In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected [from an earlier thread](https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/9382/2018-moderator-election-qa-question-collection) 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 9 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](https://meta.serverfault.com/revisions/41e4e546-f5b1-42a3-b514-c62afb9f1ec5/view-source).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):

[Ward's answers to the questionnaire][1]



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>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?



>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)



>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?



>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?



>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?



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



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



>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?



>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?


  [1]: https://meta.serverfault.com/a/9396/6177