Return to Revisions

Ward's 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 will be stepping down as a moderator after this election, which leaves 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.