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Ben

Best bits

In my opinion the best two elements of Server Fault (and the reasons I registered as a user in fact) are the overwhelming sense of friendliness and willingness to help. I have registered on many internet forums in the past, and posting as a newbie I was often put down in some way by someone who had a high post count and was thus "more important" than me. My first posts were usually disagreed with and I wasn't made to feel particularly welcome. Here at Server Fault, I "lurked" for a while so I could get a feel for the place, and was bowled over by the sense of community and real friendliness, even by the high rep users (who on forums I'd experienced in the past I would generally consider to be jerks). When I had a problem I couldn't figure out, I was confident that when I posted it on Server Fault I would be met with some friendly and awesome answers by some incredibly clever people.

As a moderator, I would continue to encourage this friendly behaviour and try to make Server Fault a better place by removing the "noise" posts we get (non-answers and spam). I want Server Fault to be the place for people in our profession to go to share their knowledge, and in my efforts to remove all the noise I hope to encourage even more professionals to join and participate.

Worst bits

As mentioned by the other candidates, we do seem to have a problem with inappropriate comments. It's not a major problem, but a problem that needs to be addressed nonetheless. I am certainly not playing totally innocent here - I have posted the odd snarky comment at the end of a long and hard day, but I usually deleted them after a few hours when I'd cooled down. I have since realised that such grumpy comments are unacceptable, and as a moderator I would work to remove such comments that poke fun at people or don't really add anything to the discussion. I would give gentle reminders of what comments are designed for, as people seeing a moderator discouraging something will be less inclined to do it themselves.

Another problem is we can be very quick to jump on the close button. We need to figure out what the original poster really wants and try and edit the question to fit. Bad English and grammar can easily be fixed with an edit, and can really salvage a potentially good question. I have recently started to do this to poor questions that I see, and as a moderator I would continue this trend. Again, people seeing a moderator do this might be more encouraged to do it themselves, or at least not go straight for the close button and try and figure out what the question asker really wants.

What do you see as the top two most valuable cultural elements of ServerFault and how will you perpetuate those cultural elements as a moderator?

This might seem like an obvious statement, but the most valuable thing we have is a community of users willing to answer people’s questions. Not just with a quick answer, or with what they happen to know about a question. We have a collection of people willing to look at a question, apply their knowledge to it, and then go off and research a solution, often to very complex problems, and provide an answer to a person on the internet who they will likely never meet, or see how they benefit from their work. They are willing to help people, because they can.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this. That is to make it easy for them to do so. Remove the spam and the advertisements that get in the way, help to clean up the inappropriate or misplaced questions, edit these questions to make sure they can reach the people best able to help them. If the moderators can help to do this, the users are able to focus on what really matters, quality answers.

Another great point about Serverfault is perhaps something I shouldn’t be saying, going for a moderator position after all, but it’s that a lot of the time, moderators aren’t needed on ServeFault. Because people have invested so much time and effort into this site, they are also invested in keeping the site clean and organised and editing, migrating or closing questions where it is needed. I also feel that by having the site looked after in this way users feel better when they have their questions edited or moved. It seems much less personal when 5 people have voted together to close or move your question than when a single superman jumps in and does it. I’d be much more inclined to consider that maybe my question had problems that I need to look at if 5 of my peers agreed on that.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this, and it’s to keep their fingers out of the pie! There are some tasks that a moderator should be very keen on dealing with, spam, abuse etc. But I feel a good moderator shouldn’t be visible to users until it is clear that they are needed. There is no call to use the mod hammer to close a question that will get closed by users  (often with positive feedback to the user that asked the question), there’s no need for moderators to come in and make sweeping changes to a question when they know the users will help evolve this question naturally over the time. Moderation is a power to be used lightly and honed over time, not a sweeping chain gun to be used on all that get in its way.

 

What do you see as the top two flaws in SF's culture at the present time and how would you address those cultural flaws as a moderator?

One of the increasingly common faults I have seen with the community is the fact that we can be somewhat elitist as to what questions we will answer. We will often look at a question that is badly worded, with spelling or grammar mistakes as being written by someone too lazy to make the effort, so why should we spend time answering it. However more and more of the time, these sorts of questions are from people whose first language is not English, or who are struggling in trying to put their thoughts into words, but are trying very hard to put together a question.

We should be more accommodating in this area, particularly as high rep users and moderators, and spend some time helping these users clean up their questions and make them better, rather than jumping on the close button. I’m as guilty as the next person in this sometimes, and I need to do better at taking the time to try and establish what someone is trying to ask. If we can get this far, then the question has value and we can help by editing and formatting the question so that it gets good answers. No question should be written off just because it doesn’t read well at first glance. A moderator’s role should be as a guide, to spot these users that might be struggling and help and encourage them to write better questions.

My final bad point is something we’ve all done at some point I’m sure. You see a question where you think “OMGZ how can they not know that” because the answer is so blindingly obvious..... to you. And therein is the problem, we’ve all learned so much over our careers that we can sometimes forget what it is like to not know the basics, especially those times when you know that the answer should be obvious, but you can’t get it. We’ve all been there, but now our heads are so full of the incredibly intricate and amazing solutions to complicated problems that we forget and we leave condescending comments or LMGTFY links. It has probably taken that user some courage to ask what they know is a simple question, but we make them feel bad about it.

I’m by no means saying this is happening all the time, but we have all thought that way I’m sure, when we’re busy and stressed, but it’s not fair to that user. As a moderator I’d like to think that I can help dissuade this behaviour by leading by example and letting people know that snide comments and LMGTFY links don’t help. Along with reassuring the, often new, users that it’s ok to ask questions that might seem simple, because you can guarantee that they are not going to be the only ones who benefit from the answer. A moderator’s diamond adds some weight to your responses and it should be used for good.

What do you see as the top two most valuable cultural elements of ServerFault and how will you perpetuate those cultural elements as a moderator?

This might seem like an obvious statement, but the most valuable thing we have is a community of users willing to answer people’s questions and not just with a quick answer. We have a collection of people willing to look at a question, apply their knowledge to it, and then go off and research a solution, often to very complex problems, and provide an answer to a person on the internet who they will likely never meet, or see how they benefit from their work, because they can.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this by making it easy for them to do so. Remove the spam and the advertisements that get in the way, help to clean up the inappropriate or misplaced questions, edit these questions to make sure they can reach the people best able to help them. If the moderators can help to do this, the users are able to focus on what really matters, quality answers.

Another great point about Serverfault is that a lot of the time, moderators aren’t needed. People have invested so much time and effort into this site, that they are also invested in keeping the site clean and organised and editing, migrating or closing questions where it is needed. I also feel that by operating in this way users feel better when they have their questions edited or moved. It seems much less personal when 5 people have voted together to close or move your question than when a single superman jumps in and does it. I’m be much more inclined to consider that my question had problems if 5 of my peers agreed on that.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this, keep their fingers out of the pie! There are some tasks that a moderator should be very keen on dealing with, spam, abuse etc. But I feel a good moderator shouldn’t be visible to users until it is clear that they are needed. There is no call to use the mod hammer to close a question that will get closed by users  (often with positive feedback to the user that asked the question), there’s no need for moderators to come in and make sweeping changes to a question when they know the users will help evolve this question over the time. Moderation is a power to be used lightly and honed over time, not a chain gun to be used on all that get in its way.

What do you see as the top two flaws in SF's culture at the present time and how would you address those cultural flaws as a moderator?

One of the increasingly common faults I have seen with the community is the fact that we can be somewhat elitist as to what questions we will answer. We look at a question that is badly worded, with spelling or grammar mistakes as being written by someone too lazy to make the effort, so why should we spend time answering it. However more and more of the time, these sorts of questions are from people whose first language is not English, or who are struggling in trying to put their thoughts into words, but are trying very hard to put together a question.

We should be more accommodating in this area, particularly as high rep users and moderators, and spend some time helping these users clean up their questions and make them better, rather than jumping on the close button. I’m as guilty as the next person in this sometimes, and I need to do better at taking the time to try and establish what someone is trying to ask. If we can get this far, then the question has value and we can help by editing and formatting the question so that it gets good answers. No question should be written off just because it doesn’t read well at first glance. A moderator’s role should be as a guide, to spot these users that might be struggling and help and encourage them to write better questions.

My final bad point is something we’ve all done at some point I’m sure. You see a question where you think “OMGZ how can they not know that” because the answer is so blindingly obvious..... to you. We’ve all learned so much over our careers that we can sometimes forget what it is like to not know the basics, especially those times when you know that the answer should be obvious, but you can’t get it. We’ve all been there, but now our heads are so full of the incredibly intricate solutions to complicated problems that we forget and we leave condescending comments or LMGTFY links. It has probably taken that user some courage to ask what they know is a simple question, but we make them feel bad about it.

I’m by no means saying this is happening all the time, but we have all thought that way I’m sure, when we’re busy and stressed, but it’s not fair to that user. As a moderator I’d like to think that I can help dissuade this behaviour by leading by example and letting people know that snide comments and LMGTFY links don’t help. Along with reassuring the, often new, users that it’s ok to ask questions that might seem simple, because you can guarantee that they are not going to be the only ones who benefit from the answer. A moderator’s diamond adds some weight to your responses and it should be used for good.

Sam

What do you see as the top two most valuable cultural elements of ServerFault and how will you perpetuate those cultural elements as a moderator?

This might seem like an obvious statement, but the most valuable thing we have is a community of users willing to answer people’s questions. Not just with a quick answer, or with what they happen to know about a question. We have a collection of people willing to look at a question, apply their knowledge to it, and then go off and research a solution, often to very complex problems, and provide an answer to a person on the internet who they will likely never meet, or see how they benefit from their work. They are willing to help people, because they can.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this. That is to make it easy for them to do so. Remove the spam and the advertisements that get in the way, help to clean up the inappropriate or misplaced questions, edit these questions to make sure they can reach the people best able to help them. If the moderators can help to do this, the users are able to focus on what really matters, quality answers.

Another great point about Serverfault is perhaps something I shouldn’t be saying, going for a moderator position after all, but it’s that a lot of the time, moderators aren’t needed on ServeFault. Because people have invested so much time and effort into this site, they are also invested in keeping the site clean and organised and editing, migrating or closing questions where it is needed. I also feel that by having the site looked after in this way users feel better when they have their questions edited or moved. It seems much less personal when 5 people have voted together to close or move your question than when a single superman jumps in and does it. I’d be much more inclined to consider that maybe my question had problems that I need to look at if 5 of my peers agreed on that.

There is an easy way for moderators to help perpetuate this, and it’s to keep their fingers out of the pie! There are some tasks that a moderator should be very keen on dealing with, spam, abuse etc. But I feel a good moderator shouldn’t be visible to users until it is clear that they are needed. There is no call to use the mod hammer to close a question that will get closed by users (often with positive feedback to the user that asked the question), there’s no need for moderators to come in and make sweeping changes to a question when they know the users will help evolve this question naturally over the time. Moderation is a power to be used lightly and honed over time, not a sweeping chain gun to be used on all that get in its way.

What do you see as the top two flaws in SF's culture at the present time and how would you address those cultural flaws as a moderator?

One of the increasingly common faults I have seen with the community is the fact that we can be somewhat elitist as to what questions we will answer. We will often look at a question that is badly worded, with spelling or grammar mistakes as being written by someone too lazy to make the effort, so why should we spend time answering it. However more and more of the time, these sorts of questions are from people whose first language is not English, or who are struggling in trying to put their thoughts into words, but are trying very hard to put together a question.

We should be more accommodating in this area, particularly as high rep users and moderators, and spend some time helping these users clean up their questions and make them better, rather than jumping on the close button. I’m as guilty as the next person in this sometimes, and I need to do better at taking the time to try and establish what someone is trying to ask. If we can get this far, then the question has value and we can help by editing and formatting the question so that it gets good answers. No question should be written off just because it doesn’t read well at first glance. A moderator’s role should be as a guide, to spot these users that might be struggling and help and encourage them to write better questions.

My final bad point is something we’ve all done at some point I’m sure. You see a question where you think “OMGZ how can they not know that” because the answer is so blindingly obvious..... to you. And therein is the problem, we’ve all learned so much over our careers that we can sometimes forget what it is like to not know the basics, especially those times when you know that the answer should be obvious, but you can’t get it. We’ve all been there, but now our heads are so full of the incredibly intricate and amazing solutions to complicated problems that we forget and we leave condescending comments or LMGTFY links. It has probably taken that user some courage to ask what they know is a simple question, but we make them feel bad about it.

I’m by no means saying this is happening all the time, but we have all thought that way I’m sure, when we’re busy and stressed, but it’s not fair to that user. As a moderator I’d like to think that I can help dissuade this behaviour by leading by example and letting people know that snide comments and LMGTFY links don’t help. Along with reassuring the, often new, users that it’s ok to ask questions that might seem simple, because you can guarantee that they are not going to be the only ones who benefit from the answer. A moderator’s diamond adds some weight to your responses and it should be used for good.