2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

Question

Fixed Opening In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.

Not every question was compiled - as noted, we only selected the top 8 questions as submitted by the community, plus 2 pre-set questions from us.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!

Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.

To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

1. Rubén

---

1. If there are fewer than 5 active/willing close voters at any given time on the site, how would you intervene and/or manage the close votes queue?

2. Discussions about the site on Meta Web Apps always only seem to be among the same two or three users. How will you encourage other regular users to engage on Meta and help drive the direction of the site?

3. The scope of Web Application was evolved over the years. What do you think about the current scope? Should we keep it as is over the next couple of years or should we discuss it before 2019 ends?

4. Web Applications seems to have more than its fair share of "drive by" users; users who ask one question and just disappear. What are your ideas for getting some of those users to stick around and become productive community members? How will you use the moderator tools to do that?

5. Should the reputation score of the user be a factor in any moderator decisions that you make?

6. What is an improvement project you want to take on that is only possible with Moderator tools?

7. In your opinion, what is the biggest problem/challenge Web Applications is currently facing? How would you propose to solve it?

8. Which criteria do you examine before migrating a question?

9. 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?

10. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Answer 1

1. If there are fewer than 5 active/willing close voters at any given time on the site, how would you intervene and/or manage the close votes queue?

If it's clear to me that the post is a fair question (no spam / blatantly off-topic) and the question is new new (less than a month) and if there is something that I'm able to suggest I will leave a comment. If the question is has around a month I will vote accordingly my best judgement.

2. Discussions about the site on Meta Web Apps always only seem to be among the same two or three users. How will you encourage other regular users to engage on Meta and help drive the direction of the site?

When I find a thread on the main site that has a discussion about Meta topics I will invite the participants to continue the discussion on Meta.

When I find a >5 rep user struggling with the way that the site works I will invite them to make share their thoughts on Meta.

3. The scope of Web Application was evolved over the years. What do you think about the current scope? Should we keep it as is over the next couple of years or should we discuss it before 2019 ends?

In a broad sense I think that the current scope is too broad as nowadays there are web apps for very complex / specialized tasks and we are not getting the attention of experts on those tasks while there are other sites on the network that could have them like managing enterprise cloud services.

4. Web Applications seems to have more than its fair share of "drive by" users; users who ask one question and just disappear. What are your ideas for getting some of those users to stick around and become productive community members? How will you use the moderator tools to do that?

I have no idea.

5. Should the reputation score of the user be a factor in any moderator decisions that you make?

Not really, but if there are many things to do I will ask their opinion about priorities.

6. What is an improvement project you want to take on that is only possible with Moderator tools?

I'm open to suggestions and willing to learn about projects of this type made on other sites.

7. In your opinion, what is the biggest problem/challenge Web Applications is currently facing? How would you propose to solve it?

Help drive-by users to make good questions.

8. Which criteria do you examine before migrating a question?

The question should be clear and have a brief description of the search/research efforts made by the OP.

9. 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?

I think that the case should be reviewed carefully as the comments could be derived from misunderstandings or cultural biases. The priority should be to follow the code of conduct if there is solid evidence that the user isn't following it, it should be reported to other mods and the community manager. If the report aren't related to the code of conduct I will try to identify if I'm able to help that user to understand the situation and to identify if that situation hurts the community. If the community isn't hurt, then I think that there is noting else to do.

10. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

First I will try to discuss this with the mod. If we disagree I will propose them to discuss together that with another mod.