2015 Moderator Election

nomination began
Jun 1, 2015 at 20:00
election began
Jun 8, 2015 at 20:00
election ended
Jun 16, 2015 at 20:00
candidates
5
positions
3

On Stack Exchange, we believe the core moderators should come from the community, and be elected by the community itself through popular vote. We hold regular elections to determine who these community moderators will be.

Community moderators are accorded the highest level of privilege on our community, and should themselves be exemplars of positive behavior and leaders within the community.

Our general criteria for moderators is as follows:

  • patient and fair
  • leads by example
  • shows respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words
  • open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions

Every election has three phases:

  1. Nomination
  2. Primary
  3. Election

Please participate in the moderator elections by voting, and perhaps even by nominating yourself to be a community moderator!

I followed this site through its Area 51 phase, doing my best to keep the proposal alive and making sure that it graduates to beta phase. We've come a long way since and the site is about to graduate again. I put a lot of time into it because it struck me that this site would fill a niche that no other Q&A site fills right now. There are vendor-forums and mailinglists but no easy-to-google place for network engineering.

In my mind moderators are a necessary function but moderation should only happen when it supports the community. We need more active users with high reputation and I hope to support the site to get there.

The final reason for this nomination is simple: Give people more choice. Please look at all candidates and look at what each one has to say. Make a choice for this election but more importantly: Keep asking and answering questions. Help to grow the site and make it a great place to find answers for all the networking people around the world.

4

Although I've been in doubt if I should nominate myself for this position, I think it's in the best interest of this SE to do so. My doubt was mostly related to Mike's 2nd reason for stepping down. However, since I'm one of the most active people in reviewing posts at this moment I think I should consider stepping forward, encouraged by Mike's words. Also, by stepping forward as a 4th person, people actually have something to chose now, which I think is a good thing (even though the current moderators do a great job).

It's obvious that this SE needs more than one active moderator, so I think it's a good thing this election is coming. Since I'm already doing a lot of the reviews, it would be a logical step to become one of the moderators.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

2

My activities here speak for themselves. (For those not familiar with the SE navigation, you can view all of my activities on my user page.)

Several community members, myself included, have noted my degree of presence here is least-of-the-three of the temporary moderators. If elected, my time commitment would remain the same. I've done my best to be consistent in my moderation work for my temporary term. The fact that I spend all of my availabe-here time on moderation activities makes my commitment patently obvious.

I believe that a moderator is only a tool that acts on behalf of the community. We've had several calls for being more "open" or "newbie Q" friendly, and I think we can improve in that direction without going down the slippery slope to chaos. To improve, we'll need additional community members to participate in discussion and work in Meta to hammer out what exactly we should change and how.

I invite you to ask questions of me in Meta. ...and frankly, if you're that involved, you should probably nominate yourself too. :)

1

This stack needs some new blood in the moderation pool. The Pro Tem mods have done a excellent job of taking care of this site so far, but having some fresh talent might be a welcome change of pace.

Not to mention it might be nice for some of the provisionals to take a breather - namely YLearn, who has been the solo moderator lately. I'd like to help this stack grow and offload some of the moderating tasks.

Lately, I've been a little preoccupied with a move from England to Colorado, but I fully intend on getting back to the parent site as soon as I settle in (i.e. as soon as I close on my new house!).

Let me know if you have any questions about how I operate. I'd be happy to oblige.

I debated nominating myself since the process started, but as the only current moderator active on the site most days I feel it is important to provide some continuity moving forward with the site. While I don't always have a lot of spare time, I do spend a fair amount of it here when I do have it.

If you want to know how I moderate and my thoughts on the position, there should be ample information in the answers I have provided on meta for you to get a good feel.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

This election is over.