2011 Moderator Election

I've finally decided to throw my hat into the ring :)

I've been one of the pro-tem moderators for the site for the past few months, so people who have been around here probably know my style. I tend to be a little hesitant about "doling out punishment" (suspensions etc.) and a little aggressive about closing questions, but only because I really care about keeping the site focused on proper physics (not philosophy, pseudoscience, etc.) and I think it is important to act quickly on questions which are inappropriate here. I don't support restricting the topics we cover to a certain level, the way Math Overflow does, but I do support restricting based on quality: the questions we get should be reasonably precise and answerable using established physics. I believe it's possible to ask a good question, or a bad question, at any level of study.

I'll freely admit that I may not have done the best job as a moderator so far, but at least some people seem to think I've been decent at it, so I think it's fair to give the community the option of having me continue in the role.

Right now I'm in the middle of a busy period that keeps me from being fully available for moderating (or participating in) the site, but that should end in about 3 weeks. This means I wouldn't be fully available for the first couple weeks of the new moderators' term, but if I'm elected, I'm hoping that won't be a serious problem. I've had some chats with Rebecca (Chernoff) and she seems to think it won't be too big of a deal.

There has been some complaint that we haven't enough candidates, so I'll put myself forward.

I'm currently one of the pro tem moderators on codegolf.SE, I have been around since the Stack Overflow private beta, and have accumulated a bit of reputation on the mother meta.

I do have opinions about what content does and does not belong (including a dislike of Big Lists, a dislike of keeping elementary homework problem on the site (I try to provide a pointer in the comments, instead), and having little truck with...er...non-standard theories), but have tried not to move too preemptively on CodeGolf.

I can be convinced to change my mind at times.

The demands of real life come and go and I may not always be able to devote a lot of time to moderation around here, but can generally check in every day (with the rare exception of travel days on overseas trips).

While I'm not very active in terms of questions/answers on the main site, I did collect quite some experience over at meta.SO concerning the SE mechanics.

Due to a lack of time I unfortunately had to turn down my pro-tempore nomination, but since I'm regularly waiting for simulations to finish I still spend some time here acting in the background doing some janitor work. Since I originally proposed this site I obviously want to take good care of it, too.

I live in Germany, so (until DST ends) the time is UTC +2 (see also Time in Germany)

I have been an active user in the first few months of Physics and I've helped build up the community until the go live phase. I would very much like to help our community grow and improve.

Why do I want your vote?

• I love Physics and I love StackExchange, therefore I see this site as one with a great potential!

• I am a pro-tempore moderator on Skeptics.SE, which is a very young, but promising site: I do know what moderating a tough active site looks like.

• I am also a long term user of StackOverflow, as I participated since the beta. I know why moderation is in place, and I've lived through a great experience in building a community from zero up to very high numbers of participants.

• I believe in a broad spectrum site: the focus should be towards having the highest quality for questions and answers. I believe that bad questions should be fixed or closed, and good questions should be rewarded with great answers.

• I am very active in various chat rooms, and I would like to help making our chat a great one!

About me

As a moderator I think I would be a good human exception handler, cleaning up messy situations and helping the community be harmonic. I believe my current experience as a moderator would really help this site.

As a physicist I am university trained to ~grad level, and as such I believe I could be most effective in dealing with lower level questions -- which is something that more skilled physicists don't have in their heart to deal with, most of the times.