Do you agree with MDMarra's linked assessment here, and do you think that anything can or should be done about it? If so, what?
I agree on the whole with the summary that there is a steady stream of "simple" questions on the site, but that's largely a product of improved growth based around other sites' users joining Serverfault. Notably, StackOverflow, and as Iain pointed out, there are a lot of SF new users who are high-rep on SO.
I believe that the ultimate resolution for a lot of these simple questions is to edit them to allow us as high reputation SF users, and also as moderators, to produce more canonical question/answers, which we can link to, either as a related-to link, or Vote to Close, Duplicate.
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 do this frequently, and I know that I'm seen as arrogant, or abrasive, but the truth is that my experience and knowledge is how I'm able to produce valuable insight and answers, but it's also that experience that makes me cynical and perceived to be arrogant, about what I call "short-term cheapskatery" where it's seen that a dodgy hack for a short period is better than a long-term, more expensive investment fix.
In terms of the comment flags, I think the best solution is to drop all users into a chat room, and allow them to discuss it in a more structured environment. I struggle to express my feelings in a tweet, for example, and similarly, it feels like a comment isn't enough to get across most points and feelings, forcing the poster to be more terse than they would perhaps be, in a chat room environment.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I don't feel too concerned about this, generally, because nothing is ever really truely deleted, and can be recovered from the brink of destruction. I'd approach the moderator who closed/deleted the question in the Chatroom, get some further insight and background, and then either undelete or reopen as needed.
How would you deal with each of the following cases: A new user who is posting many off-topic questions (good quality, just not on-topic) | A new user who is posting many poor-quality questions (poorly researched, "do my work for me", or generally not up to the minimum standard of professionalism) | A user (new or established) arguing about a moderation decision | A user (new or established) harassing other users
A new user who is posting many off-topic questions (good quality, just not on-topic)
This is probably the most difficult to deal with, but I feel that the best mechanism for dealing with it is to leave comments on the user's questions, whilst migrating them to other StackExchange sites where the question is a better on-topic fit.
A new user who is posting many poor-quality questions (poorly researched, "do my work for me", or generally not up to the minimum standard of professionalism)
These questions bug me a little bit, as a high-rep user, but I'll frequently answer a "do my work for me" question, and find that the OP never comes back. It would probably be more useful for the site's health in general to treat the "fire and forget" attitude of drive-by question posting. I don't mind editing poorly phrased questions, where English might not be the OP's original language. I'll even attempt to translate from some languages, either through my own knowledge, or a drop through Google Translate.
A user (new or established) arguing about a moderation decision
This is irritating, but best dealt with in chat, or on meta. I personally don't agree with the phrase "and the moderator's decision is final", as we're all human, and humans aren't infallible. If a clear case can be made that a moderator acted in a manner that's malicious, or just needlessly final with regard to making decisions, then I think it should be up to a group moderator discussion to revisit the instance, on a case-by-case basis.
A user (new or established) harassing other users
Luckily, this doesn't happen that often on SF. In the instance that it does, I think it should be possible to take measures as outlined in Jeff Atwood's blog, about Slowbanning or Hellbanning troublesome users (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html). It's probably the least disruptive way of dealing with a user who's up to no good.
What can we do to keep people like MDMarra engaged in the main site and not just chat? It seems like after a certain point, Q&A isn't enough for expert-level people. There needs to be design and architecture discussions to keep people at a high-level interested, but we all know that discussion is not allowed on main. Is chat part of the natural "evolution" here, or can something be done to the main site to bring people like me back to it?
Personally, I think it's a shame that the current incarnation of the FAQ is so strictly prohibitive of both high-level architecture questions (either as a whole, or once broken down, they can be frowned upon too). To some extent, I agree with the "Q&A is hard, let's go shopping" rules, but on the other hand, if we allowed more high-level, long-running questions as Community Wikis, or otherwise, perhaps we'd create a place for high-rep, old-timer users, such as MDMarra, Chopper3 and myself included to put in our $0.02 about our experiences when designing system architecture.
Server Fault has long held itself to be "a site for professionals" - our FAQ specifically calls this out: "Server Fault is for Information Technology Professionals needing expert answers related to managing computer systems in a professional capacity." How do you define "in a professional capacity" in the context of this site? What minimum standards of effort/professionalism do you intend to encourage as a moderator?
A few things commonly flag my personal "off-topic radar", these are typically things like the mention of the words "Linksys", "belkin", "WEP", "Home Server", and so on. It seems pretty clear that if you're using consumer-grade hardware in a business environment, then you're doing it wrong, or cutting costs to such an extent that it'll only ever be suitable for a short term solution, won't scale with users and business growth, and will only ever lead to the OP requiring a larger investment at a later date.
As far as the words "in a professional capacity" goes, I'd say if you're getting any kind of monetary compensation for your efforts, and you're willing to utilise business-grade products in this thing you're doing, then it belongs here.
It is however, a pretty thin line, that. If you were setting up WiFi for your Church (or other local community), and you were using a Linksys WRT54G, you post it on Superuser. If you're using Cisco Aironet, or Meraki, or Ubiquiti, then your question belongs here on Serverfault.
In the nominations, every candidate has focused on what would make him a good moderator, but one thing I'd really like to know is: Where do you want ServerFault to go and how do you plan to help make it go there?
I'd like the fix the drive-by posting problem, and encourage users to return, comment, learn and accept their answers. I'd like to see more high-level architecture design questions, and participate in the answering of these, including contributing novel R&D where needed to help investigate this kind of support. I'd like to help SF users to create more canonical questions to answer some more of the frequently asked questions by new users.
Moderators have the ability to close questions without the concurring votes of other community members. In light of this, how (if at all) will you change the way you evaluate questions that might need to be closed?
The only questions that I envisage myself closing without community votes are those in the case of blatant spam, or unacceptable content, including abuse, excessive linking, sock-puppetry and so on. Whilst perusing the review queue, I suspect I'll try to allow Votes to Close to gather under community power first, before bringing the "mod hammer" down. If a question gets posted into the chatroom demanding prompt-critical response, then I'll review these on a case-by-case basis.
One thing I really like about this site is that a lot of the moderators tend to hang out in the Comms Room. This sort of "live support" is a lot more receptive in today's "instant" world versus email. While doing so is not explicitly required and nobody can expect a moderator to be available 24x7... Do you (as a potential moderator) think that this is a valuable way for a moderator to participate on the site, and why?
I tend to hang out in The Comms Room even without being a moderator. Whilst I can see why current mods hang out there, I do think that perhaps a Mods-only chatroom would be a valuable asset to the site, not from the point of view of live support, because that's not what The Comms Room is, and certainly not a way to get on-call moderation, because that's not what it's for either, but a mods-only chatroom would allow some more discreet discussion in the event that the moderators disagree about the decisions taken by other mods.
What is not well known is that Moderators also have final authority in the /review queues. Once a moderator has picked something, it's out of the queue one way or the other. The vasty closed-queue was emptied in large part because our existing mod-staff stepped in and helped muck out the stables; otherwise it would have taken a lot longer. Now that the glut is passed, what is your policy for delving into the /review queues as a moderator?
Even as a high-rep user, I still tend to read through the Tools queues, while I'm reading through the /review queues. Mostly to see if there's anything significant that I've missed. I don't see any reason that I won't still review the /review queues if I do get elected as a moderator.
