Bitcoin SE - Seeking Community Moderators To Help This Site Stay Awesome!

Question

Your community moderators have been incredibly busy over the last few months. There's more discussion happening on meta, the overall quality of the site has come up considerably, and the reduction in the levels of spam and borderline spam has led search engines to give us an edge over similar sites for the topic in their results.

Take a look at the front page, it's a lot different than it was six months ago, and it's on track to keep getting more awesome as we steam ahead. This was a very difficult topic to nail down on our platform in a manner keeping with the kind of quality that we're very well known for, and it honestly feels like Bitcoin SE is well on its way to doing just that.

While it makes me a little sad to announce it, I'd like for everyone to take a moment to say thanks to the following super awesome people that helped us get to the point that we are today. As luck and life would have it, they don't have the time that they used to, and they want to step aside to let folks that can devote more time and energy to the site get into positions where they can be more effective:

I'm looking for a few folks from within this community that are interested in stepping up to take a stronger role on the site. You'll of course need a patient, even-handed and fair approach to solving problems, as well as a familiarity with our theory of moderation.

Bitcoin SE is at a very interesting, and critical part of its evolution, and it needs folks that are both willing to lead, and continue to push things in the right direction. This can include working with your fellow mods to adapt better custom close reasons that better explain the problems with some of the very open-ended recommendation questions that we see, curating some of your help center articles to be more relevant to folks that want to ask certain kinds of questions about Bitcoin, and working with us (Stack Exchange) as you call on our help to get things done - you'll have direct access to us.

Because the site sees such a high quantity of spam and extremely low quality posts, we ask that you be able to spend 30 - 40 minutes per day moderating the site, at least a few days a week.

Are you interested? Leave an answer below and some thoughts that you have regarding the site. Things are busier than ever, so I hope to have folks appointed by the end of the week.

Good luck to everyone, and a second round of thanks to those that are stepping down - you all have done a fantastic job!

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Special thanks to Stephen and Nick for stepping up into their new roles. Please give them a warm welcome!

Answer 1

I'm interested in joining the Bitcoin moderation team.

I joined nine months after the public beta started; I've been part of Bitcoin.SE for almost two years now. I'm mostly interested in the technical background of Bitcoin, but I also like questions about the social and economic aspects.

I'll be sorry to see these guys go. (Especially David Schwartz!) I hope they'll stick around as non-moderators, because they've made this community a better place.

I'm a full-time student, but I'll make time for moderation.

Pet Issues

We have a pretty low answer rate. (87%) Usually, that's just because there's no existing solution to the problem, though it's not impossible to accomplish. Sometimes the question isn't coherent. However, I'm guessing that about 10% of those questions are answerable questions that have slipped through the cracks.

Answer 2

I'm a little late to the game here, as I tend to spend more time on the Bitcoin SE rather than the Bitcoin meta SE, but I would be interested in helping the Bitcoin SE community by being a moderator. Since discovering the Bitcoin SE, I have found it to be the most useful and structured place to get my questions answered, and I have answered many questions as well. If I can help with this in any way, I would be happy to.

How I can help:

• I am a thorough person. I like getting and giving thorough answers.
• I check my stack overflow many times a day, and will be able to flag/mark/respond promptly.
• Have read many of many of the most searched Bitcoin SE questions, and will be able to refer users to related/duplicate questions.

Are there any issues in particular where you see room for improvement?

I think bitcoin can be such a confusing topic that many people who ask questions ask many questions at once. I think closely related questions are fine to go in the same SE question, but many questions need to broken up into more appropriate chunks.

How can we be sure that you will still feel committed to Bitcoin.SE for some time?

I am a Bitcoin enthusiast, and I deal with Bitcoin every day in my job. I'm working at a startup in New Hampshire called ziftr, where we are starting our own ziftrCOIN. I use the Bitcoin SE regularly as my goto way to get and give help. I have not been on the Bitcoin SE for as long as some others have, but I think I have already made a noticeable impact. For example, I am in the top 2% of reputation earners this month, mainly because I stay active and give thorough responses.

What do you think is the most important role of moderators on Bitcoin.SE?

I think the most important role of the moderator is to constantly watch the Bitcoin SE and make sure that questions are appropriately dealt with (flagged, marked as duplicate, broken up, etc) before others spend their valuable time giving answers. Like Nick said, we have a low answer rate, and I think we could improve that by moderators having a chance to 'preprocess' questions to make them suitable to be answered.

Answer 3

I would be willing to contribute in this manner. I'm new to this site, but I'm well-established on Stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/users/291180/travis-webb. I also run a Bitcoin-related software company (https://github.com/hashware), so I have actual skin in the game; increasing community participation will ultimately benefit my business.

I'm happy to put my selfishness to work for the community.