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?
Different people would probably describe the problem differently, but I think his assessment is largely correct: there is a disconnect between new users of the site and those that have been around longer. I think the core of the problem is not so much easy questions, but bad ones: unclear, incomplete, questions that are starting with an unprofessional premise (how can I tune my cPanel server to run my Facebook-killer website?)... That's the problem the new users cause, the other side of the coin is that the problem with the longer-term members is the tendency to respond harshly to those types of bad question.
I think that implementing some of the ideas here will help: if we can come up with some standardized, constructive comments to explain why questions are closed, maybe* we can get away from comments that are seen as mean, while still quickly shutting the door on bad questions.
(*I know we'll never get rid of all the accusations of meanness - you see them all the time on meta.SO from people who've been question-banned and are sure that they don't deserve it.)
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 can think of a couple people on SF who might fit this description... and I think the usual tool for dealing with this - a temporary ban - is the right way to go. OTOH, there was a recent case here of an active user here who was banned and hasn't come back yet. Or the more extreme case of the very active contributor to Physics.SE (who was also pretty obnoxious) who was banned and has said he'll never come back. I'm still in favour of temporary bans to give people a chance to cool off, but I'd be sure to discuss them beforehand.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
In order: 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.
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
Problematic users of all these types would likely be talked about among the SF mods, and if additional advice was needed there's the all SE mods chat room. A user harassing others would be the simplest: that's not tolerated on SE sites, so they either have to stop or they'll get banned. Another truly automatic response is that a user posting many bad or off-topic questions would likely be hit with an automatic question ban.
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?
I've been in favor of allowing questions that are more subjective (open-ended, discussion-y...) since 2009 (!) I'd love to see more questions like How should an IT department choose a standard Linux distribution? I think that SF would be better if we had some more broad questions like this, but they'd have to be held to a very high standard to keep them from becoming "I like xxx because the colour scheme is pretty!"
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?
We all know professional when we see it... We have a few things in the FAQ that are defined as being on- or off-topic, and many people vote to close when it's clear a question is about someone's home network. I think it's more a matter of doing things in a professional way: lots of us have had to do flaky things over the years, but we've generally found it works better to do things right: use real servers, don't run your company web site on XP, etc...
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 think moderators have a small amount of "moral authority" to use to ask people to behave a certain way... Whatever amount it is, I'd use it to try to convince people to use nice ways of saying "this is a bad question because..."
I'd really like to see more voting so that good questions and answers are recognized (bad ones too), but frankly, leading by example doesn't seem to have done anything on that front. So my top priority would be to work with SE staff to devise a way to deliver a 10,000 V shock to anyone who answers a question without voting on it. (Is anyone reading all these huge walls of text?)
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?
I'd have to be a bit more careful about voting to close... In the past I've been pretty quick to VtC (since "closed" doesn't mean a question is dead, it needs some work), but if I were a mod I'd be more likely to wait for other votes or flags.
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?
Many of the people in chat are very active on the site, so being there is a good way to keep in touch with "the community." There are also people who go to chat instead of meta when they have a question about the site (or a complaint) so it's good if mods are around to respond to those issues.
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?
This is going to put a bit of a cramp in my style... I do a lot of close and re-open reviewing, but I'd have to cut back if I were a mod. For close votes, whether in /review or not, I think it's ok for a mod to hammer a question that's had some other votes or flags. Similarly for re-opens, although I find that there aren't too many in the queue that deserve reopening.
