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In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions to ask the candidates. The questionnaire is now open and can be found here.

This is an alternative form of the Town Hall Chat system we've done in previous elections, we're trying some new things to test out how a different approach works.

Here's how it'll work.

  • During the nomination phase, (so, until May 13th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.
  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.
  • This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.
  • At the end of the phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions provided in this thread. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.
  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates.
  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this new process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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  • I think this process is a good idea as it allows people to take part who can't necessarily make a town hall meeting for whatever reason, including timezones.
    – paulmorriss
    Commented May 7, 2013 at 16:07
  • I second that, although in all fairness, I'd make nominees not able to participate in any kind of up-/downvoting. This would just distort the outcome of the top voted questions... or wouldn't it?
    – David K.
    Commented May 10, 2013 at 15:52
  • @DKOATED Given a single nominee can only influence any particular post at most two spaces (voting it one direction, and all opposing points the opposite direction), it would have to be very close for this to have any significant impact in any particular candidate's favor. Past that, if we take multiples into account, then that's as much community voice as anything else.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented May 10, 2013 at 15:55
  • understood and agreed. yet, based on the last couple of days activity here on meta and on the nomination page itself, it seems there aren't quite that many actively participating ... hence my raised concern ...
    – David K.
    Commented May 10, 2013 at 15:57
  • 1
    @DKOATED I wouldn't worry about that particular thing then. The lack of activity is an issue, whether or not anyone tries to take advantage of it. More focus on correcting that, over suspicion, would be my advice.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented May 10, 2013 at 17:02
  • +1 for that. I wholeheartedly agree. We need more nominees and more activity.
    – David K.
    Commented May 10, 2013 at 20:15

5 Answers 5

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What's your opinion on the where to draw the line between questions that belong to this site and the others that are closely related - serverfault.com, stackoverflow.com and wordpress.stackexchange.com?

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How can you ensure that you have enough time to dedicate to your moderation duties?

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My question would be one that is kinda out of the box from your standard set of questions about becoming a moderator. I believe it would be nice read the responses candidates that are beyond the scope of becoming a moderator. My question is related to establishing how they use the site and how passionate they are for the future success of of the Stack Exchange network.

Please note: I know this irrelevant to moderation or the election. as Grace mentions in this question but none the less I think it would be a worthy question but fully understand if you want to ignore it should it get votes.

If one of team members of Stack Exchange responsible for future developments to SE sites was to approach you and pop the question: What would you change, or add to better the Stack Exchange Network?

What would be your response?

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Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions.

  • How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
  • How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
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In the couple of years I've been active on this site it seems to me we have a large number of questions, but no so many answers or answerers. My question is - how would you make sure that new and old questions get more and higher quality answers?

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