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Congratulations! You've met the participation and engagement expectations for an active private beta site, and will be moving into public beta on July 26, 2022!

We were worried for the first week or so there, but after posting some clear guidance to assist y'all in making sure this site grew into a healthy and successful community, we were happy to see a surge in activity and Meta discussions! ^_^

As we’re getting ready to wrap up the private beta for Bioacoustics Stack Exchange, that means it’s time to start thinking about what comes next: the election to choose your first pro-tem moderators.

What does it take to be a Moderator?

Prior to 2018, pro-tem moderators were picked by staff, and the Community Management team would look for users who:

  • Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
  • Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.
  • Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
  • Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.
  • Have an eye for content that should be flagged, closed or removed and act on that within the expectations of the community and Stack Exchange generally.

Electing your moderators

In 2018, however, we started experimenting with hosting elections for beta sites to choose their pro-tem moderators, in addition to the community-elected moderators in sites not in Beta, in the rest of the network. The process is mostly the same, but if you’re interested in the full details, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange.

In accordance with that, I’m here today to announce this site’s first pro-tem election and invite users interested in nominating to state their intention to do so here. Additionally, if you feel someone would be a good fit as a moderator on this site, feel free to use an answer to this question to support them and encourage them to run.

The pool of nominees that the community can choose from will hopefully bring a good mix of skills to the table: folks who are experienced in the SE network, folks are who good subject-matter experts, folks who are skilled at community building, etc.

The timeline:

  • Starting on 1 August, users can nominate themselves on the election page. Users can also ask questions on meta for potential moderators to answer. (Use the and tags.)

  • On 8 August, if there are 4 or more candidates, we'll run an election. If not, I'll extend the nomination period for a week. If, at the end of that extension period there are still less than 4 candidates, I'll simply appoint the candidates. (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination.)

  • If there is an election, I'll announce the results on meta on 16 August (or 23 August, if we need to extend the nomination period).

NOTE:

  • This is not an official election nomination thread. It’s just a space to get some conversation about potential nominees going and a notion of who would be willing to step up, so you don't have to put up your whole election nomination here.

If you have any questions about the process, please ask them in an answer below.

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    $\begingroup$ Yay! I am assuming the text about Parity the Substrate company doesn't apply to us. Is there anything similar you are concerned about with our site? $\endgroup$
    – selene
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 17:03
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    $\begingroup$ @selene: You are correct – I assume JNat just forgot to take that part out when they copied the text over from the corresponding post on Substrate's Meta... I've edited it out now :) $\endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 18:49
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    $\begingroup$ V2Blast is correct, @selene — I overlooked areas of the post I thought only had boilerplate text, oops! $\endgroup$
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 9:49
  • $\begingroup$ How many are you expecting will be elected? --- Ah, I see that the page says "3". (I would have expected a bit more) $\endgroup$
    – Dan Stowell Mod
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 9:34

2 Answers 2

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I think @noil, @thejasvi, and @Shannon would all make great moderators.

All three are active on the site and on Meta, are excellent subject matter experts, and are an supportive community members!

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    $\begingroup$ Note that while folks can encourage others to join, they'll need to actually nominate themselves when the election starts in order to be a candidate. (In other words: While you can informally "nominate" others by encouraging them to run or saying they'd make a good mod, they'll need to be willing to nominate themselves in order for them to actually be considered a candidate in the election.) You might know this already, but I just wanted to clarify that. So on that note... If you want to say "these people would make good mods", you may want to edit your answer to explain why you think so :) $\endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 18:48
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    $\begingroup$ Ah ok, I totally missed the first part of that when reading through. Thank you for clarifying! $\endgroup$
    – selene
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 19:00
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    $\begingroup$ What about Selene 😆? Their active on the main site and meta. $\endgroup$
    – Ethan
    Commented Jul 23, 2022 at 2:14
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Aside from agreeing with @selene's nominations (@Noil, @Shannon + I'd be happy to stand for election too) , I also think the following would be great moderators considering their topic expertise, and general manner interaction with community members and Meta discussions so far (pls forgive my poor summaries of research fields, and correct if needed).

  • @selene (cetacean acoustics, aquatic field biologist)
  • @Jamie Macaulay (cetacean acoustics, dev in a popularly used software)
  • @Carly Batist (primate + terrestrial acoustics, passive monitoring)
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  • $\begingroup$ FWIW, I will only put my name in the hat if there are not enough people. I have a list of other ways I hope to strengthen this community, but will step up if needed. $\endgroup$
    – Shannon
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 23:57

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