2021 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Question

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it on the election page.

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Code Review is scheduled for an election next week, 12 April. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

Here's how it'll work:

• Until the nomination phase, (so, until 12 April at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

• We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. They are included at the bottom of this question.

• If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

• This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

• At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election.

• Once questions have been selected, the candidates will be able to answer them as part of their nomination post on the election page as described in the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange. The full questionnaire is usually around 10 questions total.

• This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

1. 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?
2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

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3. In your opinion, what do moderators do?
4. 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?
5. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Answer 1

You notice that a moderator on Code Review is not active very often, or when they are active, they do only the minimal amount of moderation, they do not participate often in codereview.meta.stackexchange.com and may not even have visited the meta site in some weeks.

Is this a concern? What, if anything, should be done to get them to "pull their weight"?

Answer 2

Moderators have a role that is much closer aligned to Stack Exchange as a corporation than the role of "just another high-rep user". This can mean enforcing policies that you'd like to see implemented differently, lobbying for change in those policies or any number of interactions that are not available to "your normal everyday user".

What do you think of that prospect?

If you could change one policy (be it SE-wide or CR), which would that be and why?

Answer 3

Moderating on SE is much more than just wielding a mighty hammer, zapping spammers and wearing a cool hat. As a moderator, the community will be looking up to you, and ideally following your footsteps - you'll be some kind of a role model here.

Are you planning to take a leadership role in the continuous building of this community, keeping it active, vibrant, appealing to reviewers / would-be reviewers / reviewees?

If so, how? If not, why?

_{Borrowed from Mathieu Guindon}

Answer 4

Moderators on Code Review automatically become moderators on the Stack Exchange chat system. The chat system includes Code Review and all Stack Exchange sites except Stack Overflow.

A user on chat has posted a message that has been flagged as rude or abusive on a board related to the hypothetical, but obviously "controversial" or "polarizing" site flatearth.stackexchange.com.

What actions do you take?