Ward's *(mostly complete)* responses to the moderator candidate questions:

>1. Do you feel there are any issues with the relative amount and types of participation on ServerFault of long-term, high-rep users compared to newer, lower-rep users? If so, what would you try to do as a moderator to address these issues?

I think it's unfortunate that many long-term, high-rep users have largely stopped participating on ServerFault, there are fewer highly experienced sysadmins posting excellent answers than there used to be.  I don't think there's much that a single moderator can do to either bring back the users who left or to develop new high-rep users.

For example, I've tried a few times over the years to focus on voting for new users who were fairly active to see if that encouraged them to stick around, but I didn't see any sign of it working.  I don't think a single person or a single moderator can do much to encourage people to stick around and become long-term users.


>2. What time zone are you in? If different, what time zones do you think you will be able to be active in for the purposes of moderation? ([HBrujin](https://serverfault.com/users/37681/hbruijn) will be stepping down as a moderator after this election, which leaves [Sven](https://serverfault.com/users/8897/sven) as the only coverage during active CET hours)

As mentioned in my nomination, I'm in the Pacific (UTC-8) time zone, and tend to stay up late. 


>3. Moderators see the review-queues a little differently. How do you see yourself handling answers from a new user that could be great with a little clarification, yet has earned at least one `not an answer` flag?

The ideal thing to have happen with an answer that could be improved by a bit of cleanup is for it to be edited, and moderators can do that as can many regular users.  But the whole point of review queues is that it _shouldn't_ be just moderators handling that sort of clean up, so I think most of those cases would be better dealt with by comments - suggesting what could make it a better answer.


>4. What do you believe a moderators role is, in cultivating good content for the site? With the decline in both new content and votes, do you believe as a moderator this should affect your behavior?

Although moderators have some tools for eliminating bad content, I don't think they should be soley responsible for it; regular users need to be involved as well.  When it comes to encouraging good content, I think moderators should lead by example to some extent (e.g. by editing and leaving constructive comments), but they can't be expected to do all the editing and commenting.

>5. 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 the usual tool for dealing with this - a temporary ban - is the right way to go.  Explain to the user what the problem is and use the banning system to give them a chance to cool off.

>6. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

In order, I would: talk to that mod and try to come to an understanding, discuss it with other SF mods, and finally bring it up in the mod-only discussion room if necessary. Somewhere along that path, I'm sure there'd be an understanding of how it should/shouldn't have been dealt with.

>7. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

I think moderators _should_ mostly deal with the bigger problems: with accounts that are spamming, with voting irregularities, with comments getting out of hand, etc.  I think the second special thing about moderators is that because their words carry somewhat more weight, they shouuld try to maintain a desirable "tone" for the site - leaving good comments, etc.


>8. 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'm comfortable with everything I've posted on SF, on meta.SF, on other SE sites, on Chat... I don't think there's anything that would look bad with a diamond after it, and at this point in ServerFault's life cycle it's unlikely that anyone is going to find much that's interesting in _any_ 7 or 8 year old post or comment.


>9. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Moderators have a few tools that even a high-rep user doesn't: unilateral close or open voting, comment cleanup, banning...   Those could all be used to greater effectiveness.