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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.

Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as our back up questions for a total of 6 questions.

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. 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?

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

  3. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

  4. 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?

  5. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

  6. Many questions with score 0 get automatically removed because they had no answer and less than 550 views/year (over 90% of questions here don't get more than 550 views/year). Do you have any plan to make such question removals less frequent, so that user content is more respected?

2 Answers 2

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Rubén's answers

  1. 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?

The first thing that I will do is to let this user know that this situation is happening and ask them about what they think about it and about the current Code of Conduct. If there is no doubdt that user disagrees with the Code of Conduct or that there is no intention to solve it then I will discuss the case with other diamond moderators and eventually escalate the case to the Community Manager.

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

First I will review if the post author or other community members have asked to revert the action and give valid reasons to do that, then I will ask the other mod about their reasons to close/delete/etc, in case that it was clear enough. If I'm able to fix the post I will do that or try to help the post author to fix it, otherwise I will explain to the other mod my point of view and request them to revert the action.

  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Diamond Moderators help the community to partipate in site which includes that the site is moderated by the community through their members which earned the corresponing priveliges. One of the most important tasks of a Diamond Moderator is to help the community to develop a common understanding of the site scope and workings. One of the challenges for new diamond moderators is to remember that their close/reopen/delete votes will make the corresponding action to taken inmediately.

  1. 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?

I feel motivated to continue paying attention that my comments should be clear enough when I given a personal opinion and when they are derivated from the site guidelines / community consensus

  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I already reached >30k rep and have earned the gold badge. Being a diamond moderator I will spend more time on reviewing that the top frequent questions are actually the best questions to be used as canonical questions, reviewing posts flagged as spam and flagged to moderator attention.

  1. Many questions with score 0 get automatically removed because they had no answer and less than 550 views/year (over 90% of questions here don't get more than 550 views/year). Do you have any plan to make such question removals less frequent, so that user content is more respected?

I plan to keep paying attention to Meta and to the review queues to act accordingly when such cases were reported and help the user interested in such questions to understand the site workings.

I.E. the user could share the question is social media in order to help attracting more views to such questions or could help to keep the question alive by posting search/research progress updates.

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Hydra's answers

  1. 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 value healthy discourse over having great answers. Hence, I would stick to the Code of Conduct and try to communicate with the user on improving their tone of engagement with the community here. I would try to avoid taking the harsh approach, but if the conversations are increasingly hostile, I will have to let other moderators step in or even raise it up to higher levels.

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

I think as a moderator team, the actions made by one person will be representative of everyone in the team. Hence, it is more important to communicate with that moderator on the justifications behind the action taken. I would trust that the actions are taken in good faith and will respect any outcomes that come out of the discussion, even if I may not necessarily fully agree to it. A blatant revert of that moderator's action is definitely out of the question.

  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

I believe that moderators are the janitors of the community and serve as an example and leader for the rest of the users. Moderators are tasked to maintain the website alongside the community and take actions based on the consensus of the community. In the absence of such consensus, moderators will have to make a decision and communicate it to the rest of the community.

Outside of such decision making, moderators are given access to more tools to maintain the health of the website. Moderators should thus make use of these tools to help build a more vibrant and inclusive community.

  1. 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?

I think that it will not make too much of a difference, although it might come with additional scrutiny. Nonetheless, I will still continue the same way that I carry myself and resolve any misunderstandings if they happen to arise.

  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I think that someone that has attained a high amount of reputation has gained the confidence of other users in terms of the questions asked and answers provided. However, a moderator is someone that has gained the confidence of the community to lead and carry themselves in a manner that the community believes in, so as to move the community forward.

Becoming a moderator will definitely put pressure on the decisions that I make as a user of this site, which makes it even more important to have a good justification on the decisions made. This is something that I feel a user with high reputation may not need to take responsibility for.

  1. Many questions with score 0 get automatically removed because they had no answer and less than 550 views/year (over 90% of questions here don't get more than 550 views/year). Do you have any plan to make such question removals less frequent, so that user content is more respected?

Unfortunately, that is the side effect of this website, as it is not visited as frequently as our sister sites on the Stack Exchange network. Nonetheless, I will likewise monitor the new questions that the site gets and improve them to meet the required standards. This can give a signal to the original poster that their question is being noticed, although there may not be someone knowledgeable enough to provide an answer.

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