This may be of wider interest: Following up my own question on integrating texdiff with an SVN repository to mark diffs between revisions, I've released my own hacky script. See: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/10134/… Comments, feedback, criticism, but mostly diffs, are welcome!

I can not add comment under questions which is asked by other users, so I used the answer box to comment it! have you any suggestions?

@hassannoori: You need 50rep to comment everywhere (You are almost there). Please only add real answers as such.

If anyone here is using Trac, a free web-based Subversion front-end with wiki and ticket system, to organize his/hers LaTeX files please consider to follow the trac.sx proposal

The Moderator Election starting gun has been fired: tex.stackexchange.com/election

I've noticed it as well. Seems to be a fairly extensive procedure -- three phases ...

@lockstep: As I understand it, that's the full procedure, but if there are insufficient 'names in the hat' then it's shorter

For example, I doubt we'll need a primary

I'm watching to see how long it takes for the first nomination to appear [and who it is, of course :-)]

Me too. ;-) But I hope that you will nominate yourself, Joseph.

@lockstep: Currently undecided. We need three volunteers, so once there are three names ...

I also think it would be best for the pro tem people to hold off a bit to allow others to get in first

I note that there are currently 189 potential volunteers (members with rep. \ge 300)

I don't know if it's appropriate to nominate someone else, but I think Geoffrey Jones would be qualified for moderating (see his answer on "Why is my text font lighter than my math font?"). Sadly, Geoffrey hasn't been around at tex.stackexchange for about two months.

I had a message from Geoffrey some time ago: I think he has other commitments to attend to, unfortunately

@lockstep: As I understand it, you can only nominate yourself (although you can lobby others to stand, of course)

Just checked the mod requirements ... I know what "more than 300 reputation" stands for, but what does "good standing" mean?

My assumption is that this means 'if you have messed people around you will not get elected', i.e it's about how the election will work in practice

@lockstep Do you consider a nomination yourself?

FWIW data-SE has some interesting comparative statistics: data.stackexchange.com/tex/queries

@Martin: I'm afraid I would already fail to meet the first criterion -- I may be fair, but there are surely times when I'm not patient ...

@lockstep still, you have shown a lot of dedication to the site (just noticed you have the highest number of edits to date)

That's because I hate typos. :-)

@Martin: Useful stuff, especially data.stackexchange.com/tex/s/203/how-many-users-can-do-x

This one's curious: data.stackexchange.com/tex/s/208/keystrokes-per-rep-point (@JosephWright, you don't fare too bad yourself) :-)

I just noticed the "John Skeet comparison" query . I guess for tex.stackexchange we will soon need to rename it as "Herbert comparison".

@lockstep: he has a way to go to catch Stefan Kottwitz :-)

@JosephWright with that rate, it's a matter of months..

@Joseph: Herbert is now at about +200 rep/day. He will catch Stefan very soon if he presses on.

Yes, I'd seen that, plus Stefan has a new job and is I guess busier than he has been

@Martin: Nicely done :-)

@Martin: Cool! (And I won 6:2.)

@Martin: like lockstep, I win :-) (10:3)

@lockstep: lucky you.. I am 1-3 behind, and with an answer to my own question..

@Martin: Herbert's last name is "Voß" (with Eszett).

@lockstep indeed, but my Swedish keyboard doesn't have that, and I couldn't be bothered to find it (besides, I was under the impression that German language doesn't use eszett anymore in favour of "ss"?)

Guys, I'm getting all the @Martin notifications. Apparently you need to write the full name (TAB helps!) here in the chat.

@MartinScharrer: I guess that should be reported as a bug, then

@MartinTapankov: We use the Eszett less than before, but it's not gone altogether. And we don't change proper names.

@MartinTapankov: the spelling reforms are not quite that simple. It depends on the exact situation (I guess @lockstep knows the rules properly, I certainly don't)

Hi I just asked on the meta question about nominations, but I'll ask here too. Why are there only three moderator slots but 5 current moderators? Are two going to stay on?

@lockstep: Ahhh, I see. I fixed the query anyway.

@AlanMunn: Not that I know of. The new moderators will completely replace the current ones (which were pro tempore to start with)

@AlanMunn: No idea why we got 5 pro tem moderators, but as I understand it we will only have three after the election (plus Jeff, etc.)

So then I think that having only three makes the job more onerous, no? Having more moderators (within reason) spreads the work. And the current 5 have been doing a bangup job IMO.

@AlanMunn: all of the elections are for a max. of 3 people (I think SO itself got 2 new ones, but they have more to start with)

@Joseph who controls the number? Us or the SE gods?

@MartinTapankov: The usage of 'ß' has been reduced, but it still exists. And names are never changed anyway. But I have seen him written as Voss often enough in the WWW.

@AlanMunn: There is not actually too much work at the moment. For example, at present there are three flags active, one of which I set myself as a reminder!

@AlanMunn: The {TeX} moderators just do 'caretaking'. The rules are set by the SO people.

@AlanMunn I guess that was because they wanted to have some extra capacity in the defining stages of the site during the betas, and to test whether they're able to do the job. Maybe @JosephWright will share some insight whether the workload is big

@Joseph that's good to know. Although I've read the discussion on meta about what the moderators do, it's not so clear how much time one spends moderating in practice.

@AlanMunn We take things pretty steadily, and there are rarely more than two or three posts to look at and comment on

I'm 8:6 in the Herbert comparison, pretty good.

I do a lot more reading questions for 'community' things (that don't need the 'mod hammer') than I do actually using the mod tools

@MartinScharrer BTW, I just put a package up on ctan based on the pronoun switching discussion we had a couple of days ago. It's not clear how useful it will be, but it was fun to write.

@Joseph I think you should definitely nominate yourself, if you're still willing.

@AlanMunn As I said, I think it would be sensible for the pro tem moderators to hold off for a few days to let others go first. There's a week for the nominations, after all.

I think you can only nominate yourself, but not others, can you?

@MartinScharrer That's my understanding. The thread for pro tem people was the same.

(Note: I didn't actually volunteer in the thread for pro tem moderators!)

@AlanMunn: What's the name of the package?

@MartinScharrer 'he-she' (don't you read c.t.t :-)

Thanks, I'm just back from a good-bye party and didn't cached up with all the news yet. :-)

Why can I approve tag wiki edits on the sweave tag, but not make them my self?

The recent changes in tag wiki privileges surely are annoying ...

Indeed.

Usually things get accepted pretty fast, so that isn't really a problem. I just wonder about the logic behind it, as clearly I have no idea about sweave whatsoever.

I just noticed that user "PaulHurleyuk" (103 rep) has earned the tag editor badge for {sweave}. Interesting ...

I think he was the one who suggested the edit I just approved.

Btw, maybe someone with actual knowledge of sweave could rewrite that tag wiki so that i contains less marketing speak.

As all of the rest of you would make good candidates for moderators, can I ask if any of you are seriously considering it?

Did I scare everyone?

@JosephWright Everyone is busy nominating themselves...

@JosephWright either no one wants to be the first to speak out or no one is considering it.

I'm considering it.

It seems like the site is pretty good at moderating itself. If you're using TeX you've already demonstrated good taste and breeding. So we're a pretty civil bunch it seems.

Does it take much time, moderating?

Note to self: don't press enter to select names!

@Seamus: there is some discussion of this somewhere above

@Seamus As I've already mentioned, I do very little actual moderating, and a lot more voting, etc., which I'd do anyway

@Seamus I'd agree entirely

@JosephWright I'm also considering it, although I don't consider myself very knowledgeable about how SX itself works (the whole tag editing stuff etc) so I may just not.

@AlanMunn There's not too much to it, so don't let that put you off

@AlanMunn We are all constantly learning how the SX sites work (and it is constantly changing)...

@Caramdir Indeed, for example I've just discovered the 'link reply' function in chat makes the odd highlighting stuff work :-)

I also just discovered that button, but what highlighting are you speaking of?

Ah, I see, you have to mouseover. That is pretty neat.

@Caramdir when you mouse over some of the messages, you could trace the whole discussion upwards and downwards between the person's message and the people highlighted

@Caramdir that's true. I guess I don't always feel like I have a good understanding of parts of it at the conceptual level independent of knowing all the little details of things you can and can't do.

I see that 10% of the electorate have already visited the nominations page :-)

@JosephWright: Indeed. No more serfdom, viva la democracia! :-)

@JosephWright: Access to moderator tools must be exciting. ;-)

Diamonds are all the rage these days, I hear..

@MartinTapankov I'm sure there is a big red 'rig the election' button in the mod tools.

Note to self: Don't dream of diamonds, reach 10k!

@MartinTapankov They can already change their comments at wish and change the written record of the past ;-)

@Caramdir What's more worrying is the stuff where is says 'Be careful, there is no undo for this!', for example for merging users

You get some raw SQ output from those operations. Now that is scary :-)

@lockstep Nowadays you need 20k!

@Caramdir: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

While we're at mod privileges, I noticed that Konrad Rudolph "protected" a question some days ago. Are spam answers by new users really a concern at other stackexchange sites?

@lockstep: You wouldn't believe..

@lockstep The description says it's to stop 'me too' answers. I guess on the higher-volume sites this might be an issue

(Personally, I'd have voted to close the question you refer to, but as a mod. I can't do that in a 'soft' way)

On SO and askubuntu some [soft-question]s attract disproportional amount of responses, and ironically enough, are the most popular

Is there any cure for questions whose posters never accept an answer even though there is a clear winner in votes?

@AlanMunn Other than prod them, not that I've found. As far as I can see only the OP can accept an answer

@AlanMunn I asked this on meta some time ago: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/482/…

@MartinScharrer Thanks. That's a very helpful discussion. I especially like Juan's response, which mirrors my own reasons for contributing here. As someone who deals with students all the time, many of whom are learning LaTeX, I'm a big fan of promoting best practices as much as possible, and SX is at least a good step in that direction.

What confounds me are zero-score accepted answers. I know that badges exist related to them, but i still regard them as a constructional fault. Accepting should also mean upvoting.

Uhh, @AlanMunn, we're currently two Martin's here, be sure to address the right one when replying, we get confused :-)

@lockstep Yes, that is kind of bizarre. "It solved my problem, but I don't like it"?

Yes @AlanMunn, please

@lockstep: maybe it was a dirty, dirty hack that worked and is basically an embarrassment and got downvoted as well, so it arrived at zero in the end. Not unusual even for us, if one is to dive into [tex-core] and [macros]

@MartinScharrer @MartinTapankov Oops. (Or should that be Opps :-) ). In my defence, both your pictures are very small on my page.

@MartinTapankov: You already have the power to view vote counts. One of my answers was accepted with zero up, zero down votes. (And I don't mean the one I asked, answered and accepted myself.)

@lockstep don't you need a certain amount of rep to upvote?

@Caramdir: indeed, you need 10 rep, i.e. 2 question upvotes

@Caramdir: Yes, but the enquirer had enough reputation (he started with 101).

@lockstep One of mine too.

@AlanMunn: Not anymore. :-) (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

@lockstep Hehe, thanks. It was a pretty concise and informative one if I do say so myself.

@lockstep Consider the favour returned.

@AlanMunn: I guess we're now both definitely disqualified as moderators. ;-)

@lockstep You mean by having colluded to vote? Oh dear.

@AlanMunn @lockstep: Surely some modest, uh, contribution towards my cat's pension fund will help me forget the events that transpired here in the last 15 minutes :-)

@MartinTapankov: that's now three candidates less.

@MartinTapankov Just give me you cat's IBAN and we're all set. Oh wait, can you wire canned catfood...

@AlanMunn OTOH Detexify would certainly appreciate some extra cash..