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I saw the "Please participate in the Server Fault 2012 community moderator election" notice and decided to take a look. After spending 10 minutes reading through the various candidates I then tried to figure out what to do next. It was then I discovered I needed a reputation of at least 150 to vote and that I've been wasting my time.

Maybe it's a good idea to publicise the election to all members but I think you should make it much clearer to people who can't vote. Maybe change the notice for people who can't vote to "The Server Fault 2012 community moderator election is underway" and slap a banner at the top of the election page saying "Only community members with 150 reputation may vote in the election"

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  • 2
    If you linked your SO account to your SF account you'd get a bonus 100 rep which may count towards the rep requirement to vote.
    – user9517
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 10:30
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    @Iain They're already linked, but he can break the link and relink them to claim the 100.
    – Chris S
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 13:41
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    Yes I got the 100 bonus but then I added a bounty to a question a while back and dropped back. My point is not that I think the bar is too high for voting or that I desperately want to vote, rather that it was annoying to only discover the fact after reading through the whole of the election page.
    – scarba05
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 9:22

2 Answers 2

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The banner is generic site-wide, so unfortunately it can't be different for different people.

As for the notice on the voting page, that's a good idea. I'll re-tag your question so that the people in charge of elections can see it :)

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    Sounds like a "support user specific banners" feature might be in order
    – scarba05
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 10:14
  • @scarba05 - I doubt it will happen. Site banners are used exceedingly rarely (maybe once or twice a year), and 99.9% of the time the messages are applicable for all users (such as scheduled downtime, etc). But you can always ask!
    – Mark Henderson Mod
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 10:17
  • I just raised a separate feature request
    – scarba05
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 10:18
  • Yep, I saw it. I've moved it to meta.stackoverflow which is where people will see it the most. Remember that on meta, a - vote means "I disagree", and a + means "I agree", so don't take it to heart if it gets some - votes (which is why they dont display specific rep here)
    – Mark Henderson Mod
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 10:19
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Yes, the bar to voting is very low and with a bit of effort if someone wanted to participate then they should be able to reach it. Even if they didn't want to participate being aware of what's happening in the community is a good thing.

The reputation requirement is mentioned in the bar on the right hand side of the election page.

enter image description here

Perhaps mentioning it in the information at the top of the page too would be a good idea.

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  • Agreed - you can hit 150 rep in one day if you really try ; certainly within a week with some light effort.
    – voretaq7
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 15:42
  • My point was that I didn't read it until after I'd spent 10 minutes reading through all the posts. I'm more active on stackoverflow but on serverfault I'm just an occasional user.
    – scarba05
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 9:19

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