I am Womble.
- We had an election last year that ended with some parting and drama.
And I can't help but think of Ryan Ries` comment: "I don't know why anyone would want to be a moderator, now." Let's be honest here, things went wrong after the last election. Communication was a major issue, and there were some divisive opinions on what should or shouldn't have been done. What do you think went wrong last year, and what would you do differently if put in the same situation?
I think the situation came about because of a lack of effective communication and some feelings of resentment that made it difficult for the moderator involved and SE staff to continue working together.
The best way to "do it differently" would be to avoid being in the situation in the first place. I agree with something Shog9 said, that SF isn't a welcoming community -- for some good reasons, and some not-so-good ones. I'm actually curious to know what the SE community team has in the way of useful suggestions for how we can improve that situation.
- Last year, we voted on someone who was running on a platform of
extreme, desperate measures, we voted for someone who put up the following campaign slogan: "A vote for me is a vote to put my cruelty and viciousness to work for the site, against the horde of stupidity that threatens it." And while it definitely wasn't a landslide victory, talks of stupidity dealt with through cruelty did garner enough votes to win a second place. Do you think the extreme rhetoric used last year is still viable today?
Would you consider picking up some of the work that helped win last year, and if so will you take a different approach?
Burninating bad tags is a good idea, and there should be more of it. It would appear that SE staff took a dislike to a perceived lack of detailed "community consensus" around each action that was taken, and so I will make sure that any major work is done in accordance with an appropriate meta thread. I'll also seek to keep SE staff proactively informed of what's going on, so there's no need for them to to freak the hell out.
- Do you agree with the statement "ServerFault needs professional-quality questions, not just questions from professionals"? What does the word "professional" mean to you, within the context of the phrase, "professional-quality questions"? Do you believe that in addition to professional-quality questions, ServerFault also needs professional-quality answers and comments? What are "professional quality questions" to you?
I do agree with the statement. "Professional" is a word that bugs me a bit, as it doesn't have a clear and universally-agreed definition, and the negative form, "unprofessional", is used far too often as a sloppy placeholder for "I don't like it". If you've ever been called "unprofessional" because you don't wear a suit, then you know what I'm talking about.
In the context of "professional quality questions", I take the word "professional" to mean that you would be proud to show any question you wrote to your current boss, or any future boss, as an example of the quality of work that you produce. Further, the question would be of a level that you would expect of a colleague, or perhaps a subordinate, in your workplace.
It is somewhat disengenuous of us, however, to demand professional-quality questions, but greet questions which don't meet our standards with answers and comments that don't also meet the same standards of professionalism. I know it's really tempting to dole out some nuclear-grade snark to some n00b (and I've delivered some absolute scorchers over the years, of which I am now not particularly proud), but I really think we're not doing ourselves any favours with this behaviour. It is a vicious circle which will inevitably end with the dissipation of the site.
- I'm drunk/not reading carefully/don't hang out here much. Why should I vote for you instead of some other person?
Because I, too, am drunk and don't read things carefully. I AM YOUR KIND OF PERSON.
- What problems does Server Fault face that are unique to Server Fault?
The amorphous nature of what it means to be "a sysadmin" is a big one. It creates challenges around defining topicality, and helping visitors to decide whether this is the right place for them. I've heard SF described as "ask-a-sysadmin.com", and that isn't too far off the mark, either -- there are a lot of good, smart people here to answer questions, and that makes it an attractive place to dump questions on all sorts of topics.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a sysadmin job whose duties seemed to encompass "anything that uses electricity". That comes to bite us in the behind when it comes time to say, "this question is off-topic", because sysadmins do so very many things in different companies.
- Briefly explain the role of a moderator, and what you plan to do to fill that role. What is awesome about your approach?
I've heard it said that a moderator is an "exception handler", taking care of the things that the site users as a whole can't do themselves, for various reasons. I'd take it further than that: moderators are the executors of the community's wishes.
My intention is fairly simple: to be active on meta and maintain a good sense of the feelings of the community on various issues, and apply those to the content of the site in such a way as to encourage maximum participation from as many high-quality individuals as possible. I don't know if I'd call my approach "awesome", but it should at least be effective.
- 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?
Talk to them. Explain the consequences of their behaviour in terms that they would see as important and useful -- not "stop that or you're banned", but instead "you're scaring the n00bs" or "you come off looking like an angry coot", perhaps.
If they persist in their behaviour, and it is disruptive to the point of discouraging others from participating, I'd end up bringing out the banhammer. No single person, no matter how valuable and voluminous their answers, is as valuable or productive as the community members that a single disruptive person discourages from participating.
That goes double (or more) for poor questions and argumentative question-askers, too. Wading through large quantities of poor questions is demoralising, and I fully intend to do my part to keep poor-quality questions from discouraging people who provide good, informative answers from participating.
- How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
Talk to them. (I'm seeing a pattern in these "stock" questions...) If I don't understand something, I'm more than willing to put my hand up and say, "what the?". I'll listen to their side of the story, put my own case, and we'll either come to an understanding about what the correct course of action is, or we'll agree to disagree and I'll let it go, because there's no point in antagonising someone else by duelling over something which is, at the end of it all, relatively inconsequential.
